ESPN’s over-the-top streaming service ESPN Plus will
launch in late March or early April, Disney CEO Bob Iger said at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley this week.
As previously announced, ESPN Plus will cost $4.99 per month, and will
feature live sporting events not currently shown on ESPN’s linear TV channels, as well as on-demand archival programming.
Iger said that the service—and the price—will evolve
over time. “I imagine you’ll see that price rise for the augmented service,” Iger said, adding that down the line “We have the opportunity to enable customers to buy
seasons, teams, weekends,” enabling for different pricing schemes or personalization.
Of course, for now ESPN Plus is a supplementary service to cable TV and ESPN’s
linear channels. Down the line, however, Iger conceded that the app could supplant the traditional channels.
“Over time, our intention would be for that app to be the app
that people experience ESPN on,” he said, “but we’re going to manage the migration of that very carefully because right now we have a business—the multichannel
business—that is serving our company quite well.”
Iger added that many providers have had discussions with Disney about distributing its direct-to-consumer apps,
including ESPN and a Disney-branded service coming in 2019.
With more and more consumers turning to OTT offerings for their entertainment, Iger argued that Disney needed to adapt
accordingly. In order to ”thrive in a fully disrupted world,” Iger said, the company needs to be ”in the very business that is doing the disruption."