• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, February 17, 2025

The next big streaming/CTV news comes later this year with Disney's launch of ESPN's “flagship” platform.

For many it will show how much sports really means to the TV and streaming ecosystem -- especially to ESPN's cable TV consumer loyalists.

Disney surely is focusing heavily on this product launch, with ESPN a key piece of its company. It cannot afford to mess up -- even a little bit.

Rich Greenfield, media analyst of LightShed Partners, believes Disney needs to hit the ground running -- but also to make up ground because of the demise of Venu Sports as a "destination" for sports (working in a joint venture with Fox Corp. and Warner Bros. Discovery.) It needs now to be that destination of sorts -- by itself.

With that as a backdrop, Greenfield believes that at the minimum, ESPN needs to be involved in all four major sports franchises -- NFL, NBA, Major League Baseball and NHL.

However, MLB now seems to be on the outs with ESPN -- and that means ESPN will suffer from losing “Sunday Night Baseball” and the Home Run Derby event as a part of the All Star game. Summertime programming in particular would suffer.

“Given what we suspect is a $25 [plus] ESPN Flagship direct to consumer price point (maybe incremental $20/month if bundled with Disney+/Hulu), having a weak summer sports calendar will likely lead to a spike in churn,” he says.

While losing MLB is important, consider that NFL and NBA are the two “must have” crucial sports franchises. So that works for ESPN.

All eyes will turn to the WNBA, which has 25 summer regular-season games and playoffs in the summer. 

Greenfield says that WNBA in 2024 improved to 1.2 million viewers per game because of the interest in Caitlin Clark, compared to its average of just 450,000 viewers the year before. Last year, “Sunday Night Baseball” averaged 1.5 million viewers -- up 6% from 2023.

While the potential for the WNBA to help buffer some of the expected MLB losses is growing, ESPN will need more established sports programming. Depending on whether MLB stays at ESPN, this might affect renewals from lesser but still important sports franchises: Formula One and UFC.

Ultimately, Disney needs to find the right TV/media marketing strategy -- convincing consumers that shifting to ESPN as a streaming services (from a cable network) will be as good as or better than the original.

Not only that, but adding $25 a month to consumers' streaming packages will be a big ask.

Batter up, consumers?