Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery announced Tuesday that they will partner and sell access to all the sports they broadcast through a new streaming service. It will be available this fall, but many other details, such as price or who will manage the service, are not yet known.
The subtext of the deal – and of most decisions made by media companies – is that the cable package is collapsing. Until recently, approximately 100 million households in the United States subscribed to a cable or satellite television channel package. Today, that number stands at around 70 million, and it’s falling.
Media companies know that young adults are no longer subscribing to cable and that their best customers are also older ones. They know that people no longer think about “TV” but are instead accustomed to “content” that can be watched on a TV, phone or other device.
Cable’s days seem numbered, but right now it’s still a profitable business — streaming, for most companies, is not — and the biggest audiences for shows including sports, still exist on traditional television. So how can media companies get from where they are today to where they’re going to be?
With, they hope, deals like the one announced this week.
How it works?
Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have consolidated 14 of their channels broadcasting sports – the full list includes ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNews, Fox, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Big Ten. Network, TNT, TBS and truTV – as well as the streaming service ESPN+, and will sell them as a single package.
How much will it cost?
This has not been announced. But you can expect it to cost more than the roughly $15 per month most streaming companies charge, and less than the roughly $100 it costs each month to subscribe to a TV package paid. Announcements will be broadcast on the new service.
Is it a streaming service or a bundle of cable-like channels?
Both, in a way. This is definitely a streaming service that you will be able to subscribe to and watch on a variety of devices. But rather than a menu of different shows to watch on demand, there will be channels you can watch live, much like cable customers do.
As a result, this means that subscribers to the service will also be able to watch non-sports shows broadcast by these channels, such as “The Simpsons” and “The Bachelor”.
What is all this non-sporting content?
Contracts between networks and leagues generally specify where games can be broadcast. Due to fears of smaller audiences, most leagues have been reluctant to allow too many games to leave broadcast and cable channels and move entirely to streaming. But this new service is structured in such a way that it offers everything on the included channels: sports and non-sporting content. This more closely resembles existing cable bundles and means the companies didn’t need to get permission from leagues to stream games on the service.
Is this the only service I need to watch all the sports I want?
No. Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery paid for the rights to show a ton of sports, but they don’t own the rights to everything.
NBC, CBS, Amazon and other smaller players are not part of this deal. So if you want to watch the sports they have the rights to – which include many National Football League games, major golf tournaments and the PGA Tour, the men’s college basketball tournament, the Olympics and the English Premier League, among others – you always will. you have to subscribe to these channels.
So how can I benefit from all sports?
Well, you sign up for a pay TV package, or in Amazon’s case, Amazon Prime. You can get what’s on CBS and NBC with a cheap digital antenna, but if you want the games in the United States or on CBS Sports Network, you’ll need to get a pay TV package. For any games exclusively on NBC’s Peacock streaming service (like this season’s NFL playoff game between Kansas City and Miami) or CBS’ Paramount+ streaming service, you’ll need to subscribe to them.
The Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. channels. Will Discovery still be part of normal cable or satellite packages?
Forks.
If I have to subscribe to cable to receive sports on CBS and NBC, and Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery will also be there, why bother with this new service?
Intense sports enthusiasts may not want this. But this service takes many sports that were available on cable and sells them in another way. If you care about all sports or non-sports channels like Food Network or Nickelodeon, this probably isn’t for you.
But if you paid the one-time cost of a digital antenna and then purchased this package, you could watch a significant percentage of all sports on TV for a price that was likely much cheaper than a cable subscription.
It might also be interesting if you’re only a fan of a few sports. Do you like the National Basketball Association? You can get 100 percent of the nationally televised game with this package. Like a smaller college sport, like volleyball? You can get most of it from this package.
This doesn’t seem like a perfect solution.
This is probably not the case. Right now your options are to pay for a TV package (and a handful of streaming services) to watch everything, get a digital antenna and watch the NFL and a few other big events on traditional TV, or not watching sports.
Someday you might be able to pay for individual games a la carte, or a service might bundle all the sports together and somehow offer them for less than a cable subscription. This package could serve as a bridge to that future for some sports fans.
Can you please stop calling it a package?
Blame the companies for not having a name. They simply call it a “joint venture.”
