S (Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for ESPN)
Disney’s announcement today that it is adding an ESPN tile to the front page of Disney+ marks another significant step toward unifying all of Disney’s streaming offerings in one place.
And that’s a bigger deal than just a little interface tweak, especially when the company’s sports offerings become fully available online sometime next year.
“It’s an opportunity to broaden the base,” said Meghan Shue, head of investment strategy & portfolio construction at Wilmington Trust, on CNBC this morning. “Disney+ is a unique product, as we all know, and very focused on family, but they’re trying to make (Disney+) a pass-through to those other apps.”
The company has sold various bundles of Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ for years, most notably its bundle featuring all three, now costing $16.99 a month. And third-party metrics companies say the combined viewers of all of Disney’s streaming, broadcast and cable operations make it the most-watched source of entertainment, sports and news in the world, even more than streaming monarch Netflix.
The three services have never been fully integrated in the five years since Disney+ debuted, or even in the year or so since it took full control of Hulu. There’s been no integrated interface or search (is that Michael Jordan documentary on ESPN, Disney+ or Hulu?) or even a single sign-on identity for billing and the rest.
Screenshot of Disney+ home page featuring Hulu and ESPN+ tiles
That family focus for Disney+, which counts on children’s content to drive a massive share of its regular viewership, has complicated plans to integrate its streaming services more quickly.
Hulu relies on the critically acclaimed shows of the F/X cable network for much of its original programming, including this year’s Emmy Best Drama Series winner Shogun and contender Bear. Neither would be considered cuddly family-friendly shows, for all their respective, intense, and complicated brilliance.
But Disney executives slowly came around to adding a Hulu links within Disney+ to let customers directly access the latter’s programming footprint beyond kid-friendly series, Pixar movies and various Star Wars and Marvel franchise
Now, after adding Hulu programming to the home screen more than a year ago, Disney+ will also get at least the modest array of live games and talk shows available on the underfed ESPN+ service.
Next year, the company’s executives have promised, ESPN will finally offer its full array of games and other programming from the cable version of ESPN. And that will put pretty much all of Disney’s billions of dollars in annual spending on content in one online place for its many different sets of fans.
Pricing and audience enthusiasm for a standalone full ESPN app still haven’t been determined. The company had hoped to extract useful consumer data with Venu, the “skinny bundle” of sports-focused cable and broadcast networks it tried to launch this year with partners Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.
But virtual cable provider Fubo sued and persuaded a judge in September to issue an injunction halting Venu’s rollout. That case is expected to continue for at least several months, potentially delaying Venu’s launch long enough that it no longer can debut at all.
The shift could be a tectonic one for the tattered cable television industry, already in retreat from cord-cutting, network closures, layoffs and Comcast’s just-announced plan to spin off most of its cable nets into a stand-alone company.
Sports, especially the NFL, have been the stickiest, most popular programming remaining on cable television. ESPN’s move to streaming could kick out the last stanchion undergirding consumer interest in cable networks instead of streaming. As it is, traditional “cable” has seen its penetration of U.S. audiences drop by nearly half, to somewhere around 55 million households with subscriptions, and falling fast.
