ESPN content makes up a third of what will be available on a new sports subscription service in fall 2024.Phil Nickinson / Digital Trends
There’s a habit, when it comes to streaming television, to overcomplicate things. Why else would there be a million (more or less) articles online explaining which streaming service is “best.” (Spoiler: None.) Or articles that explain why you should get one service over another, as if it’s a zero-sum game.
This has all happened before, and it will happen again, thanks to the gods of SEO. And we can expect even more of it in the fall of 2024 when the first of a pretty major one-two punch hits the world of streaming sports. That’s when we’ll see the combined sports assets of ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery become availableas part of a new streaming service.
Much is still unknown. A name for the service, for one thing. Price, for another. And we don’t yet know exactly when it will drop. (Disney CEO Bob Iger said “probably August,” but there’s been nothing more official than that.)
When it does come time to decide whether the new service is something you’ll want to spend money on, only two things actually matter. And they’re not complicated.
It’s as simple as that.
Those are, of course, subjective considerations. The sports that are most important to me might not be of any importance to you. (And that’s OK!) And the price I’m willing to pay may well be different than what you’re OK with (or vice versa).
While this new sports trifecta doesn’t yet have a name or a price, we do at least have a pretty good sense of the actual live sports that will be available, since a press release has said so.
There are no two ways about it — that’s one hell of a list. But here’s the thing: Much (if not all) of the sports listed above are available some other way, quite possibly via a subscription for which you already are paying, whether it’s via cable or via a linear streaming service like YouTube TV.
And that actually makes sense when you considerwhat Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch saidthe day after the new sports service was announced: It’s not intended to replace what you get with a cable or streaming subscription.
“This sports-focused platform is focused entirely on not cord-cutters, but cord-nevers,” Murdoch said on the Fox earnings call. “The target for this … is really that universe of, call it, 60 million-odd households that currently don’t participate in the bundled, cable, and pay television ecosystem.”
Disney’s Iger reiterated things that same day in his company’s earnings call, likening the new sports service to a sort of super add-on for those who don’t have some other linear TV subscription. Like, say, the live subscription you can get as part of Hulu’s on-demand package.
All that to say that when the time comes and this new sports service gets a price (and, ya know, a name), there really are only two things you need to worry about. (OK, maybe two and a half.) Same goes for whenESPN becomes available as a standalone subscriptionin fall 2025.
Does this new service have a price you’re able to stomach? And does it have the sports you want to watch? And are you already getting those sports some other way?
