Disney, Warner & Fox sports streaming blows up the TV bundle

Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox have a plan to make sports streaming less of a hassle, one that involves offering a new kind of pay TV bundle.

This fall, the three companies will launch a new streaming service that bundles all their respective sports programming. The package will include 13 broadcast and cable channels—among them ABC, ESPN, Fox, and TNT—and promises to cost less than a typical cable bundle or live TV streaming service.

But the biggest news here is what the companies didn’t explicitly announce: For the first time ever, they’ll be splitting off sports and broadcast channels from the rest of their cable channel lineups. This is uncharted territory for TV networks, and it might finally blow up the pay TV bundle as we know it.

Details of the Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox sports streaming deal so far

Just to play catch-up, here’s what we already know about the joint venture between Disney, Warner, and Fox:

• The channel lineup will include ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network, ESPNews, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, and truTV, according to Variety.
• Some of those channels have non-sports shows, such as The Bachelor and The Simpsons, so they’ll be included as well, the New York Times reports.
• Pricing could be around $45 to $50 per month, not counting introductory promo rates, one source told CNBC.
• ESPN+ will be bundled at no extra cost.
• Disney+, Hulu, and Max subscribers will have an option to bundle the new sports package, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• The long-term goal is to add more sports programming from other companies, turning the service a broader sports hub, CNBC reports.
• That said, the companies did not approach Comcast (NBCUniversal) or Paramount (CBS) about working together, believing they didn’t offer enough sports and would make the package too expensive, Variety reports.
• The companies will keep licensing their channels to other TV providers and won’t make anything exclusive to the new service.

Here’s what we still don’t know about the new Disney, Warner, and Fox streaming service:

• An exact launch date and price.
• The name of the service.
• Whether local Fox and ABC broadcast affiliates are on board.
• What the service will look like and whose tech stack it’ll be built on.
• Whether it’ll include DVR, rewind, or full-game replays.
• How this might affect Warner’s rumored acquisition talks with Paramount.

Why the Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox sports streaming deal matters

Here’s the most important—and so far, most underappreciated—element of this new bundle: It doesn’t include any non-sports channels, even from the companies involved. That means no Fox News from Fox, no CNN or HGTV from Warner, and no Disney Channel or FX from Disney.

For the channel owners, this is an unprecedented move.

The reason cable TV costs so much is because programmers have insisted on bundling all their channels together. Even if you only wanted ESPN and ABC, for instance, Disney’s agreements with TV distributors required you to pay for every other Disney-owned channel, including FX, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, National Geographic, and so on. Disney also stipulates that all those channels are included in the most popular TV packages. Attempts to break up the bundle have been met with howls of rage and even lawsuits.

In the end, the TV industry miscalculated how badly people wanted those channels. Faced with ever-increasing TV bills, a growing proportion of cord-cutters are simply abandoning their bundles, even if it means going without sports, cable news, or that one specific cable channel they loved.

Now, Disney, Fox, and Warner are doing the unthinkable and offering a skinnier bundle focused on a specific type of programming—in this case live sports—as a way to bring those defectors back. TV distributors have wanted to do this for years, but the channel owners have finally become desperate enough to cooperate.

Sports streaming annoyances will continue

The new joint venture still won’t eliminate all the hassles of watching sports in the streaming age.

In a research note, City analysts estimated that the service will only cover about 55 percent of U.S. sports rights, the Wall Street Journal notes. It won’t include regional sports (which is a whole other mess) or the growing sports lineups found on Paramount+, Peacock, Amazon Prime Video, and Apple TV+. Diehard sports fans will still have to pay more for complete coverage, and some may be better off with a bigger bundle such as YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV instead.

But as a shake-up to the TV business, Disney, Fox, and Warner just dropped a bomb. Cable providers are already griping about the joint venture, because it provides the kind of flexibility they’ve long been barred from offering. Now that the biggest rule in pay TV bundles has been broken, a broader packaging shake-up seems likely.

The ripple effects should be as much fun to watch as the sporting events themselves.

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