Why Disney-ESPN, Fox, and WBD are wrong about cord-cutters and sports

The jokes arrived almost immediately after the announcement. On Tuesday, February 6, Fox, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery unveiled plans to pool their resources into a brand-new mega-streamer, the most robust one-stop-shop for sports on the market. By the end of the day, social media users were snarking about how the trio had just reinvented cable.

Of course, the difference between the forthcoming streamer and cable is that people demonstrably want cable. Or at least they used to. The more apt comparison in terms of joke math might be that, by solving a viewing problem its target audience doesn’t actually have, those conglomerates might actually be reinventing Quibi.

Internally known as Raptor, the new streaming project does not have a name yet, so for the duration of this article, let’s refer to it as “Sportzilla.” Here’s what Sportzilla does have: a wide range of broadcasting rights for pro and college sports, including NFL, NBA, MLB, FIFA, and some “combat sports.” It will be an all-in-one bundling of whatever replaces the current Disney-owned sports streamer ESPN+, along with all other dedicated sports channels owned by these companies, and it would be available for further bundling in a Max + Sportzilla package.

The joint venture is reportedly a bid for capturing younger viewers, the so-called cord-nevers—kids who did not grow up in strictly linear TV households and are now perhaps moving into their first apartments. Beyond that specific demographic, however, the broader goal seems to involve capturing every last sports fan who lives without cable. According to Reuters, “The venture will appeal to the 40 million households in the U.S. that pay for high-speed internet access, but don’t subscribe to pay TV.”

But how many of those 40 million households already have subscriptions with live-TV alternatives like YouTube TV (more than 8 million subscribers), Hulu + Live TV (4.4 million subscribers), Sling (2.12 million subscribers), or one of the many other cable-free options? How many of them are also currently clamoring for a be-all-and-end-all omnibus sports package (that, as we’ll get to, isn’t as omnibus as it would like you to believe)? Enough to make Sportzilla financially sustainable? Enough to satisfy an omnivorous, glutinous sports fan?

Don’t bet on it just yet.

Live television—which essentially consists of sports events, award shows, and some reality singing competitions—has long been the obvious final reason to hold onto a cable subscription. It’s been apparent for so long, in fact, that many of the streaming services, whose collective success doomed cable to begin with, have found ways to pick at the last remaining bits of meat on the bone. Amazon’s Prime Video has had exclusive rights to NFL Thursday Night Football since 2022, will continue to have them into the next decade, and now has its eyes on MLB, NBA, and NHL games as well. Any of the company’s MLB offerings, however, will be competing with those of Apple TV, which has also gotten into the sports streaming business with Friday Night Baseball. Both services are joined by YouTube, which made a $14 billion bet last fall on exclusive rights for NFL Sunday Ticket, a subscription service for viewing out-of-market games on the Sunday lineup. Not to mention that NBC’s streamer, Peacock, lured in a record-breaking 23 million viewers back in January to watch the NFL’s AFC wild card playoff game, after splurging $110 million for broadcast rights.

Between all the current options to watch live games on streamers, cord-nevers seem to be pretty well covered for sports. Their main incentive for going beyond one of the dedicated packages that already exist is if Sportzilla offered absolutely every major sporting event possible. It doesn’t.

While Sportzilla is tipped to contain “the full suite of ESPN channels . . . alongside the sports programming of other industry leaders,” those industry leaders do not include NBC Universal, which has rights to the Premier League, along with its NFL and MLB offerings, nor Paramount Global, which has NCAA Men’s Basketball, the PGA Tour, and soccer’s Champions League, in addition to its NFL games. Any exclusive rights within those respective portfolios will never see daylight on Sportzilla. The streaming service will be voluminous, to be sure, but incomplete.

Most sports addicts will learn to live with whatever items happen to be absent from a streamer that has almost every major sporting event on the planet—but at what cost? In addition to being officially nameless at the moment, Sportzilla is also missing a price tag. According to CNBC sources, however, it will be higher than $30 per month, and probably closer to $45. That is a monster price tag, even for a streaming service as monstrously expansive as Sportzilla. A certain brand of affluent sports nut will spend whatever it takes to get the most sports imaginable, and think nothing of it, but the mythical cord-cutter who either listens to games on the radio or keeps refreshing live NFL scores on Google certainly won’t have it in their budget. Ditto the many trust-fund-challenged youngsters embarking on their first apartments.

We are already at peak subscription, if not well past it. People are looking to downsize their monthly subscription expenses, not beef them up, so this move seems poised to appeal mostly to people already over-indexed on sports offerings and inclined to reduce. As for the rest of the “40 million households in the U.S. that pay for high-speed internet access but don’t subscribe to pay TV”? Maybe they belong to the 62% of Americans who, according to an October 2023 poll from Pew Research Center, follow professional sports either not too closely or not at all, confirming the evidence put forth by dwindling TV ratings (for everything but NFL, which has bucked the trend).

If that turns out to be the case, it’s game over for Sportzilla.

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