Sling TV’s Day Passes are great. ESPN owner Disney wants to quash them

Streaming TV operators are always dreaming up new packages and bundles, and admittedly, I snooze through most of them. But Sling’s Day Pass subscription, which gives you a day’s access to Sling Orange—a package that includes ESPN and two-dozen other channels—for just five bucks sure got my attention.  

Turns out it got Disney’s attention, too. 

Disney, as you may know, owns ESPN, and Disney doesn’t want to sell you just a day’s worth of ESPN. It wants you to pay for at least a month—ideally though its new ESPN streaming service—or even more.  

Now Disney is claiming it never got a heads-up from Sling about its paradigm-breaking Day Pass idea, and it’s suing to stop it. 

As Deadline reports, Disney’s legal team filed a federal lawsuit late Tuesday that accuses Sling of rolling out its Day Passes “without our knowledge or consent,” adding that the short-term subscriptions “violate the terms of our existing license agreement.” 

From a business perspective, Disney is right to be concerned. Sling’s Day Passes (there are Weekend and Week Passes, too) have the potential to upend the pay TV business, which (as Deadline notes) have long relied on lengthy commitments from subscribers.

Back in the cable era, TV viewers would sign up for a year or even longer. In today’s streaming world, a minimum of a month is the norm. But just a week, or even only a day’s commitment? For the likes of Disney, that’s dangerous precedent. 

What Disney’s afraid of, of course, are commitment-phobe streamers like me. I love the idea of being able to buy a $5 Day Pass for, say, a single Monday Night Football game on ESPN, or maybe just one night of U.S. Open Tennis. That’s way better than forking over $40 for a month-long subscription that I only need for 24 hours.

And once that Day Pass expires, boom, I’m out—and no, a Day Pass doesn’t auto-renew in the hopes you’ll forget to cancel. 

Now, Disney’s case against Sling will hinge not on what’s fair or desireable for consumers, but on the specifics of its deal with Sling. If the contract says Sling must offer ESPN and other Disney-owned channels for such-and-such a term and at XYZ rate, and Sling violated that agreement, then Sling might have a problem. A deal’s a deal. 

Big picture, though, Sling’s Day Pass idea is a terrific idea—and quite possibly the future. Or at least, I certainly hope so.