ESPN Gets Closer to a Move That Will Kill Cable

The media industry is nervously waiting for ESPN to pull the trigger.

All eyes are on Disney's  (DIS) - Get Free Report ESPN.

As streaming services have taken over the media landscape, live sports have kept traditional TV channels afloat. And ESPN’s business continues to create most of its revenue on these channels.

But the time will come when ESPN will move most of its material to a direct-to-consumer service and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro admitted such in an interview with Bloomberg.

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“We’re going to get to a point where we take our entire network, our flagship programming, and make it available direct to consumer,” Pitaro told Bloomberg. “That’s a ‘when,’ not an ‘if’….We’re only going to do it when it makes sense for our business and for our bottom line.”

Now is certainly not the time for ESPN to make the move given its generated $28 billion from TV viewership last year. But with ESPN’s subscriber count down 25 million in the last decade and the company losing millions in the last year, the push for change is mounting.

It has continued to invest in its streaming service ESPN+ -- which had nearly 23 million subscribers as of Q3 2022 -- moving in more live sports onto the platform.

ESPN’s biggest move in streaming could be with the NBA when it negotiates the next media rights deal of the league starting 2025. Pitaro is “confident” that ESPN and the NBA will “see eye-to-eye” on where they can pursue streaming live games of the league, likely on the ESPN+ platform.

If ESPN does move to streaming, it would be a massive domino to fall for cable and traditional TV channels and could be the beginning of a definitive switch to streaming.