Media Coming Together?

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It's coming together. This is only the beginning. Like a romantic relationship the beginning is always exciting. Where will it end? Like the Greeks say "Rome wasn't built in a day."
 


SEC & B1G a marriage made in heaven. A fantastic 2 conference league. America will have great games every week. Great Coaches Great Players Great Games. What's not to love?
 

There is a thread about this on the "Pop Culture" and "Pro Sports" page.

short version - 3 major media companies - Disney, Fox and Warner Bros/Discovery are teaming up to offer a new sports streaming service that will combine multiple offerings into an all-sports bundle.

here are some details from USA Today:

Subscribers will have access to all the broadcast and cable channels owned by each of the companies that feature sports: For Disney, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS and ABC. For Fox Corp., FOX, FS1, FS2 and the Big 10 Network. And for Warner Bros. Discovery, TNT, TBS, truTV. Disney's ESPN+, a standalone streaming service with 26 million subscribers, will also be part of the new entity, though it lacks rights to major sports and is often bundled with Disney+ and Hulu.

In addition to the Big 4 ― NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL ― the service will feature NASCAR auto racing, UFC, PGA Tour golf, Grand Slam tennis, the FIFA World Cup and several college sports, among others.

The companies have not announced any pricing plans, but said the new service will be offered in bundles with existing streaming services they own, including Max, Disney+ and Hulu. Fox has no current subscription-based service.
 


short ornery norwegian said:
There is a thread about this on the "Pop Culture" and "Pro Sports" page.

short version - 3 major media companies - Disney, Fox and Warner Bros/Discovery are teaming up to offer a new sports streaming service that will combine multiple offerings into an all-sports bundle.

here are some details from USA Today:

Subscribers will have access to all the broadcast and cable channels owned by each of the companies that feature sports: For Disney, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS and ABC. For Fox Corp., FOX, FS1, FS2 and the Big 10 Network. And for Warner Bros. Discovery, TNT, TBS, truTV. Disney's ESPN+, a standalone streaming service with 26 million subscribers, will also be part of the new entity, though it lacks rights to major sports and is often bundled with Disney+ and Hulu.

In addition to the Big 4 ― NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL ― the service will feature NASCAR auto racing, UFC, PGA Tour golf, Grand Slam tennis, the FIFA World Cup and several college sports, among others.

The companies have not announced any pricing plans, but said the new service will be offered in bundles with existing streaming services they own, including Max, Disney+ and Hulu. Fox has no current subscription-based service.
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How in the world will revenue sharing work considering the vastly different expenses some of these networks have for content and on air personalities? Are the channels no longer competing with each other? I have trouble seeing how the three companies each have 1/3 ownership of this app and work through some of these things.
 



matt said:
How in the world will revenue sharing work considering the vastly different expenses some of these networks have for content and on air personalities? Are the channels no longer competing with each other? I have trouble seeing how the three companies each have 1/3 ownership of this app and work through some of these things.
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I could be wrong, but as I said in the other thread, there are a lot of people who are still on cable TV or satellite because of live sports. I'm not quite sure how the money works out, but this sure seems like an incentive to get people to drop cable and go all-in on streaming.

the people behind this must believe that it will cost out and generate more revenue for them in the long run. and if they offer this as a bundle with existing streamers like Disney+ or Max, then that could generate more subscribers for the streamers and help them become profitable.
 

short ornery norwegian said:
I could be wrong, but as I said in the other thread, there are a lot of people who are still on cable TV or satellite because of live sports. I'm not quite sure how the money works out, but this sure seems like an incentive to get people to drop cable and go all-in on streaming.

the people behind this must believe that it will cost out and generate more revenue for them in the long run. and if they offer this as a bundle with existing streamers like Disney+ or Max, then that could generate more subscribers for the streamers and help them become profitable.
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I understand that Disney, Fox, and WBD don’t want to get left behind on streaming sports as companies like NBC, Apple, Amazon, and even Netflix have been making good in roads to streaming live sports. But there are significant details to be worked out. Is the new app going to share revenue based on eyeball minutes in the app on ESPN vs. Fox Sports vs. TNT? Are they not still competing with each other then?

Fox just signed Tom Brady to a 10 year, $375m contract. ESPN pays people like Pat McAfee and Troy Aikman $15-20m each year. These companies each have 1/3 ownership, but they won’t all be OK with an even split of revenue as the big spenders need to get their ROI on content rights and announcer talent. These are not trivial issues and I am curious to see how they work these things out. Frankly I’m not sure how they do. I wouldn’t want to be the CEO of the new venture trying to appease the three shareholders and a fragmented board while battling the other streaming services for customers and trying to turn a profit.
 
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A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
Version 400 of that deceleration ... still around.

I feel like we're just going to end up with "cable TV" but slightly different in the end.
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It's just like the traditional phone line. As long as old people exist, there will always be a market for the original stuff. My folks won't let go of their phone line until they're six feet under even though it makes no sense and 90% of their phone calls are solicitations.

And they have their own cell phones on top of it!!!
 


short ornery norwegian said:
I could be wrong, but as I said in the other thread, there are a lot of people who are still on cable TV or satellite because of live sports. I'm not quite sure how the money works out, but this sure seems like an incentive to get people to drop cable and go all-in on streaming.

the people behind this must believe that it will cost out and generate more revenue for them in the long run. and if they offer this as a bundle with existing streamers like Disney+ or Max, then that could generate more subscribers for the streamers and help them become profitable.
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The timing is just a coincidence, but I've been a holdout with my cable tv up until now. I just decided the other day we're going to drop it. We just don't watch enough "traditional" tv in our house any more. We have a bunch of streaming subscriptions and we also watch a fair amount of Youtube on the tv. I'll probably sign up for fubotv to get most of the tv channels that we had with cable. Should save us at least $50 a month.
 


Goldmember said:
Cable TV died today.
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I actually doubt it.

If you haven’t given it up by now, with all the streaming that’s out there, why would this do it?


Notwithstanding the high prices and having to rent the boxes, that dedicated hardware/network does give a great viewing experience. If you watch a lot of TV and don’t give a crap about saving $50/mo total off your household expenses, it’s probably worth keeping if you already have it.
 



Word said:
The sad thing is that the dream we all had of a la carte tv didn't quite turn out how we hoped it would. To get everything you want it is really not any cheaper than the old cable days.
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It was always headed here. You end up more or less back where you started, with the service coming into your house through a different pipe.
 

howeda7 said:
It was always headed here. You end up more or less back where you started, with the service coming into your house through a different pipe.
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The annoying thing for me is it's not all in one place anymore. You have to constantly back out of apps and go into a different app to switch around. Hard to see the whole schedule at once. I miss my one-stop-shopping.
 

howeda7 said:
It was always headed here. You end up more or less back where you started, with the service coming into your house through a different pipe.
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I don't think it was always headed to this point.

Right now streaming services are bidding WAY more than they're making to host these games. It drives up prices ... but I'm not sure it will stay that way.

The other issue as we see more games locked away, I wonder if we see leagues or conferences and such across all sports A LOT more interested in "hey our fans can't watch our games that impacts the bigger picture"...
 

A_Slab_of_Bacon said:
I don't think it was always headed to this point.

Right now streaming services are bidding WAY more than they're making to host these games. It drives up prices ... but I'm not sure it will stay that way.

The other issue as we see more games locked away, I wonder if we see leagues or conferences and such across all sports A LOT more interested in "hey our fans can't watch our games that impacts the bigger picture"...
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Sports these days don't seem to care much about the fan experience as long as it makes more money. I think it's shortsighted as in the long term they may lose fans. Similar to the Gopher ticket price discussion we've had many times on this board.
 

Word said:
The annoying thing for me is it's not all in one place anymore. You have to constantly back out of apps and go into a different app to switch around. Hard to see the whole schedule at once. I miss my one-stop-shopping.
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Roku is pretty user friendly in this regard I think, but I do miss the convenience of cable.
 

A boar’s nest of competing interests. The tech companies eg Amazon, Apple are interested in more than just subscription fees.

Negotiating strategy, maybe. Who knows what Bezos’, Iger, Alphabet, Meta, endgame are.

We can only be sure of one thing, the consumer isn’t going to win here. The $ amount fans are willing to pay has a theoretical limit but probably hasn’t been reached yet. If they can hook you into their ecosystem sports can be the $1.50 hot dog and it becomes a secondary concern.
 

I saw a guy on Twitter claiming that the new streaming sports bundle (for lack of a better name) will be priced at somewhere between $35 to $50 a month.

when you consider that Bally Sports Plus wants $20 a month for a buggy app that only has two teams (Wild and Wolves), $35 to $50 for all of the channels in this new service is fairly reasonable.
 


mngg11 said:
It's just like the traditional phone line. As long as old people exist, there will always be a market for the original stuff. My folks won't let go of their phone line until they're six feet under even though it makes no sense and 90% of their phone calls are solicitations.

And they have their own cell phones on top of it!!!
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I‘m still with Comcast, and I’m bundling their “Triple Play” (or some such silly name) package (Cable TV, internet, and landline phone).

When I call and tell them to cancel my landline phone, they tell me it’ll be more expensive to have just the two parts than to stay with all three, so I keep my landline phone package, even though it’s been a bunch of years since we’ve used it.

I just shrug my shoulders and keep on keepin‘ on.
 

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