ESPN, Fox Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery announced Tuesday plans to launch a joint streaming service this fall that will include all of the companies’ sports properties and networks. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.
The service, owned equally by the three parties, would include all of the relevant, sports-related networks from each company — ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, the SEC and ACC networks, ESPNEWS, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS and truTV — as well as ESPN+, forming an unprecedented sports-specific streaming bundle. To this point, the only way to stream multiple companies’ sports networks was to do so through a streaming MVPD such as YouTube TV, Fubo or Sling.
Between the three companies, the service would carry NFL games (including next year’s Super Bowl), the entire NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball playoffs, the bulk of the NASCAR season, the FIFA World Cup and many other properties.
The announcement Tuesday is one of the more surprising developments in recent sports media history. The decline of cable — and the inability of direct-to-subscriber streaming to adequately replicate its convenience and reach — has been a dominant storyline for several years. There had been particular speculation about when ESPN would take its channels direct-to-subscriber, but no indication that the move would be done in tandem with competing companies.
Additional details, including the name and price of the service, have not been announced. It will be available both as a standalone product and as an add-on through Disney+, Hulu and Max — though notably not through ESPN+. It is not clear whether ESPN+ would exist solely within the app or continue to exist as a standalone product.
To this point, WBD had been the only of the three companies to stream its linear sports properties direct-to-subscriber, having just months ago launched a Bleacher Report-branded sports tier on “Max” that includes all games carried by TNT and TBS. ESPN+ has thus far streamed only a handful of major league games carried on the linear ESPN networks. As Fox Corporation has no paid streaming service, sporting events carried by FOX and FS1 have not been available without a cable subscription.
