ESPN on Tuesday officially announced the name and pricing of its new direct-to-subscriber streaming service.
Titled “ESPN” — as reported last week by CNBC — the service will cost $30/mo ($300/year) when it launches later this year. The price tag makes “ESPN” less expensive than any of the general vMVPDs, including Sling ($45/mo), though obviously those services include a far greater number of channels.
The service will include ESPN+, which will be renamed “ESPN Select” and remain available separately for its current price of $12/mo. (A previous version of this post mistakenly said ESPN would upgrade existing ESPN+ to the new ESPN app, but that was based on a misreading of the network’s press release. ESPN in its release said: “Existing ESPN+ subscribers will automatically become subscribers to ESPN’s new service,” but the ‘new service’ in question is just ESPN+ with its new name.)
The price tag for “ESPN” does exceed other direct-to-subscriber options. The TNT Sports networks are available to stream on Max for as low as $17/mo. Events on the NBC and CBS broadcast networks are available to stream with the base Peacock and Paramount+ plans, respectively, for $10/mo. A price tag has yet to be announced for the new “Fox One” direct-to-subscriber app, which includes all of the Fox Corporation offerings across sports, news and entertainment.
Venu, the abandoned streaming service that would have included all of the ESPN, Fox Sports and TNT Sports channels, was set to cost $43/mo.
The launch date for the new ESPN service has yet to be announced, but ESPN said Tuesday that it will debut in “early fall.”
