prior reporting that an ESPN spinoff was unlikely to happen<\/a>. However, the network is reportedly open to potentially selling minority stakes in itself, similar to the recently closed NFL deal which saw the league purchase 10% of ESPN.<\/p>\nESPN has long been rumored as a prime candidate to separate from the Disney mothership. Since 2015, around the time when the pay TV bundle began to experience declines from cord-cutting, ESPN\u2019s importance to the Disney enterprise has shrunk. Once the cash cow funding the company\u2019s other ventures, ESPN\u2019s operating income now sits at about one-third of Disney\u2019s experiences division, which includes the company\u2019s theme parks and cruises.<\/p>\n
Other media conglomerates have chosen to cut bait and split from their declining cable networks recently. Most notably, Comcast let go of most of its cable channels to form what is now called Versant earlier this year. Warner Bros. Discovery was prepared to spin off its cable networks later this year before Paramount swooped in and purchased the entire company.<\/p>\n
The difference between those ventures and ESPN is that ESPN remains the linchpin of the entire pay TV bundle. Its economics are declining at a rate slower than its cable network peers.<\/p>\n
Add to that, Disney recently invested heavily into the launch of ESPN\u2019s new direct-to-consumer product hoping to begin replicating the once-great economics of the cable bundle with a digital platform. So far, that has proved challenging to almost every media company that has launched a streamer. But if there\u2019s one network that could conceivably buck that trend, it\u2019s ESPN.<\/p>\n
So at least for now, ESPN will stay tied to Disney. But the door is still open for the Worldwide Leader to one day split from the company if Disney decides it\u2019s time to move on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ESPN will remain under the Disney umbrella, at least for the time being. After rumors of a potential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397661,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,3716,352,30569,200651],"class_list":["post-612646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-disney","tag-espn","tag-espn-spinoff","tag-josh-damaro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}