{"id":99665,"date":"2025-08-21T15:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T15:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/99665\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T15:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T15:48:08","slug":"disney-fox-hope-sports-services-push-streaming-but-dont-hurt-cable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/99665\/","title":{"rendered":"Disney, Fox Hope Sports Services Push Streaming (But Don’t Hurt Cable)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDisney and Fox say two new sports-heavy streaming services<\/a> that debut Thursday aren\u2019t meant to kill traditional TV. They might just do it anyway.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter keeping the bulk of their sports portfolios on cable, both Fox and Disney are setting them free. A broad ESPN streaming service<\/a> and a new Fox One broadband offering<\/a> aim to reach the tens of millions of \u201ccord cutters<\/a>\u201d who don\u2019t subscribe to cable or satellite and who still might want to watch ESPN<\/a>\u2019s NFL and NBA telecasts or studio shows, or Fox\u2019s MLB games, Fox News programs or selections from the Fox broadcast network.<\/p>\n

\n\tNo matter the companies\u2019 good intentions, there is a growing sense these new services will only encourage those who have yet to sever their connection to traditional TV to at least consider doing so. Fox One, for example, makes big games as well as Fox News programs \u2014 some of TV\u2019s most-watched pieces of content \u2014 available live as they happen no matter whether the viewer uses a screen that is attached to TV set or a smartphone. ESPN putting everything from \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d to ACC match-ups online in an era when major cable carriers may not want to distribute every one of its many networks.<\/p>\n

\n\tSports and news have been \u201cthe last true holdouts\u201d to make the jump to streaming, says Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester Research, and any streaming service that includes such a concentration of them \u201cis ushering in a kind of last nail in the coffin of legacy TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFox and Disney would beg to differ. Both companies say they have taken pains not to undermine their cable and satellite subscriptions.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe traditional MVPD ecosystem is still important. This has been very important to our business historically, and it\u2019s going to continue to be very important to our business as we move forward,\u201d says ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro. \u201cWe are running parallel paths here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven Fox\u2019s CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, has said he doesn\u2019t want to see his networks\u2019 cable audience migrate to broadband. Like ESPN, Fox is giving traditional subscribers the chance to gain access to new Fox One features and content online, so there\u2019s little need to drop one and get the other. With a potential base of 65 million people who don\u2019t have traditional TV access, there are plenty of new customers to chase, says Pete Distad, CEO of Fox One. Fox One and traditional distributors \u201care selling the same product, in general,\u201d he notes, adding that Fox isn\u2019t trying to undercut cable companies on price. \u201cWe are not doing this at the cost of pay TV.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tConsumers may not have the same loyalty to their pay-TV providers as Disney and Fox. Time and again over the past two decades, one-time couch potatoes have moved quickly to systems that deliver their video favorites in more convenient fashion. In the 2000s and 2010s, they were happy to pick up DVRs that let them zap past the commercial breaks and watch their shows at times of their own choosing. Streaming services have proven even more popular in recent years, with consumers increasingly eager to drop traditional cable in favor of subscription-based venues they can drop and pick up as they see fit \u2014 and not be forced to watch a similar overabundance of ads.<\/p>\n

\n\tSports is a tricky format to play with in these times of shifting media allegiances. \u201cA big sporting event extends across demographics of all types, and it is one of the last remaining examples of programming that is live and shared across a huge audience at the same time,\u201d says John Harrison, media and entertainment growth leader for EY Americas. Fans will tolerate advertising during games, he says, because the commercials pop up typically during natural breaks in the action. If more sports rights go to companies like Amazon, Netflix and Apple, which have no old ties to broadcast or cable TV, he says, \u201cyou can see a total acceleration of cord cutting\u201d in the not-too-distant future.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, people are leaving cable anyway. ESPN is projected to see its traditional pay-TV subscribers fall to 57.9 million in 2026, according to data from Kagan, a market-research firm that is part of S&P Global Intelligence, compared with 65.1 million in 2024. The pay-TV audience for Fox Sports 1 is seen falling to 57.2 million in 2026, compared with 62.8 million in 2024.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new services may be able to help keep cable afloat, Harrison suggests, because they both will let pay-TV customers have access to much of their new technology. Such a decision may \u201clengthen the runway\u201d for pay-TV crowds, he says, but its effectiveness in doing so probably won\u2019t be known for a year or two.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is also a chance ESPN and Fox may boost cable. A handful of recent deals gives companies like Charter Communications, one of the biggest traditional distributors, the chance to sell streaming services like Disney+. \u201cWe are actually going to be distributing Fox One potentially through\u201d cable companies over time, notes Fox\u2019s Distad.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven so, moving more sports to streaming is one of the few ways media companies believe they\u2019ll be able to reclaim the large audiences they once collected via their linear networks. Advertisers want those crowds to assemble once again. Unless cable companies stop shedding subscribers, companies like Disney and Fox have little choice but to move sporting events to where the most eyeballs are.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think we\u2019ve reached the point, really, where cord-cutting trends and the outlook for the future pay TV landscape, has forced the issue,\u201d says Harrison. Media companies have to create \u201ca committed path to monetization of all their content,\u201d and they can\u2019t leave sports out of the picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Disney and Fox say two new sports-heavy streaming services that debut Thursday aren\u2019t meant to kill traditional TV.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[66891,88,352,23571,66892,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-99665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-cord-cutters","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-espn","11":"tag-fox-corporation","12":"tag-streaming-wars","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99665","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=99665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}