“We believe in the power of live sports,” said Disney CEO Bob Chapek today announcing an expansion of the brand’s footprint on various fields.
The House of Mouse has renewed its current deal with Major League Baseball and bulked up even more with a new agreement with Spain’s LaLiga soccer league, the exec said on the company’s Q2 earnings call.
Dropping the news in an otherwise fairly dry report, he boss of ESPN’s parent company add that Disney sees sports having “tremendous value now and into the future.”
Now going to 2028, the baseball deal will see ESPN air 30 regular-season games a year. Kicking in next year, the agreement includes 25 editions of Sunday Night Baseball, the national MLB game of the week, as well as MLB All-Star coverage and the MLB Little League Classic. With Disney leaning heavily into streaming, all the games shown on ABC and ESPN will potentially be simulcast on subscriber-based ESPN+
Exclusive to ESPN+. the eight-year agreement with the home of FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, and of course superstar Leo Messi covers both English and Spanish-language rights. In that context, the sports streamer will air 380 LaLiga Santander matches per season, which will feature all 20 teams in Spain’s marquee first division soccer, or football as the rest of the world outside America calls the beautiful game.
With rights across all major sports, the extra muscle made public today is part of an overall move by Disney to shift away from long declining sports cable revenues and viewership and give ESPN+, which is bundled with Disney+ and Hulu, new strength.
“We know things are going to change,” Chapek admitted of the strategy thar is baked into the sports deals for both linear and digital use. Emphasizing a “parallel path with ESPN and ESPN+,” the CEO added he was willing to shift focus if need be. Yet, Chapek told analysts on Thursday that Disney are “really happy with the deals that we have” and their shareholder value.
To that end, a key point in the baseball deal is the ability to simultaneously air games on linear networks and stream them on ESPN+. While the streaming outlet is still a shadow of the main network, it continues to grow, both in terms of subscribers and strategic importance. In the fiscal second quarter, its subscriber level hit 13.8 million, up 75% from the same time a year ago.
Streaming has factored more heavily into baseball coverage in recent years, with Amazon Prime Video gaining a share of the YES network and streaming several Yankee games starting this season. Other games have streamed on Facebook and YouTube, and HBO Max parent WarnerMedia (whose Turner Sports has a long-term deal with MLB) has alluded to baseball in its discussion about future sports streaming offerings.
Looking at the LaLiga agreement, soccer rights have been increasingly in demand, especially in streaming. Domestically, Champions League rights are a cornerstone on Paramount+ and Premier League games are the No. 1 draw on NBCUniversal’s Peacock – even more so going forward as the Comcast-owned company shutters NBC Sports Network.
Playing the big game, Fox retains the World Cup rights and will have the quadrennial event again in 2022.
Having said that, all is not free kicks in Disney’s streaming world.
Just like Netflix, the House of Mouse felt the subscriber bite this quarter with Disney+ results noticeably lower than expected.In Q2 earnings info just released, Disney+ had 103.6 million subscribers, compared with the 109.3 million that had been estimated. After rapid growth over the past year and a half since the streaming service debuted, the stumble of the previously surging Disney+ saw overall Disney stock drop 4.4% in early after hours trading.
Game on.