ESPN, FOX, and Warner Bros. Discovery are teaming up to create one giant sports streaming service, helping to consolidate your 50 billion different subscriptions.
Set to launch near the end of this year, the as of yet unnamed service will provide subscribers access to an entire slew of linear sports networks, including ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, FOX, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV, and ESPN+. If you don't follow sports, just know that this amounts to a lot of sports.
"[T]his exciting joint venture [is an] unparalleled combination of marquee sports rights and access to the greatest sporting events in the world," Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a joint announcement.
Subscribers will be able to watch a veritable smorgasbord of events across a range of sports, such as the UFC, the US Open, and the UFL. College sporting events such as the NCAA Men’s & Women’s Basketball Tournaments will also be included.
It's good news for anyone who likes pro football, and basketball, and baseball, and hockey, and golf, and tennis, and cycling, and soccer, and combat sports, and motorsports.
The super sports streaming service will be equally owned by ESPN, FOX, and Warner Bros. Discovery, but come under a new brand with an independent management team. It will also be available in a new app, though subscribers will be able to bundle it with Disney+, Hulu, or Max. Pricing is scheduled to be revealed at a later date.
This news doesn't necessarily mean that current sport streaming services are not long for this world. ESPN, FOX, and Warner Bros. Discovery will licence their sports content to the new platform on a non-exclusive basis, so the new streaming Megazord won't be the only place you can catch your favourite sporting events.
As such, you might end up just sticking with your current subscriptions if all your sporting needs are already met by one service. However, if you're a fan of multiple sports and are tired of juggling multiple subscriptions, the ESPN/FOX/Warner Bros. Discovery Brundlefly sounds like an attractive proposition.
Though certainly a promising announcement, it isn't a done deal. The agreement is only in principle right now, so may still fall through if the three companies can't agree on the details. But if everything works out, your sports streaming subscriptions could soon become much more streamlined.
