ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp. are joining forces to create a new standalone sports streaming app.
The new streaming service will combine vertical sports content from each company (ESPN, TNT and Fox Sports) under one umbrella. As such, subscribers will have access to ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV and ESPN+, as well as hundreds of hours of NFL games. NBA, MLB and NHL, and the main university divisions.
The service is expected to launch in the fall and more details, including pricing, will be announced at a later date.
According The Hollywood ReporterEach company will own one-third of the new streaming service and will license its content to it on a non-exclusive basis.
Streamers have looked more toward sports in recent years in hopes of avoiding subscription fatigue and increasing overall user engagement. Last year, YouTube purchased the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket from DirecTV and Apple TV became the exclusive streaming home of MLS. More recently, Netflix acquired the rights to exclusively stream WWE. Monday night raw starting January 2025.
For its part, Warner Bros. added a sports vertical to Max last October, offering subscribers the ability to stream sports programming from TBS, TNT and TruTV at no additional charge (although the company intends to charge an additional fee for sports at some point in the future). Meanwhile, ESPN has been working to launch as a direct-to-consumer streaming service by 2025.
This is a developing story…
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