Later this year, Disney is going to be launching a brand sports streaming service, which is currently going by the working title of “ESPN: Flagship”. Unlike the existing streaming platform, ESPN+, this new direct-to-consumer offering will include every all of the live channels, without the need for cable, in addition to all of the content from ESPN+.

This latest version of ESPN will be available as its own stand-alone app and will also be available within Disney+. 

During today’s quarterly financial results investor call, Disney CEO Bob Iger was asked about the launch of ESPN Flagship, confirming that more information will be released next week and how linear customers will also get access to it.

If you are a subscriber of linear ESPN, you will automatically get what I know we’ve been referring to as ESPN flagship. By the way, it will not be called that. And next week, Jimmy Pitaro plans to reveal not only the name, but will also talk about our pricing strategy. But the plan would be to basically be somewhat agnostic from a subscriber perspective, so that we can still do our best to preserve the multichannel ecosystem, but at the same time, obviously want to grow our DTC business.

The difference is that the ESPN linear service will — if that’s all this consumer chooses to watch, will not have the bells and whistles and those additional features that the DTC service will have. But again, we’re giving the consumer the option of consuming both. From a critical mass perspective, we have obviously an unrivaled portfolio of licensed sports on ESPN and an unrivaled portfolio of studio programming and shoulder programming. The bulk of which will be on the linear service and of course on flagship, flagship. At some point, I’ve got to stop using that word.

That said, what we’ve already been doing and what we’ll continue to do is give consumers of Disney+ and Hulu a taste of live sports on that service so that we have an opportunity to upsell them on the Disney DTC service, which obviously is a priority of ours. And again, that service will have many more features than the linear service will have. So I know — and this will when we launch will be much simpler perhaps that I’m even describing. We’re going to limit the number of SKUs. We’re going to make it very, very clear what is what, meaning what you get when you just watch Linear, what you get when you sign up to Disney DTC.

And I think the most important thing is that if you are a subscriber of Disney+ and Hulu and ESPN DTC, I should have said ESPN, not Disney, if you’re a subscriber of all three, you’ll have a seamless experience there. They’ll be completely ultimately integrated or embedded into the service. And that I think is a real plus from a consumer experience perspective.

For linear customers who have access to ESPN, getting access to “Flagship” was something that was negotiated with cable companies to make this direct-to-consumer version available.  It’s also very likely to drastically increase the number of people who have cut the cord.

It was previously announced that Disney would continue to offer ESPN+ to customers, but I’ve always wondered if that might be a short-term fix since running multiple options and platforms seems unnecessary. However, one of the key things Bob Iger mentioned on this call was reducing the number of SKUS, aka the number of options available to customers, which makes me think they might be planning on revealing some mergers between their platforms.

Operating Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+ and ESPN Flagship at the same time doesn’t make much sense on many levels, as reducing the number of platforms available will make it simpler for customers, but also reduce the operating costs for development, servers, marketing and other technical aspects.   I wouldn’t be surprised if ESPN+ is sunseted, and potentially, the eventual merger between Hulu and Disney+ will happen, drastically reducing the options available.    Especially with Bob Iger’s comments on the investor call:

What we’ve just talked about, which is to continue to put Disney+ and Hulu together as a user experience. You’ll see more of that in the months ahead. In addition, we plan when we launched ESPN direct-to-consumer to be really smart about bundling that. And for those that bundle, the experience will be fully integrated, that will be another big step.

Are you looking forward to a full direct-to-consumer version of ESPN? Let me know on social media!

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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