Late last year, following the launch of the ESPN hub on Disney+, it was announced that Disney was creating a brand new daily sports news show called “SC+,” a spin-off of “SportsCenter.”

This new show, aimed at the casual audience, will be coming to Disney+ later in 2025. It will air live on Disney+ at a set time and then remain on the platform for on-demand viewing.

During a recent Q&A session with investors to discuss the latest quarterly financial results, Disney CEO Bob Iger was asked about their decision to add the new SportsCenter Daily Show to Disney+ instead of the new ESPN flagship streaming platform, to which he replied:

Well, I think we’ve all seen the benefit of live. Just look at ESPN’s ratings as a for instance or talk to anyone in the advertising business, live is extremely attractive. And we have the benefit, as I said earlier, of having live programming every day of the week, every day of the year or every week of the year. And so I think that as we provide our consumers with a one app experience, live will be a major component of basically our growth the growth in that business. It will contribute to the growth in that business for us.

What we did with ESPN and the SportsCenter show that you mentioned is we put us in the ESPN tile as we call it or presence on the home screen of Disney plus that was in part designed to increase engagement for Disney plus Hulu subscribers, gives them something to see on a daily basis. And obviously, as we’ve talked today, growing engagement is critical particularly to lowering churn. It also gives us the ability to use it as an introductory offer, sort of an introductory ESPN digital offer. And ultimately when flagship is launched, people who use the ESPN tile will have an opportunity to subscribe to flagship right from that tile. And if they do subscribe to it, then it becomes a completely integrated app experience with Disney plus and Hulu.

So it’s there to improve, but to do two things to benefit Disney+ Hulu and it’s also there to ultimately benefit ESPN flagship.

While streaming services have generally avoided live sports for years, this is rapidly changing, with Netflix, Amazon, Max, Paramount+, and Peacock all incorporating more live sports into their schedules. Disney has the advantage of the established ESPN sports brand, and the launch of ESPN On Disney+ was just a stepping stone to providing more sports content on the platform.

With ESPN Flagship launching later this year, offering everything from the traditional ESPN channels, in addition to all of the content from ESPN+, all of which will be fully available within Disney+, making a new sports news show available to everyone will hopefully pull in enough viewers to warrant the costs.  It’s also a gateway to get Disney+ subscribers to upgrade to get the ESPN Flagship add-on.  Plus, I could easily see clips of “SC+” used on social media since it’s aimed at a more casual audience.

There are still plenty of questions about the new “SC+” show, such as what time it will air and who will present it. However, there are also questions about whether it will be available internationally on Disney+ or exclusively in the US. No doubt, we will hear more about this in the coming months.

Roger’s Take:  With ESPN becoming a major hub within Disney+, offering a show to highlight all of the major sports news in one place, aiming at a broad audience, sounds like a good opportunity to grow ESPN.  It’ll also be available to subscribers of ESPN Flagship, so sports fans can still check it out; plus, I do think they’ll have other ways of monetising the show through sponsorships and clipping bits out for social media. Will it work?  That’s going to come down to whether the show is good and if enough people tune in for it.

Are you looking forward to watching the new SportsCenter Daily show on Disney+?  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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