ESPN’s Brave New World

Welcome back to In The Room. Tonight, a look at the next era of ESPN and ESPN+ as Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro prepare for their post-linear, D.T.C. future.
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Welcome back to In The Room.

Tonight, a look at the next era of ESPN and ESPN+ as Bob Iger and Jimmy Pitaro prepare for their post-linear, D.T.C. future.

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ESPN’s Brave New World

Disney’s announcement that it will send ESPN off on its own D.T.C. journey introduces a host of provocations for the industry: namely, is this the true beginning of the end of cable, and perhaps of ESPN as we once knew it, too?

DYLAN BYERS

Back in 2014, while Hollywood executives were still reckoning with the second- and third-order effects of the Great Netflix Disruption—and bracing themselves for the long, inexorable decline of their cable and network television businesses—Disney’s chief business strategist Kevin Mayer asked John Skipper, then the head of ESPN, to start testing pricing models for a hypothetical streaming service that would deliver the premiere sports channel directly to consumers. Even then, four years before the eventual launch of ESPN+—a relatively cautious...

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