Disney no longer weighing ESPN spin-off - report
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Last fall's reports that Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS) would look at spinning off sports giant ESPN are deep in the rear-view mirror for now, Puck News says.
Hitting up the gossip at the Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho - an annual gathering where media moguls get together to talk (and talk deals) - Puck's Dylan Byers has heard Disney chief Bob Chapek has abandoned any effort to shed ESPN.
That comes amid some new calculus from media companies largely driven by Netflix's (NFLX) 2022 fall. When Netflix was zooming, the view on traditional media businesses like Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) was that their linear (traditional) TV offerings were a drag on multiples that needed to be "more like Netflix."
"While still highly lucrative, these low-to-no growth businesses were in structural decline and hung like an albatross around Chapek and (WBD CEO David) Zaslavâs necks, preventing their companies from being valued at the coveted 'Netflix multiple,'" Byers says.
Now that Netflix subscriber growth has run into a barrier, that view is changing quickly, he suggested, showing the old appeal of keeping a foot in both streaming and linear worlds.
Meanwhile, it also shows a new recognition that live sports (key to the entire linear system) will be even more important going forward - and given some increasingly aggressive live-sports-rights competition from the tech world and big rivals like Amazon.com (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) - for a clue to how new deals might work, see Apple's recent 10-year deal for Major League Soccer.