ESPN chief: Live sports still a draw; no sportsbook deal imminent
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ESPN (NYSE:DIS) chief Jimmy Pitaro sounded an upbeat note discussing the sports network and customers' demand for live sports - and he's "excited" to work again with newly rehired Disney CEO Bob Iger.
Speaking at a Sports Business Journal
conference, Pitaro said there's more demand for live sports than ever, noting âLive sports are the single best way to aggregate live audiences and the single best way to drive a new platform.â
Pitaro's appearance followed Disney's disclosure in its annual report that ESPN lost about 2M subscribers from the last fiscal year, to a current 74M - keeping the issue of streaming vs. linear delivery at the forefront for ESPN.
âOur strategy has always been parallel paths,â Pitaro said. âWe are heavily invested in this traditional ecosystem, the MVPD [multichannel video programming distributor] ecosystem. And at the same time, in April of 2018, we launched a direct-to-consumer product, which, fast forward to today, has north of 24M subs and is doing quite well for us." But he wouldn't commit to a time when the flagship ESPN channels might be available a la carte.
When it comes to new sports rights, the talk of college football this week has been the push to accelerate expansion of the national playoff - and the conventional wisdom is that the playoff committee will look to expand its list of media partners alongside that move.
Pitaro indicated some flexibility there: "We like where we stand with our current agreement, obviously. But if (the CFP organizers) wanna bring in another media partner, weâll listen and we'll try to be creative," he told SBJ. "What's important to me â¦ is we want to keep the championship game. And we would like to extend. So that's kind of the quid pro quo there.â
As for working with Iger, "Bob hired me in 2010. I would obviously not be in this job if Bob didn't put me here in 2018," Pitaro said, noting Iger is a "huge" sports fan. "When he calls me, it's oftentimes about the business, but it's oftentimes just to talk sports. ... But now he's back, and I think the employees at ESPN are excited.â
Also front and center in ESPN issues these days is sports betting, and while Pitaro gave some lip service to its importance (and the company's deals with DraftKings (DKNG) and Caesars (CZR)), he says there are "no deals imminent" for a sportsbook license.
Meanwhile, though ESPN is linked to talks to replace DirecTV as partners for the NFL's out-of-market Sunday Ticket game broadcast package, the momentum still seems to lie with Google (GOOG) (GOOGL) or Apple (AAPL). ESPN made clear to the NFL that it values Sunday Ticket, but the network is "not currently engaged" with the league on talks.