Does Disney deal in nothing but poison apples? Looking for “strategic partner” for ESPN

WOWSAHS

This is something else. Everything they touch turns to dirty dust.

Last week, #Disney CEO Bob Iger said that he was looking for strategic partners to help take #ESPN into its next phase. It now appears that $DIS has had talks with the #NFL and #NBA about becoming investors.https://t.co/eaANcXVPaU

— The Streamable (@TheStreamable) July 21, 2023

Oh – that Bob Iger is a GENIUS, man.

Well, he’s going to have to be to oversee the fire sale of this pile of garbage.

As Disney considers a strategic partner for ESPN, Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger and ESPN head Jimmy Pitaro have held early talks about bringing professional sports leagues on as minority investors, including the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, according to people familiar with the matter.

ESPN has held preliminary discussions with both the NFL and NBA about a variety of new partnerships and investment structures, the people said. In a statement, an NBA spokesperson said, “We have a longstanding relationship with Disney and look forward to continuing the discussions around the future of our partnership.”

…The NBA and Disney have broached many potential structures around a renewal of media rights, the people said. Disney and Warner Bros. Discovery
have exclusive negotiating rights with the NBA until next year.

I guess I can understand dancing with the NBA (BORing, but that’s just me, because I hate basketball) (don’t you AT me) considering they already have a contractual relationship with them, but I don’t see where the NFL would be remotely interested. It would be a complicated venture any way you slice it as far as the leagues are concerned. There are too many media players already with too much money flowing in to disrupt that.

But Disney is bleeding streaming subscribers and they need to juice up what saleable properties they still haven’t completely destroyed.

Speculation is running rampant in What-Ifs-Ville.

…The move would be a logical one for Disney as it tries to move past the traditional cable subscriber model and underscores how badly the company wants to find a solution for the sports network as its linear subscribers decline. Still, ESPN ratings have climbed in recent years on major sporting events. There’s no better partner for sports content than the leagues, themselves.

Superficially, it may make less sense for the NBA and NFL, which sign lucrative media rights deals with many media partners that fuel team revenue and player salaries with a range of media companies.

…Professional sports leagues could face conflicts of interest if they take a minority stake in ESPN. Owning a stake in ESPN may irritate Disney’s competitors, such as Comcast’s NBCUniversal, Fox, Amazon, Paramount Global and Apple, who help make the leagues billions of dollars by participating in bidding wars for sports rights. Taking an ownership stake in ESPN could give leagues the incentive to boost the value of that entity rather than striking deals with competitors.

Clay Travis was busy running Disney’s God-awful numbers before news broke about them courting the leagues, and “fugly” doesn’t begin to describe the self-induced, woke disaster Iger has on his hands.

Some other interesting wrinkles in the HULU/Comcast buyout that’s going to cost Disney their shirt. Comcast is a cable network, in effect a direct competitor of Disney’s streaming operation, so why would Iger spend the money on yet another cable company? Good explanation below.

Iger wants a strategic partner, that will give him $$$ and won’t be involved.

He will go with a PE firm, one that he already knows, like Cain OR someone DESPERATE to get into US Sports, like Public Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Saudia Arabia.

— Trey Morris (@TreyMorris) July 21, 2023

All this is coming about because Disney has so thoroughly destroyed Disney and the singular, beloved place the company held for decades in the American psyche. A once enthusiastic public is rejecting the company’s pricey offerings at a record clip.

…Until last quarter, Disney’s bundle of linear TV networks still had revenue growth because affiliate fee increases to pay-TV providers — largely driven by ESPN — made up for the millions of Americans who cancel cable each year. That trend finally ended last quarter, according to people familiar with the matter. Accelerating cancellations have now overwhelmed fee increases, and linear TV revenue outside of advertising has begun to decline.

Their stock has taken a pounding this past year and small wonder.

It wasn’t enough to go to woke war with the state of Florida. They went to woke war on their viewers. If, perchance, an offering wasn’t woke, it was 9 times out of 10 a derivative regurgitation of a much loved classic, with slap-dash, half-assed film-making, pedestrian/trite dialogue, and zero interest in art or storytelling. Churn-it-out, formulaic crap.

As David said in his piece, Disney is creatively dead.

Now, with their streaming slipping away from them – well, they threw it away, let’s be honest – Iger hopes to use what’s left of ESPN’s cache (which has also lost much of its luster from an average sports enthusiast’s point of view) to generate some cha-ching in an effort to keep the outfit afloat while he rights the ship.

…Conversely, CNBC reports (citing anonymous sources) that the NFL has an interest in finding a partner for its media assets like the NFL Network and NFL RedZone. Maybe the time is right for that to happen.

Or maybe the leagues see the current state of ESPN — including the recent tidal wave of layoffs — and think, “We’ll pass.”

Is Iger’s ship a dashing pirate galley or the Titanic?

The way Disney’s going…is that Celine Dion I hear warming up in the wings…?