Television Accounts for Less than Half of U.S. Viewing Time for the First Time
Global Market Intelligence. Peacock and Apple TV+ now carry a number of Major League Baseball games exclusively, while Amazon’s Prime Video has become the primary home of the National Football League’s “Thursday Night Football." Even companies that generate significant amounts of revenue offering live sports on their cable channels are exploring offering them on their streaming platforms, a balancing act as they look to grow their streaming subscriber bases without cannibalizing their ailing TV-network businesses. Warner Bros.
Discovery, home of the TNT, TBS and CNN cable networks as well as the Max streaming service, earlier this month said it is working on bringing news and live sports to its streaming offerings in the U.S. The company has sports rights for several high-profile leagues including the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball. Disney’s ESPN, meanwhile, is hunting for a strategic partner to aid its transition to streaming.
The network has held talks with potential partners and investors. It is working to make a stand-alone version of its flagship TV channel available to cord-cutters in two to three years, or once its reach in the cable-TV world falls below 50 million households, the Journal previously reported. About 75 million U.S.
households still subscribe to a pay-TV package, down from a peak of around 100 million about a decade ago. “Taking our ESPN flagship channels direct-to-consumer is not a matter of if, but when," Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger told investors last week during a conference call to discuss the company’s latest quarterly earnings. Write to David Marcelis at david.marcelis@wsj.com
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