ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Fox Corp. are joining forces for a new standalone sports streaming app.
The new streaming service will combine each company’s sports content offerings and licenses in a single package. As such, subscribers will have access to ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SECN, ACCN, ESPNEWS, ABC, Fox, FS1, FS2, BTN, TNT, TBS, truTV, and ESPN+, as well as hundreds of hours games from the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, college football and basketball, tennis, the UFC, Formula 1, and NASCAR.
The service is expected to launch in the fall. It will be available both as a standalone app, as well as a part of a bundle with Disney’s ESPN+ and Hulu and WBD’s Max. More details — including pricing — to be announced at a later date.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, each company will own one third of the new streaming service and license their content to it on a non-exclusive basis.
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Streamers have looked more towards sports in recent years in hopes of fending off subscription fatigue and increasing overall user engagement. Last year, YouTube purchased the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket away from DirecTV, and Apple TV became the exclusive streaming home of the MLS. More recently, Netflix acquired the rights to exclusively air WWE’s Monday Night Raw beginning in January 2025.
For its part, Warner Bros. added a sports vertical to Max last October, offering subscribers the ability to stream sports programming from TBS, TNT and TruTV for no additional charge (though, the company does intend to charge an extra fee for sports at some point in the future). Meanwhile, ESPN has been working its way to launching as a direct-to-consumer streaming service by 2025.
