(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.)
Looking at the stories for July and August of 2025, a lot of them struck me as “this may happen” stories, not actual news stories, as in deals that are “about to close” or speculation of what we may see. Now, in many cases, these stories are written based off good evidence: the reporters are speaking to sources with firsthand knowledge of the discussions/deals that are coming.
But as many times as we see these deals close, much more often they don’t. I saw a lot of smoke about Apple and Formula 1 making a deal, but no fire (i.e. an official announcement) yet. The news coverage has implied that a lot of deals are in the works for MLB, but again, no details and nothing official. Before they made their deal with Paramount, there were leaks that Legendary would try to buy Lionsgate. That hasn’t happened, has it? Paramount has finalized some legitimate deals (the Duffer Bros, Cindy Holland, Legendary), but I’m still waiting on Bari Weiss/The Free Press news to become official.
Not to mention, often the truly big stories (especially giant mergers) emerge with no foreshadowing. For example, see UFC and Paramount+ just last month!
That’s just a little reminder about my focus. I look at “real” news stories because I want to focus on news that actually happened, not what could happen. With that said, over the last sixty days—apologies for the gap between this column and other stories—we had a lot of actual news, including a few big sports media rights deals, Google’s big antitrust win, the latest Nielsen news, more streamers increasing their prices, and more.
But the most fascinating story is the return of the sports bundle. A few months back, I put out a “Most Important Story of the Week” column with the deliberately provocative title, “The All-in-One Streamer is Dead”. If you actually read the story, you’ll know that I acknowledged multiple times that all-in-one streamers (especially Netflix) are fine. But some streamers had decided to take the niche-streamer route. Hence, the hyperbolic header.
So has the sports bundle truly returned? Kind of, but also not. But it’s definitely the most important story of the week….
Most Important Story of the Week – The Sports Bundle Returns!
First, let’s review the big news, starting with the launch of two new streamers:
- Disney launched “ESPN”, a new app with full access to all ESPN sports for $30 a month.
- Fox launched “Fox One”, an app with access to Fox, Fox News and, crucially, Fox Sports for $20 a month.
- The two companies announced a bundle for both apps for $40 a month.
The goal with these two new streaming options is to offer sports that were previously exclusive to cable channels (MVPDs) and over-the-top cable bundles (vMVPDs) on their own. These new streamers have those sports, but, crucially, are priced competitively with those uber-expensive linear TV bundles. Notably, these live sports broadcasts aren’t exclusive to streaming. If customers need/want to watch sports, they can buy a cable package, subscribe to a vMVPD (like YouTube Live TV or Fubo/Hulu Live TV), or subscribe to these streamers. (Or they can pirate it.)
Not to be outdone, Paramount announced a big, splashy sports media rights purchase after the Skydance merger finally closed. (And yes, I owe a write-up on their moves post-merger, but I stand by my initial take from July.)
- Paramount shelled out a whopping $7.7 billion for the next seven years of UFC rights
That’s a lot of money! And I’m not sure it’s a great use of that money either! I need to parse the numbers still, but it seems like an overpay. And it says to me that Paramount intends to keep competing in the sports space.
Then ESPN went on a buying spree:
- ESPN and the NFL announced a big, pseudo-joint merger venture.
- ESPN also announced a deal for WWE’s premium events.
- Plus, there are still rumors that ESPN may buy everything from MLB to UFC.
But that’s not it. Everyone seems to be buying sports:
- ESPN will license even more college football games to TNT/Discovery.
- TNT secured more games from the Savannah Bananas stunt baseball team.
- DAZN grabbed some global rights for the NHL and college football.
- The UK’s Channel 5 will get more NFL games.
In other words, TNT and DAZN remain sports buyers—especially overseas—and Netflix still has its eyes on major sporting events. At the same time that the two biggest US sports buyers try to consolidate their lead, everyone else wants to play too.
Takeaways!!!
If the above stories feel a bit contradictory, I don’t disagree! At the same time that the biggest players focus on a bundle, the smaller players keep buying sports. And that’s why the strategic “lessons” I’d take from these news stories are fairly nuanced, as always.
- The bundle lives! At least, Fox and Disney want it to live. And as others have speculated, when Discovery and Warner Bros. split again, it’s likely TNT content will get bundled in the new offering. So the previously dead Venu may live on. Other folks may join this bundle. Thus, we may have the long-rumored “sports bundle” to rule all sports bundles. Or not…
- The sports landscape is as competitive as ever. No one wants to cede that sports user experience to anyone else, because whoever owns it would essentially be a monopolist, dictating terms across the industry. Amazon and Apple clearly are eyeing sports, with Amazon spending the most. ESPN isn’t pulling back, neither is Fox. NBC-Universal bought NBA rights and is heavily rumored for MLB. Even Paramount doubled down on sports with a huge UFC deal. In other words, this landscape is as fierce (and fractured) as ever.
- Netflix remains cautious. Netflix has mostly bought one-off events, avoiding most regular sporting events besides the WWE’s weekly shows. It even let ESPN get WWE’s formerly pay-per-view, now called “premium live events” (PLEs) like Wrestlemania. This says to me that Netflix still doesn’t want to own all of any one sport, and will keep mostly dabbling in one-off events. Though that’s a potentially risky strategy, a topic I hope to explore in a future article, but also potentially the best “ROI” plan of the bunch.
- We still haven’t seen the sports contraction. Again, that’s what I thought would happen, especially after ESPN seemingly balked at all the initial prices for MLB, UFC and F1. But then Paramount came in and said, “Naw, we’ll drop a bunch of money on rights.” MLB (or someone interested in their valuations) is releasing a lot of rumors to reporters about big paydays, too. So is this the year sports media rights valuations crack? It doesn’t look like it. (But yeah, I’m still waiting for official word on Formula 1.)
- Disney has the most interesting strategy. On the one hand, they lost UFC, may lose MLB, and don’t seem to care about F1. But they also secured more NFL programming and locked down WWE rights. My gut is they think they have enough regular programming between NFL, college football and the NBA to keep fans hooked, and now want special one-offs to bring in select fanbases, like WWE and maybe some UFC rights. We’ll see.
- MLB rights seem undervalued to me. MLB’s viewership is competitive with the NBA; their regular season games have lower ratings, but their all-star game and playoffs achieve the same ratings (if not higher in the last year). The knock on baseball is that its viewers are way too old, but this sport actually is beloved by fast-growing, younger demographic groups, particularly Latino audiences. But right now, according to the rumors, they’re going to get one quarter the pay day of the NBA. That feels off to me.
- Sports prices still high…and profits elusive. Ampere Analysis put out a report that US sports buyers will spend $30 billion on sports rights this year. That feels right. But the competition is keeping prices high, and that means that most streamers will struggle to pay back these fees. As all the streamers approach profitability, this may play a key role.
Wildcard: The ESPN Spinoff
It’s worth noting the ESPN wildcard, which is that a lot of these moves may have been set up to spin off the sports Goliath. By establishing its own streamer and by securing a deal with the NFL, ESPN is positioning itself as its own valuable asset. Not to mention, in their financial reports, Disney separates “sports” income and profits from the rest of the company.
So…will Disney CEO Bob Iger’s legacy be the breakup of his company? I mean, maybe, but also maybe not.
I mean, ESPN is still widely integrated into the rest of the company, especially ABC, their broadcast channel. They’ve also bundled live sports into Disney+ proper. (Another all-in-one streamer!) In a spun-off ESPN world, both ESPN and Disney may look like smaller minnows in the streaming landscape. That said, if the price is right, don’t count out anything.
Almost Most Important Story of the Week – The Death of Nielsen?
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