Coming off a stream of news, ESPN chair James Pitaro took a deep dive today into a recent deal with the NFL and what he thinks will drive engagement at the Disney division’s just-launched sports streaming app. He touted in-depth personalization like tailored SportsCenter feeds, the StreamCenter feature letting viewers user their phones to control the app on a smart TV, and up to four multicasts.Also, while it’s not brand new, there’s a search function so fans can check when and where their teams are playing even on rival platforms, something Pitaro said was polarizing internally. “Fortunately, I got to make the call, and so we went ahead and did it. And I felt like — going back to our brand and our mission of serving the sports fan — this was directly connected to our mission. I ultimately believe that the rising tide will pay dividends for us. Meaning, you deliver for the sports fan, you deliver the information that they’re looking for, they’re going to come back,” he said during a Q&A at the Bank of America media conference today.ESPN entered a new chapter late last month, launching its long-awaited new streaming service August 22 at a price of $29.99 a month, bulking it up with WWE events and expanded NFL rights. The streamer offers the full ESPN ecosystem of live games, studio shows, original content and all 12 of its networks. It makes a powerful bundle with sister streamers Disney+ and Hulu and has partnered with the new Fox One streamer and NFL+ Premium.ESPN’s live sports portfolio spanning 47,000 live events across the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, college sports, Tennis Majors, PGA Tour Live and Golf Majors, UFC, WWE, international soccer, and more, which Pitaro said may rep the strongest portfolio of rights in its 46-year history.A landmark deal between the NFL and ESPN announced in August will see the league take a 10% equity stake in ESPN in exchange for control of the NFL Network and other NFL Media properties.“The games, the studio programming, their film library will live within NFL Network” when the deal closes, Pitaro said. ESPN will be acquiring linear rights to RedZone network and affiliated contracts as well as the RedZone brand. “So there’s opportunity to potentially expand RedZone, which is an amazing product, an amazing brand, potentially expanding it to other sports, other leagues.”ESPN is also acquiring the NFL’s fantasy business and “we couldn’t be more excited about it from an advertising and sponsorship perspective.”The Disney sports powerhouse will be licensing additional games. And a final component is the NFL Draft. “We helped create the NFL draft with the League and so many … employees at ESPN take pride in what we’ve done to help grow the NFL Draft. It was really important to us that we extend that deal. And we were able to reach a separate agreement … with the league on that,” Pitaro said.He said ESPN will continue to invest in social media. “Years ago we decided that we were going to invest in social … that we needed to be open and we needed to be present on third party social platforms, which was a tough decision in a world where you have finite resources.“We ultimately debated that and aligned on this idea of being where the fan is, especially the younger fan, and so we’ve done a great job at creating content, not just taking clips of first takes and putting them on social platforms … [but] creating content natively for those platforms and identifying content on the web or online that we think represents our brand and including that. That’s where younger people are, and so we have to be there.“And what we see is that the more we invest in social the more time those fans are spending with ESPN owned and operated properties. It’s helping to grow our brand with younger people, but it’s also helping to grow our business.”On personalization, ESPN has been doing it digitally for decades, he said, letting fans “favorite” a league, or a team, or a player, then using that data to personalize the experience. With DTC it made a push on the hugely popular show SportsCenter. “We decided, look, I’m a sports fan. I’m a huge sports fan. And for many years, for decades, I’ve wanted a SportsCenter dedicated to me. I’m a Yankees, Giants, Knicks, Rangers, Notre Dame. And so when I want fire up SportCenter, that’s what I want. I want to see my team’s highlights first, if they played, and maybe I also want to see the highlights from the rival teams. And so that’s what you have now. We call it SportsCenter for you. It is fully personalized, driven by AI, and we couldn’t be more excited about it.”The app has tabs for stats, for key plays, for betting and for commerce.Asked about the rising cost of sports rights, Pitaro acknowledged significant increases over the past several years. “I don’t have a crystal ball [but] I don’t know how sustainable this type of growth is.”He said he and others have been heartened by what he calls big tech’s relatively disciplined involvement. “You’re seeing big tech operate with discipline, which I think even a few years ago, a lot of people did not expect, I think, I think a lot of people expected the big tech players to spend more aggressively, bid more aggressively, than than they have.” He also noted that besides a still pending MLB deal, there’s not that much available on the market now or coming up anytime soon.On the new ESPN app, he said: “We are just getting started here. I have said this repeatedly, but it bears repeating. This is not a movie launch. Here at Disney we are really good at opening movies. That is not what this. We launched a couple of weeks ago. We’re very proud of the product and the features, but this is a marathon.”
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