LAS VEGAS — One day, brilliant TV executives will band together and put their programming under one roof. It will solve all your sports viewing problems. They’ll call it cable.
This new venture ESPN, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery is not. At least not yet.
There’s still significance in three of sports’ biggest brands coming together this fall to give fans another option. The Great Reunion is upon us, but it is far from resolved.
For the consumer, you won’t Need this feat will be named later and, my initial bet is that most of you will choose this option. The service will be owned equally by the three parties, but each partner will receive the same rate it earns from cable TV or YouTubeTV, according to sources familiar with the deal. ESPN alone, the single network, receives about $12 a month from cable subscribers.
So what does this mean for you? The estimated price for the new venture adding ESPN, Fox and WBD Sports together will likely be between $40 and $50 per month. There are probably some sports fans who would like to save some money with this deal, but it’s hard to believe there are many.
You can already watch almost everything this trio offers through places like YouTube TV for around $70 and change per month. If you want this option, it’s already available, with even more channels to boot.
After a year of talks between the three parties, it is important to see these superpowers come together and it is very understandable why they did so. For them there is no risk, all reward. This “skinny sports package” – as the media guys like to call it – is worth a try.
Fox Sports enters the sports subscription space for the first time with this small step. They were the ones watching their competitors pour billions into subscription streaming while they stood on the sidelines patiently biding their time. Their executives thought regrouping was the way to go, so this gives them an initial chance.
ESPN planned to go direct-to-consumer with its entire product by 2025 with the possibility of 2024. It will now begin this fall with tag-team partners.
This new deal does not deter ESPN’s previous plans. The network still intends to have a standalone direct-to-consumer ESPN product within the next year. Additionally, it could still move forward with an equity partnership with the NFL or other digital leagues and/or players.
WBD Sports has an ever-underrated menu of rights to bring to new product, from the NBA and MLB playoffs to March Madness.

The new sports streaming venture is a step toward unifying sports rights, but it is incomplete. Sunday’s Super Bowl on CBS, for example, would not be on the platform. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
But the reason why these entities still have nothing complete here is the exclusion of other major players, such as CBS for example.
This “skinny sports package” is a little too thin to include Patrick Mahomes, Christian McCaffrey and Taylor Swift this weekend, given that CBS has the Super Bowl this year. Even more problematic when you compare this new product to YouTube: If you want to watch March Madness, CBS games won’t be there. It won’t be a one-stop shop.
The importance of this agreement may increase in the future, as the names reported in the press release suggest. The quotes came from the top: Disney’s Bob Iger, Fox’s Lachlan Murdoch and WBD’s David Zaslav.
However, if they want to fight the almost unlimited pockets of Amazon, Apple or Netflix, if these digital giants become even more serious about sports rights, Iger, Murdoch and Zaslav could have a stronger hand as a trio.
The new entity will have its own CEO and is said to operate independently. Its leaders, however, will still be Iger, Murdoch and Zaslav, so how independent will it be? Where might it lead in the future? Will they be able to get along? If the questions could be answered positively, it could lead to something even bigger.
For you, fans, maybe this new CEO will find a way to put everything you want to see into one simple service. Until then, this undertaking won’t change much for most of you.

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(Photo of Fox Sports’ Michael Strahan interviewing Christian McCaffrey of the San Francisco 49ers after last month’s NFC championship game: Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)