Actually, MLB and NHL expire in 28, which is not really that long. NASCAR, Indy Car, and several second tier college conferences expire before that. But that really doesn't matter if ESPN held the rights for a century to come. Actually it makes things worse, the longer the rights, the more money Disney owes in a system where it cannot recoup it.
Disney has turned a cash cow into a toxic asset in the span of less than four years. Faced with the blunt and irrefutable math that selling ESPN a la carte will yield less money than it cost to produce ESPN (just like all streaming, except the one) unless they sell it at a three figure/month price, all the MBAs at Disney can do is a truly silly theory about "dual distribution". Which is dumb people paying for cable to subsidize the smart people who will get ESPN at a huge discount. That is truly insane. The correct answer to "Operation Mothership" was "it can't be done". Simple.
What we are seeing the current big dispute with Charter is, and this is hard to believe, cable being the adult in the room. ESPN, as an exclusive, provides value to bundled packages. ESPN, if you can just buy it a la carte, has no place in a cable company's line up. Why burden your customers with material they don't want, when the minority that does can simply buy it extra?
ESPN is thus, very soon, becoming toxic. Tied up in huge contracts for material that, outside of the bundle, simply cannot cover their costs. Apple, nor Amazon, nor whatever, are all too well run to tie up Disney's toxic asset.
If they want sports, they can pick them up when the rights expire, or from the Disney bankruptcy, whichever comes first.