ESPN+ is its own quandary. The original formula seemed OK. Disney has lots of excess rights, mainly with colleges, where it buys the rights to everything the conference does. Thus it had hundreds of thousands of game of “mid-major” conferences in football and basketball, and yet more rights to “non-revenue” sports at larger schools. Add in sports produced in English for other markets, like cricket or soccer, where the US rights are not expensive, and on-demand of its documentaries and there you go.
But the world didn’t beat a path to its door. Turns out that mid-major football and basketball and true major women’s whatever, baseball, and track, don’t really matter to very many people.
So Disney reversed course. Now spending big money to get what are really third tier and below rights to larger sports. Early rounds of the PGA, an on-the-cheap version of NHL center ice (less games), original documentaries, etc. And tossing up the occasional thing from real ESPN which it cannot do that much of, as it would void the deals with big cable, et al.
And it just cannot make any money.
