ESPN

“There's a big lawsuit about it, goes on for a couple of years, and at the end of it, Lalit gets booted out of the business, and despite his family's 50% ownership in that original ESPN Disney joint venture, he gets nothing.”

“So August, 20, 25, the NFL reached a deal with Disney and ESPN to essentially sell the NFL network, the NFL's cable network and the NFL's official fantasy app to ESPN for a 10% equity stake in all of ESPN in return for this swap.”

“It was actually the first big coup for ESPN when ESPN started in 1979 and 1980 was televising the NFL draft.”

“Right after Liberty takes over in 2017, they do a deal with ESPN, much like Bernie's original European Broadcasting Union deal. Liberty says, will you please show all of the F-one races on the calendar on ESPN? We will give it to you for zero dollars.”

“It would come out later in Disney's annual report that ESPN lost three million subscribers that year. Which still meant it had ninety-two million in total.”

“It was because it had ESPN, but it also cost the company It's strategic clarity. Disney never again would get to be just Disney. It's the flywheel business and the ESPN affiliate slash advertising cable business. And it's worth it because buying ESPN was this …”

“Sports have a very limited shelf life. You are not going back and watching Manning cast episodes from last season. The flywheel does not apply here. So you can't build long-term value around that original content.”

“Nine dollars and 42 cents per month per subscriber that the cable operators pay ESPN.”

“Yeah, it's a declining asset that does three billion dollars a year now in operating income.”

“So in the long run, if the main reason to subscribe to any given channel ends up being actually about the game content itself and not differentiated by stuff around the game, then the excess profits in the long term Will just be captured by the rights holders …”

“If you go line up those three acquisitions, which sound ludicrous on their price tags, especially when you didn't know how they were gonna pay off, Pixar at 7.4 billion, let's even include the cash in there, that's about two and a half years of cable's then pr…”

“In twenty-twenty-five, they do a deal with the NFL. The NFL trades, the NFL network cable channel, Into ESPN in return for a 10% stake in ESPN itself.”

“So we're flashing forward, but later on, in the 2008 to 2011 time frame, Disney's cable networks segment, of which analysts believe that three quarters of the cable network segment is ESPN, that segment accounted for 60% of the entire company's operating incom…”

“So in 2006, just look at the Monday Night Football package that ESPN buys. O six, it was a 1.1 billion. 20 11, it was at 1.9 billion a year. And by 2021, it went up to 2.7 billion dollars a year now.”

“They're in the midst of a transition to streaming with Disney Plus and Hulu. And ESPN making giant technology and marketing investments to support that transition that lost billions for half a decade.”