Getting your SportsCenter fix requires having a cable subscription but in the future this restriction might be removed. Disney CEO Bog Iger has said that the company may decide to sell ESPN straight to customers one day though he does caution that this won’t happen immediately, it could take a few years before Disney puts everything in place before selling the channel directly to customers.
For customers this would mean that they will be able to pay for ESPN separately and not have to get a cable subscription if that’s the only channel that they really want, it’s similar to what HBO or Showtime have done, both networks are selling subscriptions to their channels online.
This is going to be a significant shift for Disney which has made a substantial amount of money courtesy the high per-subscriber cable fees that ESPN brings in, and it’s going to make things much easier for people willing to cut the cord and move entirely towards online TV streaming.
Iger was speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box earlier today and he pointed out this change is not going to come immediately, adding that it could very well take up to five years or even more for this to happen.
At least we now know that Disney is considering this idea, when asked about a possible price point for a standalone ESPN subscription, Iger said talking about that right now “would be conjecture at this point.”
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