ESPN has to be happy with the performance of ESPN+ thus far. During Disney’s latest quarterly earnings report, the company revealed that the streaming platform added another 1 million subscribers during the second quarter of 2022. That brings the total to around 22.3 million.
Disney generates an average of $4.73 from each ESPN+ subscriber in monthly revenue. It is part of the cash cow that streaming has been for the entire Walt Disney Company. Disney+, the company’s flagship OTT streamer, added 7.9 million subscribers during the same time period.
Don’t expect this to mean that Disney and ESPN are ready to abandon traditional cable. Bob Chapek, Disney’s CEO, described linear networks as still being “cash generators”. He added that “the hesitancy to move too fast away from those is really a cashflow situation.”
“At some point, when it is going to be good for our shareholders, we will be able to fully go,” Chapek said. “It will be the ultimate fan offering that appeals to super-fans of sports, and it is really only ESPN that could pull that off.”
