Baseball is already brought to you by Disney, if it’s a game on ESPN. But now Disney wants to bring you all the baseball… at least if you stream it online.
The LA Times reports that Disney is in talks to buy a big stake in MLB Advanced Media, better known to most of us simply as MLB.tv.
MLB Advanced Media has other services too, but MLB.tv is the big one. That’s the $110 annual (or $25 monthly) subscription service that allows baseball fans access to live streams of all their out-of-market baseball games.
Live sports offerings are still the tether that keeps pay-TV subscribers paying up every month, but even that trend appears to be on the wane. The LA Times reports that ESPN lost 1.2 million subscribers last year, a trend that is unlikely to abate any time soon.
As cable and other pay-TV subscriptions wane and consumers increasingly turn to over-the-top streaming services for their fix, ESPN is fighting an uphill battle to keep eyeballs on ads. And now even Disney apparently realizes the streaming writing is on the digital wall.
Disney is in talks for a stake in MLB’s sports streaming company [L.A. Times]
by Kate Cox via Consumerist
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