Invest3 publishersIndependently confirmed2 min readPublished
Disney adds Disney+ viewers to a Super Bowl whose ads sold out in August
Disney will stream Super Bowl LXI and two Monday Night Football games on Disney+ at no extra cost, alongside the ESPN and ABC broadcasts. Its ad slots sold out in August, before the stream was public, so the added reach mainly serves Disney+ and ESPN's live sports offer.
The Investor · Invest desk
What happened
- Disney+ will show the same ESPN and ABC broadcast, with Joe Buck and Troy Aikman calling the game, plus the ESPN Deportes Spanish-language feed.
- The first of the two Monday Night Football games on Disney+ is Dallas at Philadelphia on Oct. 26, and the second has not yet been named.
- Neither Monday game moves exclusively to Disney+; both will still air on ESPN, ABC and ESPN Deportes.
- Outside the U.S., Disney+ will carry the game in more than 55 markets, while ESPN's linear channels reach more than 130 countries and territories.
- CNBC calls it the latest step in Disney's push into live sports, after Disney said in August that Formula E races would come to Disney+ later this year.
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Why it matters
- cost The 58 brands that committed in August collect whatever audience Disney+ adds, unless their contracts anticipated a stream that had not yet been announced.
- decision By simulcasting, Disney gives up using the Super Bowl to force Disney+ sign-ups and keeps the ABC and ESPN audience intact for the advertisers who bought it.
- constraint With Formula E and now the NFL included at no extra charge, Disney will find it harder to charge Disney+ subscribers separately for live sports later.
Disney sold the advertising first and announced the stream second. Every commercial slot in the telecast was gone by the fiscal third-quarter call in August [8]. The Disney+ plan came on Wednesday [1], so the 58 brands across 34 product categories [9] signed before the stream was public [12]. The sources do not describe their contract terms. Disney+ will show the same broadcast as ESPN and ABC [5], and if that includes the same commercials, the streaming audience is extra reach for buyers who had already committed. The units Disney can price knowing the stream exists are the ones advertisers hand back, which Variety reports Disney is offering at $10 million to $12 million per 30-second slot [10]. Divided by 30, that comes to about $333,000 to $400,000 a second [13].
The choice can be read a few ways. The narrowest is advertiser relations: nine of the 58 brands are buying their first Super Bowl spot [9], about 16% of the roster [14], and a bigger audience on a debut purchase costs Disney no inventory it had not already sold. A second reading is a contained trial. One Super Bowl and two regular-season games, each also airing on linear [3], is a small sample. A weak streaming number would leave the ESPN and ABC audience where it was.
I think the terms fit a third reading best. Disney is using its largest NFL property to make Disney+ part of what ESPN sells. Subscribers pay nothing extra for the game [1]. The ESPN App keeps every Monday Night Football game and all Super Bowl programming, the ManningCast on ESPN2 included [7], so Disney+ is one more place to watch a broadcast that stays everywhere it already was.
The view is wrong if Disney starts moving games off ESPN or ABC to Disney+ alone. At that point the stream would be replacing the broadcast. The evidence is also thin on repetition. ESPN is producing a Super Bowl for the first time [4], so that half of the offer has no history yet, and the Monday games are where any pattern would have to show up.
What to watch
- Which game Disney names as the second Monday Night Football broadcast on Disney+, and whether more are added next season.
- Whether Disney reports Disney+ viewing of the Oct. 26 Cowboys-Eagles game separately from the ESPN and ABC audience.
- Whether any of the 58 committed advertisers gives up a slot and Disney resells it near the $10 million to $12 million Variety reports.