ESPN+

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  ESPN+ launched on the 12th of April 2018. Less than a year later, one single event showed what the service could do: the debut ESPN+ broadcast, UFC Fight Night: Cejudo vs. Dillashaw, brought in 525,000 new subscribers in a single day. A sports broadcaster built on cable bundles had just proven people would pay for it directly, one event at a time. So who actually controls ESPN+, and why did a legacy network decide to build its own streaming platform? And after years of expansion, what finally happened to it?

• 2. Who Really Owns ESPN+

  ›

  Seventy-two percent of ESPN belongs to the Walt Disney Company, held through an indirect subsidiary called ABC Inc. Hearst Communications holds 18 percent, and the National Football League holds the remaining 10 percent. That ownership structure sits above ESPN+ as a brand, not as a separate company. The service ran on technology built by BAMTech, a Disney subsidiary now called Disney Streaming.

  ESPN3 and the ESPN app carried some of the same programming years before ESPN+ existed, but ESPN+ never absorbed those services outright. Subscribers to ESPN3 and the app still needed a television provider to watch, and ESPN+ did not replace that requirement. As a result, a portion of ESPN's sports rights simply never reached ESPN+ at all.

• 3. The BAMTech Bet

  ›

  In August 2016, the Walt Disney Company paid $1 billion for a minority stake in BAMTech, a streaming technology business spun out of MLB Advanced Media. Disney also secured an option to buy a majority stake later. At first, Disney called the plan only 'an exploratory OTT project,' built mainly around ESPN-owned rights for events that never aired on television. ESPN had already used BAMTech's platform to run WatchESPN, its existing TV Everywhere service for cable subscribers.

  Disney chief executive Bob Iger framed the timing around a broader shift in television. Even as cord-cutting eroded pay-television subscriptions, Iger pointed to a bright spot. 'Live sports has really thrived, even in a world where there's so much more for people to do and to watch,' he said.

  By August 2017, Disney exercised its option to take full control of BAMTech and announced plans to launch its ESPN streaming service in 2018. A Disney-branded entertainment streaming service was set to follow in 2019, ending the company's content relationship with Netflix. Disney said the ESPN service would carry ESPN's own rights along with Major League Baseball, National Hockey League and Major League Soccer programming, though it would lack major properties like the NBA and NFL. Disney also promised a redesigned ESPN app that would become a 'premier digital destination' for sports.

  During Disney's fourth-quarter earnings call, Iger revealed the new service's name: ESPN+. In December 2017, Disney announced its intent to acquire 21st Century Fox, a deal that was set to include the Fox Sports Networks group of regional networks. Regulators later forced Disney to divest those regional networks on antitrust grounds, though observers had speculated Disney wanted their rights folded into ESPN+. By February 2018, Iger said ESPN was targeting a monthly price of $4.99. ESPN+ and BAMTech were placed inside a new Disney business unit called Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International on the 14th of March 2018. ESPN made that $4.99 price official on the 2nd of April 2018.

• 4. Chasing Rights Across Sports

  ›

  When ESPN+ launched, its lineup leaned heavily on boxing, carrying Top Rank events alongside archive footage that would eventually run through 2025, plus 36 exclusive fight cards. College sports factored in early too. The Ivy League had already signed a ten-year media rights deal with ESPN before the service launched, and its events became a staple of the platform. Grand Slam tennis coverage was part of the package too, along with international cricket involving the India national team, Cricket Ireland and New Zealand Cricket. Soccer rounded out the opening slate, spanning Major League Soccer, the U.S. Open Cup and the 2019 Copa America. Coverage also reached Italy's Serie A, the Eredivisie and England's FA Cup, among other leagues. College Rugby also had a place in the early lineup.

  In October 2018, ESPN+ added rights to Sweden's Allsvenskan and Denmark's Superliga, broadcasting one match per week from each league. A Belgian Pro League deal followed in February 2021, expected to bring three matches a week. Out-of-market Major League Soccer games came to subscribers at no extra charge, replacing the league's old MLS Live service. ESPN+ also held exclusive rights to all regionally televised Chicago Fire matches through 2020, making Chicago the second MLS club to sell its regional rights to a streaming platform, after Los Angeles FC's arrangement with YouTube TV.

  Hockey arrived under the NHL Power Play on ESPN+ branding starting with the 2021-22 season, replacing the previous NHL.tv service and covering all out-of-market games. MLB.tv also became available for purchase inside the ESPN+ platform, offering daily games throughout the regular season. During the 2020 Major League Baseball season, ESPN+ ran a live look-in show called Squeeze Play, tracking the seven Wild Card Series matchups ESPN held rights to. Select games in that round also carried Statcast broadcasts. The format echoed ESPN Bases Loaded, a similar look-in service ESPN had run during the NCAA baseball tournament. Golf's PGA Tour Live, also run by BAMTech, was part of ESPN+ for the 2018 season before moving to NBC Sports Gold in 2019. Supplemental feeds for the PGA Championship began in 2020, including during windows when CBS held the broadcast, and PGA Tour Live itself returned to ESPN+ in 2022 under a new deal running through 2030.

  The American Athletic Conference signed a 12-year media rights deal with ESPN in March 2019, handing ESPN+ most of the games not carried on ESPN's own channels. Two months later, ESPN+ added 18 World TeamTennis matches to its May 2019 schedule. Germany's Bundesliga joined the platform under a six-year deal announced in September 2019, starting in 2020. For the 2019-20 season, ESPN+ picked up third-tier rights to nearly every Big 12 Conference team, branded Big 12 Now. Oklahoma was excluded, since its rights sat with SoonerSports.tv and Bally Sports Oklahoma. Texas was excluded too, tied instead to its existing Longhorn Network deal. ESPN re-acquired National Hockey League rights on the 10th of March 2021, signing a new seven-year contract. It guaranteed ESPN+ at least 50 exclusive games each season, plus simulcasts of select ESPN broadcasts and every ABC game, including the Stanley Cup Final in some years. A week later, ESPN's renewed NFL rights gave ESPN+ simulcast access to Monday Night Football starting with the 2021 season. ESPN+ held one exclusive Monday Night Football game per year from 2022 through 2024. Those games moved back to ESPN's own networks in 2025, and are set to shift again, to NFL Network, in 2026.

  Disney wound down the U.S. version of Hotstar, a streaming service aimed at Indian Americans, in September 2021, folding its content into ESPN+ and Hulu. That shift brought ESPN+ the home broadcast rights to the India national cricket team and the Indian Premier League, both previously sub-licensed through sister network Star Sports. In April 2022, ESPN struck a smaller deal with the Savannah Bananas, agreeing to livestream two games of their Banana Ball World Tour on the 8th and 9th of that month. Later that same month, ESPN signed the Northwoods League, a summer collegiate baseball circuit, to stream select games daily, along with its All-Star Game and playoffs. ESPN also picked up the Oklahoma Sooners' third-tier media rights that May, branded SoonerVision on ESPN+. That deal runs only through the 2024-25 season, after which the Sooners leave the Big 12 for the Southeastern Conference, whose media rights already belong entirely to ESPN.

• 5. The UFC Anchor

  ›

  In May 2018, the Ultimate Fighting Championship and ESPN signed a five-year agreement covering both digital and linear television rights, taking effect in January 2019. The agreement gave ESPN+ exclusive streaming rights to 20 UFC Fight Night cards a year, plus preliminary bouts from another 10 Fight Night cards annually. ESPN+ also picked up supplemental UFC content: Dana White's Contender Series, archive fight footage, pay-per-view encores, and in-platform sales of UFC Fight Pass.

  ESPN reached a two-year extension of its UFC contract on the 18th of March 2019. Starting with UFC 236, ESPN+ became the sole U.S. distributor of every UFC pay-per-view event sold to residential customers. Television providers no longer carried those PPV sales, so buying a UFC pay-per-view card required an ESPN+ subscription.

  The UFC package is set to move to Paramount Skydance Corporation's Paramount+ and to CBS in 2026. That shift will also end pay-per-view sales for UFC events altogether.

• 6. Paywalls And Bundles

  ›

  On the 21st of August 2018, ESPN folded its existing ESPN.com subscription product, ESPN Insider, into ESPN+. That merger added Insider's premium web features to ESPN+, including exclusive beat coverage and deeper statistical, analytics and fantasy-sports tools. Both services charged the same monthly price, but Insider subscribers kept a complimentary subscription to ESPN The Magazine, which continued until the magazine itself shut down in September 2019. Annual Insider subscribers were also grandfathered into a $39.99 yearly rate, compared with the $49.99 annual price ESPN+ otherwise charged.

  Russell Wolff, an ESPN executive, was named executive vice president and general manager of the service on the 31st of October 2018. ESPN+ began inserting pre-roll advertising into its on-demand content in October 2019. A month later, alongside the launch of Disney+ on the 12th of November 2019, Disney introduced the Disney Bundle, packaging ESPN+ with Disney+ and the ad-supported tier of Hulu for $12.99 a month.

  On the 22nd of October 2020, ESPN moved a larger share of its written analysis behind the ESPN+ paywall on ESPN.com. That same announcement shifted several ESPN Radio programs exclusively onto ESPN+, including The Dan Le Batard Show, Greeny, The Max Kellerman Show, Chiney & Golic Jr. and Jorge Ramos y Su Banda. By March 2021, ESPN+ programming also became available through the Hulu website and apps for anyone subscribed to both services, via a branded ESPN+ on Hulu hub.

  ESPN+'s standalone price had already climbed to $6.99 a month by 2021, after two smaller increases. In July 2022, Disney announced a jump of three dollars, or 43 percent, pushing the price to $9.99 starting in late August. Observers speculated the increase was meant to push subscribers toward the Disney Bundle, which held steady at $13.99, while keeping ESPN+ competitive against rival standalone sports streaming services.

  A carriage agreement with Spectrum in September 2023 gave Spectrum TV Select Plus subscribers access to ESPN+ at no added cost. That same agreement included future distribution rights to an ESPN 'flagship' streaming service the companies expected to launch in 2025, one built as a superset of both ESPN+ and ESPN's linear-exclusive programming. In December 2024, ESPN+ programming reached a branded ESPN hub inside the Disney+ website and apps, one that also carried ESPN programming already simulcast on Hulu.

• 7. Voices Behind The Screen

  ›

  Kobe Bryant hosted and produced the original, basketball edition of Detail, ESPN+'s franchise breaking down game film alongside current players, until his death in January 2020. Peyton Manning was announced as host of an NFL version of Detail in October 2018, and Daniel Cormier took over a mixed martial arts edition announced on the 29th of June 2019. Steve Kerr, who coaches the Golden State Warriors and once played for the Chicago Bulls, hosted special Detail episodes with former Bulls coach Phil Jackson. Those episodes focused on the Chicago Bulls dynasty built around Michael Jordan in the 1990s, timed to the ESPN documentary miniseries The Last Dance.

  ESPN FC, a soccer studio program, moved from ESPN's linear networks to run exclusively on ESPN+. Arda Ocal hosted In The Crease, a daily highlight and discussion show built around the Stanley Cup playoffs. Quest for the Stanley Cup, a documentary series following the same playoffs, moved over from Showtime. Last Train to Russia previewed the 2018 FIFA World Cup, while Year One followed the 2017-18 NBA rookie class, featuring Jayson Tatum, Ben Simmons and Donovan Mitchell.

  Taylor Twellman hosted MLS Rewind, a weekly recap of Major League Soccer with analysis from Alejandro Moreno. A sports betting show, I'll Take That Bet, ran in partnership with The Action Network. Ariel Helwani and Chael Sonnen hosted a weekly mixed martial arts discussion show called Ariel and the Bad Guy, and Matthew Berry fronted The Fantasy Show, a fantasy football program that had aired its first season on ESPN2. Katie Nolan hosted Always Late, a late-night talk show that succeeded her earlier Fox Sports 1 program, Garbage Time. Its second season, beginning in late September 2019, also aired on ESPN2 on Thursdays. The series was cancelled in 2020.

  Peyton Manning hosted Peyton's Places, a documentary series that later expanded into spinoffs. Eli Manning covered college football, Abby Wambach covered soccer, Vince Carter covered basketball, John McEnroe covered tennis and Ronda Rousey covered combat sports. NFL PrimeTime, hosted by Chris Berman and Tom Jackson, brought back an internet-only edition of a football recap show ESPN had broadcast for close to three decades. During the season, the show streams live each Sunday at 7:30 p.m., recapping that day's games. Later segments are hosted by Scott Van Pelt, Steve Levy and, previously, Joe Tessitore. Les Miles, the Kansas Jayhawks football coach, was the subject of the documentary series Miles to Go. Sebastian Salazar and Herculez Gomez hosted Fútbol Americas, a twice-weekly breakdown of soccer from a North American perspective. Peyton Manning also returned, this time alongside Bill Belichick, to host The Breakdown, a show analyzing upcoming Monday Night Football matchups. ESPN+ also carried Sky Sports F1's studio programs Pit Lane Live and Welcome To the Weekend, beginning with the 2019 Formula One season.

• 8. ESPN's Next Chapter

  ›

  In May 2025, Disney announced that ESPN+ would be absorbed into a new ESPN direct-to-consumer streaming service. Existing ESPN+ subscribers were set to automatically become subscribers to a 'Select' tier within that new service. ESPN+ would keep operating separately for an unspecified stretch of time, though, because of contractual obligations tied to certain content providers, including Bundesliga, La Liga and the UFC.

  That new ESPN streaming service launched on the 21st of August 2025. On that date, ESPN+ officially became part of it, and the previous ESPN+ streaming product was rebranded as ESPN Select. ESPN+ also kept being distributed to commercial establishments as a standalone package, separate from the new consumer-facing service.

  In January 2021, Joe Hand Promotions began offering ESPN+ for Business, a commercial subscription delivering limited live sports content to businesses through DirecTV. That commercial service expanded to include college sports in 2023. In September 2025, ESPN announced it would also make ESPN+ available as a standalone streaming package for commercial establishments through EverPass Media.