Is ESPN Doomed?

[MU82]

I've been crapping on DIS here since 2015. And back in September it had underperformed SPY going back to the early 1990s.

And the catalyst for the rally since September was the reports it was going to sell ESPN to the sports leagues (NFL, NBA and MLB).

Are you advising staying long DIS because they are going to finally unburden themself of ESPN?

I'm advising to sell AAPL in 2015, as you advised.

I'm also advising to be suspicious of investing advice given on basketball fanboards by people you don't know, especially when the adviser has no proof of expertise on the subject and doesn't know the goals of potential investors.

Anyhoo, this is fun. Back to the subject, The Athletic's Andrew Marchand gave a nice summary of the whole ESPN thing in his article last week: https://theathletic.com/5355283/2024/03/20/espn-tv-rights-nfl-nba/?source=pulsenewsletter&campaign=9364963&userId=3738391

With ESPN's direct-to-consumer plan, the network is attempting to uphold its mission statement of, "Serving sports fans. Anytime. Anywhere."

In the process, Disney CEO Bob Iger and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro are looking to make deals. Anytime. Anywhere.

Iger and Pitaro are trying, through equity stake talks with the biggest leagues and with distribution discussions with the largest digital players, to add to ESPN's already impressive content lineup and have price points to serve every sports fan.