MW New ESPN and Fox streaming services raise the question of how much is too much for viewers

By Lukas I. Alpert

With the average household subscribing to four streaming services already, and games now diced up across multiple platforms, will consumers be willing to pay for more?

Despite the bringing together of many different kinds of sports programming in the new ESPN+ and Fox One sports services, football superfans may still need to subscribe to multiple platforms to watch all their teams' games. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)

An ordinary U.S. household currently pays $69 a month for an average of four streaming services. In launching new streaming platforms on Thursday, Fox and ESPN are betting that enough households will be willing to pay even more.

Both new services are primarily focused on live sports programming, which has remained, until now, one of the last bastions of traditional linear television. But now that more than half of television viewership is on streaming, the shift of sports there was inevitable.

For consumers, this only adds to what's already a dizzying array of choices of what to watch and subscribe to. Die-hard sports fans may have it even worse, as any given team's games have been divvied up among a plethora of services.

Fox Corp. $(FOXA)$ and ESPN parent Walt Disney Co. $(DIS)$, seem well aware of the pressure that too much choice for consumers may put on their new ventures, and have looked to bundling those services with others as the key to success.

??Fox Corp. and MarketWatch's parent company, News Corp $(NWSA)$, share common ownership.

The new ESPN product, called ESPN+, will be available for $29.99 a month as a standalone service, but a bundle with Disney+ and Hulu would cost the same over the first 12 months. The bundle would increase to $35.99 a month with ads, or $44.99 a month without them.

Cable-TV subscribers who already get ESPN through their cable packages will have access to ESPN+ for no extra cost.

"This is something that fans have been wanting, they've been asking for for many years," ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro told CNBC on Thursday. "And our mission is to serve the sports fan - anytime, anywhere - and we're going to deliver."

Fox's new service, called Fox One, will cost $19.99 a month, but can be bundled with Fox News' streaming channel, Fox Nation, for $24.99 a month. The service will include live baseball and football games, IndyCar, college sports and the FIFA World Cup.

In an additional form of cross-company synergy, both Fox and ESPN will offer a bundle of both ESPN+ and Fox One starting in October for $39.99.

Disney has said it views ESPN+ as the centerpiece of growing its streaming business. Earlier this month, the company announced sweeping deals with the NFL and WWE to help bolster its position in developing its ESPN+. In the NFL deal, Disney will take control of the league's media properties in exchange for a 10% stake in ESPN.

"The enhanced ESPN app will be a sports fan's dream with key new features planned for launch, such as multi-view, enhanced personalization, integration of stats, betting, fantasy sports and commerce, and a personalized sports center," Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said on the company's last earnings call.

Whether these new services will serve as a panacea for viewers remains to be seen. They may serve to further complicate an already confusing viewing environment for fans who have cut the cord.

For example, a fan of the New York Jets who wanted to watch all the team's games on streaming platforms alone would have to toggle among five different services, including Paramount Skydance Corp.'s (PSKY) Paramount+, Amazon.com Inc.'s( AMZN) Prime, ESPN, Fox and the NFL Network.

The bundle of ESPN+ and Fox One and the inclusion of NFL Network games on the ESPN+ platform would smooth some of that, but a Jets fan would still be required to sign up to multiple services to watch the full season.

-Lukas I. Alpert

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August 21, 2025 12:42 ET (16:42 GMT)

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