Earlier this month, speculations were spreading that Disney Plus was positioned to incorporate sports content into its portfolio by 2025. The recent development however reveals a more imminent inclusion of sports content. As mentioned by Variety, the maiden voyage for this new content type is slated to start when ‘SC+’, a Disney Plus exclusive iteration of ESPN’s iconic showcase ‘SportsCenter’, debuts on March 3.
What does ‘SC+’ bring to the table? The announcement reveals that the new ‘SC+’ will serve as a daily quick-firing roundup, structurally designed around the famous ‘SportsCenter’ Top 10 clips. The adaptation is aimed at the current U.S. Disney Plus customers alone. Designed to run for a duration of a quarter of an hour or more, the program will provide ‘exclusive insights and analytical perspectives from seasoned ESPN professionals and journalists’.
Disney pitches the program as a perfect fit for a quintessentially relaxed, entertainment-oriented audience, rather than those intrinsically involved in sports or self-proclaimed sports aficionados. The daily episodes will kick-start at 9 a.m. ET and remain accessible for on-demand streaming for the next 24 hours.
From Monday through to Friday, Gary Striewski and Randy Scott who presently host the 7 a.m. ET ‘SportsCenter’ will also feature as hosts on ‘SC+’. During the weekends, Hannah Storm and Jay Harris, notable anchors from ‘SportsCenter: AM’ will take charge of the program.
Despite opening the gates for more ESPN content on Disney Plus through ‘SC+’, don’t consider it as the limit of Disney’s ambitions. Further plans by Disney involve integrating ESPN Plus within the native Disney Plus application, a strategy mirroring what Disney has masterfully done with Hulu.
Disney is also formulating strategies to initiate a direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming service. To avoid confusions, rest assured that this proposed service is unique from and in no way related to ESPN Plus. Anticipations are that the streaming service will make its debut sometime early this upcoming fall.
If current movements and plans are anything to go by, these won’t be the final major changes we see this year. We understand that Fox is engineering a new sports and news streaming platform, aiming to kick off later in the course of the year.
There’s also surging speculation that Netflix may secure the U.S. broadcasting rights to Formula 1 by year’s end. Therefore, keep your ears open for subsequent updates on this rapidly transforming landscape concerning the broadcast of sports programming.
So far, 2022 has been an eventful year and has shown us how dynamic and unpredictable the world of sports broadcasting can be. If the trend continues, we can expect more exciting news regarding this sector in no distant time. With new players entering and established ones readjusting their strategies for this game, the sports streaming landscape has never been this vibrant.