ESPN aims to turn sports fragmentation into touchdown

Streaming video from your sofa is meant to be the simplest way of entertaining yourself but survey after survey finds consumers frustrated about the sheer amount of content – and the inability to find what they actually want to watch quickly enough. And keeping up with where to find live sports events on a given night has become a similar challenge for fans, as access to games splinters across channels, platforms and services.

Looking to solve the struggle as sports rights transition at pace from cable and satellite, Disney’s ESPN this week announced a ‘Where to Watch’ feature that aims to be a universal search guide for live sports, regardless of where they air.

The move is timely as fresh research from Hub Entertainment confirms that while consumers are open to having more of their regular sports content available on OTT services, they are concerned that their experience will be impacted by difficulties in finding the game.

In the Hub findings, culled from survey interviews with nearly 4,000 US sports fans age 13 to 74 in July, 69% of the keenest sports fans “think it’s a hassle to use multiple providers to watch the same sport.”

And nearly 60% already say it has become more difficult to find the sports they want to watch.

That should be concerning to all streamers intent on ploughing more money into sports properties. According to Jon Giegengack, principal at Hub and one of the study’s authors, “network TV still benefits from the inertia of familiarity, one which individual streamers will need a longer track record to match.”

He warns that “fans are already wary their sports will become more confusing to find – a problem which will be even more frustrating with live sports because it’s critical to find and watch them immediately.”

Disney appears to have reached a similar conclusion about fragmentation of live sports, which it aims to address with the new feature that’s available on the ESPN app and website.

“Simplifying discovery of sporting events and where a fan can watch has become increasingly important as sports viewing has become fragmented across networks and platforms,” said Brian Marshall, VP of Sports Product & Technology at Disney Entertainment & ESPN Technology, in a statement.

Chris Jason, executive director of Product Management at ESPN, added, “As sports viewing has become fragmented across many TV networks and streaming platforms, it has become more difficult and confusing than ever for people to know where they can watch their favorite teams, players, and sports on any given night.”

‘Where to Watch’ is described as “a proprietary database of sports events and the networks and services airing them, presented on the ESPN App and ESPN.com.”

It not only shows any sports event on ESPN platforms, but also events across broadcast, cable, regional sports networks, and streaming services.

The feature allows users to organize live sports events in two main ways, including through a listed time-based guide that shows most live sports events on a given day – and importantly, where to find it. The other is through favorites, where users can opt to organize by favorite team, sport and league, to have results display upcoming events for those specifically. They can also filter by league or where the game is available (such as ESPN+, Peacock, Fox or others), and search for events.

The database is drawn from “over 250 potential media sources” including over 100 networks and streaming platforms, to provides a guide plus links to the multiple sports that ESPN channels, other networks and streaming services air. It also enables direct links to ESPN network streams, through ESPN+ or TV Everywhere authentication, as well as direct links to select partner networks. Those include NESN and Monumental Sports at launch with Tim Bayus, VP of ESPN Strategy, saying it’s “optimistic about expanding the availability and number of partners over time.”

As Bayus pointed out, while Where to Watch will link directly to its forthcoming standalone direct-to-consumer ESPN streaming service, Disney built it to serve fans subscribed to the flagship ESPN DTC product (expected in 2025) as well as those who are not.

Aside from corralling live sports lineups into one place, David Pierce of The Verge noted that ESPN is also looking to engage more people with its website and app, “where they might also decide to play fantasy sports or gamble through ESPN Bet.”

“Turning ESPN into the app people open whenever they want to watch a game, no matter where that game is, would be a big win for the company,” he added.

By the time ESPN launches its standalone DTC product in 2025, it said it hopes the guide will become the routine discoverability tool for all sports fans.

ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro this week also disclosed that the company sees an opportunity to get in on distribution of live sports to local fans as regional sports networks face challenges. Per reporting from Variety, Pitaro told reporters the company has floated to sports leagues and leaders the idea that ESPN could be a potential distributor of games to specific markets through its streaming services, including the planned flagship ESPN streaming service.

It’s worth noting that Hub’s study also demonstrated wariness from fans about having their enjoyment of the game disrupted by glitches, app crashes, buffering and other lags in the streaming service.

Among avid sports fans surveyed, 37% said they “regularly” experience at least one of a list of technical issues while streaming sports. Moreover, a quarter of fans said cable and broadcast TV would do the best job of delivering sports – more than twice as high as Amazon Prime (11%) and about 3x higher than Hulu or Netflix.

However, when asked by category which would do a better job, almost twice as many respondents chose a streaming platform (59%) as those who picked network TV (24%) in what Hub calls “a testament to the brand equity streaming platforms have built with their scripted TV experience.”