Big changes are coming to ESPN and ESPN+.
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post broke the story Wednesday that features and analysis pieces will go behind the company’s online paywall:
Sources said that breaking news and investigative pieces will remain outside the paywall on ESPN.com, but writers who focus on insight and analysis will now primarily be available only to ESPN+ subscribers.
For example, if baseball insider Jeff Passan has a feature, it would be on ESPN+, but if he were to break a big signing, it would remain outside the paywall.
Jacob Feldman expanded on the the story in Sportico on Thursday morning:
At the same time, some written work from many of the company’s most popular writers, including Bill Barnwell, Zach Lowe, Jackie MacMullan and Jeff Passan, will move to ESPN+ as well. Breaking news will still be available for free, but other articles will often require a subscription to read across the company’s platforms. ESPN digital content vp Nate Ravitz said the expansion could double the amount of traffic for E+ written content, with subscription material set to make up around 10% of ESPN’s overall written output.
It’s an interesting decision for the company. It’s also hard not to look at this and not see the influence of The Athletic. Marchand reported that the move is being made to bolster the direct-to-consumer ESPN+, in line with Disney’s overall business strategy. It’s interesting to think through whether or not adding these writers’ analysis and features to the ESPN+ library will be enough to get new subscribers to the service. The value of ESPN+ has been crushed by COVID-19 — a big part of ESPN+’s allure was access to a ton of live sports , and since there are fewer live sports, there’s less reason to subscribe — and while the writers’ work alone might not draw subscribers, bundling it with other programming could be an interesting value.
The way ESPN is dividing its news - breaking news is free to access, while features are paywalled - is really interesting to think through as well.