An ESPN deal may give Apple big slice of ‘ultimate story’

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives made waves recently when he claimed that Disney’s sports channel ESPN may be a “perfect fit” for Apple’s TV Plus service. He predicts Apple may acquire the station within the next nine months.

Apple wants the ultimate story

ESPN is currently owned by the Walt Disney Company. The latter company wants to shore up its value and may be willing to sell and/or partner with Apple. For Apple it’s a content deal that may help boost Apple Plus subscriptions, given that the recent deal with Lionel Messi doubled subscriptions to its MLS season pass offer.

We’ve also recognised for ages that Apple has designs on sport, from signing up deals to offering up innovative new screening options for sports on Apple TV.

It thinks it can make a difference to sports entertainment, and with the sheer amount of relevant tech it has, it probably can.

“…Acquiring ESPN ($50 billion+ price tag likely) would make a ton of strategic sense, gain valuable sports content, major TV rights across each of the major professional and college sports packages, and change the cross-sell opportunities and attractiveness of Apple TV looking ahead while putting Apple on the sports map globally speaking,” said Ive.

Method in the madness

One slightly underreported exchange during Apple’s most recent fiscal call lends a little credibility to this speculation.

Analyst Aaron Rakers of Wells Fargo specifically asked Apple CEO, Tim Cook, “how strategically you’re thinking about expansion in sports as a key driver of services growth going forward?”

Cook, who like his former boss is an expert at telling the truth while saying little, said:

“You know, we’re focused on original content, as you know, with TV Plus. And so, we’re all about giving great storytellers the venue to tell great stories and hopefully get us all to think a little deeper. And sport is a part of that because sport is the ultimate original story. And for MLS, we’re, we could not be happier with how the partnership is going. It’s clearly in the early days. But we are beating our expectation in terms of subscribers and the fact that Messi went to Inter-Miami helped us out there a bit and so we’re very excited about it.”

If you skip the Messi and MLS bits of that exchange, Cook quite transparently articulated what sport means to television, to Apple, and to TV Plus.

Sport is the “ultimate original story”.

How much is the ultimate story worth?

We know Apple has been seeking out key deals, including what appear to be failed discussions with the UK Premier league for football rights.

With that in mind, it makes a lot of sense to believe the company will have been speaking to lots of companies that may provide it with access to sports broadcasting rights.

The thing is, the numbers emerging from those conversations have been pretty high and within that context the speculated $50b cost of a deal/takeover of ESPB may represent a good deal.

Ives certainly thinks so, saying, “I think Apple is really the perfect fit. And I think this is something for Cupertino that they’re looking to go after. Live sports content is the golden goose.”

Back of the net? Wait and see.

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