ESPN+ Loses More Subscribers, In Yet Another Blow

Disney-owned ESPN took another blow on Wednesday, as the company announced that ESPN+ had lost subscribers in the latest quarter. Again.

Per Front Office Sports, the sports network lost 3 percent of its entire subscriber base on its ESPN+ platform since the end of 2024. Importantly, with 24.1 million paid users, the current total subscriber numbers are roughly the same as they were in mid-2022. 

So in two years, in a time period where interest in sports has continued to grow and the platform has been home to multiple big events, it has gained virtually no new signups. Not great news.

(Photo by Michael Wade/Icon Sportswire)

ESPN+ Continues To Demonstrate Difficulty For Streaming Services, ESPN

After years of unchecked growth on streaming platforms, once-dominant services are showing weakness. And it's impacting ESPN's operating income.

While revenue rose 7 percent, per Disney's quarterly results, operating income dropped 17 percent. That drop was attributed to increased rights fees and production costs. As the company explained, the figure "reflected higher programming and production costs due to three additional college football playoff games and one additional NFL game."

But therein lies the problem: ESPN is paying more for rights, spending more to produce live events, without seeing subscriber growth to compensate.

In the last fiscal quarter of 2024, ESPN lost 700,000 subscribers, once again demonstrating the difficulties the sports media giant is facing moving forward.

Disney intends to launch a direct-to-consumer version of ESPN soon, which could help its bottom line, especially among cord-cutters. But with the cost of content and rights skyrocketing, it'll have to be priced competitively to avoid the same issues ESPN+ now faces.