UFC Debut Proves to Be Noted Step Forward for the Growth of ESPN Direct-to-consumer platform saw spike in subs in same week the product launched new functionality By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Monday, January 21, 2019 - 3:06 pm
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It was a big week for ESPN . The video service powered by The Walt Disney Company's Direct-to-Consumer and International (DTCI) division and ESPN, grew on both the technological front and in terms of subscriber support following the additions of some new product functionality and the debut of one of the platform's newest and biggest partners: the UFC.
While linear ESPN was logging a 1.4 rating on a handful of undercard fights earlier in the day - the largest ever for a UFC Prelims card on cable since 2003 - ESPN was the exclusive home of the marquee fights which was highlighted by UFC flyweight champion Henry Cejudo and UFC bantamweight champ TJ Dillashaw battling for Cejudo's 125-pound title belt at an event held at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. By the end of the night, a record-setting 568,000 new subscribers had signed up for ESPN on Friday and Saturday combined. Over 525,000 of those came in on Saturday alone. Not surprisingly, ESPN is calling the largest event and subscription catalyst for ESPN since it launched in April of last year.
Saturday showcased ESPN and Disney's desire to want to take what it deems to be high profile content and offer it exclusively behind a direct-to-consumer subscription pay wall while driving interest in that content, and the ESPN product itself, through a multi-platform promotional effort. In the days leading up to the card, ESPN hosted a live show previewing the event on Twitter, pre-fight shows on ESPNNews, spots on SportsCenter, and, of course, aired the undercard on ESPN while strongly promoting the main event to come on ESPN later that evening.
The basis of ESPN Plus's content strategy is to be complementary to ESPN's existing products and services and doing so in two ways, says John Lasker, Vice President, Digital Media Programming for ESPN. Number one is to make sure that we're super serving audiences that are already coming to us for the content that we cover on a recurring basis. So its not to be competitive with things we are already doing on television, but find opportunities where we can actually serve more; increase frequency and engagement with those fans.
Second, he continues, and this is where UFC starts to come in, we're using ESPN to help us expand our audience. The UFC audience profile is young, diverse, and certainly expansive. We think that, being a low-cost subscription service and having all of the flexibility outside of just live events to super-serve that fan, that the suns really aligned there.
What's perhaps lost in all of the hoopla around ESPN is that the same app is the same product that also provides users with scores, access to audio, video, and print content, and authenticated streaming for major events going on on ESPN and ABC's linear air. On Saturday, while the UFC event was taking place, the same streaming backbone was also supporting authenticated streams of a NBA matchup between the Los Angeles Lakers and Houston Rockets and a marque Top 5 college hoops showdown between Duke and Virginia.
All day, and across all ESPN platforms, we collectively demonstrated the promise of what we can do to fulfill our mission of serving a wider array of sports fans, ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro said in an official release.
It was a conscious choice to make the ESPN app the ultimate one-stop-shop destination for everything ESPN related. ESPN does not have its own separate app and that choice is one that Lasker feels has proven to be an advantageous one.
We're constantly challenged with the task of an abundance of riches of sports content that we're trying to make available to fans and what the app allows us to do that traditional channels doesn't allow us to do is to personalize, says Lasker. That's one of the big reasons why direct-to-consumer is so important. There's so much going on in the world and we want to make sure that fans get to what they are looking for as quickly as possible when they are coming to the app. We recognize that as a challenge but it's one that we're more than willing to take and the app will continue to evolve in that direction.
Still in its first year of existence, ESPN has made significant strides, including when it was announced back in August that the platform had reached 1 million subscribers just four months following its launch. That being said, much of the work on the ESPN product began in earnest the year prior (in about August of 2017) when Disney's Bob Iger first announced that Disney would be shifting its approach to a DtC future. That gave the folks at ESPN a run way of about nine months to tear down and rebuild the ESPN app (the most popular sports app out there) in time to meet the new demands ESPN would bring upon it.
It's amazing looking back at it, with the people at ESPN and Disney, what they were able to pull off in the short amount of time that they did, says Lasker, who has been with ESPN for nearly two decades and has seen the growth of ESPN on the streaming front through authenticated streaming and the launch of ESPN3. On the content side, we went into this with the design and the opportunity to better serve existing fans that were coming to us in all platforms and we thought we had the opportunity to expand our audience and serve more sports fans that might not already have been coming to us. And I think we nailed it.
Last week, ESPN kicked off the new year by unveiling new functionality for the ESPN app that included technology committed to improving the customization and recommendation of content
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