ESPN+ streaming service hiking price by 43%

[Da Coach]

Looks like Bradley fans, and all others who are forced to subscribe to ESPN's subscription streaming service ESPN+, will be playing a lot more to watch games. Disney, which owns ESPN, is raising the monthly price for ESPN+ from $6.99 per month to $9.99 per month, a 43% increase. The yearly subscription price will go from $69.99 to $99.99. The increase starts August 23, just in time for football and basketball seasons.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/15/disney-raises-price-of-espn-43percent-to-9point99-per-month-beginning-aug-23.html

Disney stock price hit a 52-week low on Thursday (7/14/22), and they are losing billions of dollars on their streaming services. So maybe this price hike isn't too surprising. Disney kept the price of their streaming bundle (Disney Plus, Hulu, and ESPN+) the same, at $13.99. So this increase appears to be an incentive for the people who subscribe only to ESPN+ for sports to switch to their 3-network bundle.
But once that happens, they are likely to hike the bundle price, too. Streaming services, like cable providers and cellphone service providers have learned that once they get customers to subscribe, they tend to remain subscribers even when prices get raised.

[Mikovio]

I know it’s a big percentage hike but it’s still a good value. You get so much including about all Bradley/Valley sports home and away, MLB games, PGA early rounds and soccer.

I’ve got the Hulu + live TV bundle for 69.99 and I think it’s great. I get Hulu, Disney+, ESPN+ and about 70 channels including local channels and NBC Sports Chicago for Sox/Bulls/Hawks and college basketball. Looks like that’s not getting hiked, yet.

[Da Coach]

I agree with Mikovio. It only requires subscribing for 4 months to see all the Bradley & MVC games (Nov.-Feb.). Even with the price hike to $9.99/mo., it will be only about $40 to see virtually every Bradley game, every MVC game, and thousands of other NCAA games, NHL games, and other sports. That is less than I spend to attend one game in person.

[Tommy]

Weird, I thought the inflation rate was only 9.1%

[algotrader]

The MVC should break all broadcast ties and run its own streaming service. For free. We are doing ourselves no favors by having to jump around 6 different channels just to find our game. The MVC could easily build its own app and offer a 4K stream in one location with multiple different audio sources. Much like MLB.tv.

With the new unlimited transfer rules put forth by the NCAA, as well as conference consolidation. Now is more important than ever to carve out a conference reputation for ourselves. And that starts with building a solid fanbase through students and alumni. Something an MVC specific app would greatly facilitate.

[Tommy]

The MVC should break all broadcast ties and run its own streaming service. For free. We are doing ourselves no favors by having to jump around 6 different channels just to find our game. The MVC could easily build its own app and offer a 4K stream in one location with multiple different audio sources. Much like MLB.tv.

With the new unlimited transfer rules put forth by the NCAA, as well as conference consolidation. Now is more important than ever to carve out a conference reputation for ourselves. And that starts with building a solid fanbase through students and alumni. Something an MVC specific app would greatly facilitate.

That is an outstanding idea and point you make, Algo. They wouldn't even need to do it for free as I'm sure if it covered the entire MVC, they'd have plenty of interest.

Would definitely set them apart from most other conferences.

[Da Coach]

That seems like it would be a good idea, but other than the major football conferences, mid-major conferences have mostly moved away from trying to offer video streaming for their athletic events.
The Horizon League, Ohio Valley Conference, Colonial League, Atlantic-10, and Big West all had high quality conference streaming networks-
https://www.bradleyfans.com/forum/sp...456#post442456

But most of those conferences eventually dropped their own streaming networks, and switched to ESPN3/ESPN+.
For example, the Horizon League had an excellent, high-quality streaming network as far back as 2010. In fact, we have had several threads on BradleyFans wondering why the MVC couldn't do something similar to the Horizon League TV Network. Here is one example-
https://www.bradleyfans.com/forum/sp...ge4#post262432

But HorizonLeagueTV doesn't exist any more. As of 2018, they now have a similar deal with ESPN like the MVC for streaming their events.

https://horizonleague.org/sports/2018/10/18/espnplusplaybook.aspx

Bradley did start their own subscription streaming service called B.tv in the early 2000's. Does anyone else remember signing up for the package deal that including live streaming of most Bradley sports events?
It had a some technical problems, despite a big investment in video and streaming equipment by Bradley-
https://www.bradleyfans.com/forum/sp...b-tv#post19073
https://www.bradleyfans.com/forum/sp...467#post315467

But after a couple years, Bradley suddenly dropped the whole idea and went back to televising the games on WTVP in 2010-11 for a few years, before giving up on live TV broadcasts, and joining the other MVC schools in the streaming deal with ESPN
https://www.bradleyfans.com/forum/sp...ge4#post262432

I don't see Bradley or the MVC going back to trying to stream the games themselves again. It just cannot be done profitably without a much bigger subscription base, BCS-level football, and big money sponsors like the Big Ten and SEC conferences have.

[BUfan17]

Personally I don't mind paying for ESPN+, even with the price hike it is still very affordable and I only keep it for the season anyway. You get a lot more than just MVC games too which is nice and the production value is fairly good too.

[algotrader]

It just cannot be done profitably without a much bigger subscription base,

They tried to create a service back when streaming services were barely a thing. These days there are plenty of tools that would allow the MVC to create its own streaming service at a cheaper cost. For instance, back then the cloud didn't really exist and the idea of rapidly ramping up and down services as needed also didn't exist. You needed to purchase a lot of your own equipment that sat around 24/7/365, your own bandwidth, etc. These days you can create your own container based services, ramp them up right before game time, and only pay for what you use. The cost of development is also way down for something like this as the industry has a lot more experience in building these types of things.

Finally, the MVC needs to start thinking about its future. College basketball is changing and the conferences that build their own streaming services to be ubiquitously available will be the ones that survive. Simply put, the MVC is going to see more and more issues attracting and retaining talent the more we cling to the way we used to do things. It will slowly fall behind.