Disney stock slammed as ESPN loses subscribers

Edward C. Baig | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Closing Bell: Disney slides on ESPN subscriber losses; oil Falls It was a shortened trading session on Wall Street after the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday. Lower volume made for choppier trading, though moves were kept in a narrow range. Disney (DIS) weighed on the Dow after the world's largest entertainment c

NEW YORK—Sports fans typically feast on the long Thanksgiving weekend but the news has been anything but yummy for Walt Disney shareholders. Disney’s (DIS) stock fell 3% to $115.11 Friday, after the media conglomerate revealed late Wednesday in 10K regulatory filings that ESPN’s subscriber base has plummeted to 92 million as of Oct. 3. That’s down from 95 million just a little over a year earlier.

Disney CEO Bob Iger has previously indicated that the ESPN numbers, which are not new and come from Nielsen, overstate the decline.

The venerable sports network has traditionally been a major profit generator for Disney, with fans still driven to watch sporting events in real time such as Monday Night Football.

But live sports programming is expensive to produce. And an increasing number of cord cutters are ditching pricey cable subscriptions and turning instead to a la carte options, available through streaming services and smartphone apps.

This has all factored into lower ratings for ESPN’s long running SportsCenter. What’s more, in recent months, ESPN has also lost some of its highest profile broadcasting and digital voices, including Bill Simmons, Keith Olbermann and Colin Cowherd.

Back in August, during Disney's earnings call, Iger admitted to "modest sub-losses" at ESPN. But he add that, "Overall, we believe the expanded basic package will remain the dominant package of choice for some years to come, because to the quality and variety it represents for a price that is generally considered fair and appropriate."

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