Why ESPN is positioned to win the live sports streaming war

When media-industry folks talk about "content delivery models," what they really mean is this:

1. We use to just have televisions;

2. Those televisions were our primary — and maybe only — method for consuming live sports;

3. While consumption habits didn't "break" television (you can still buy one), other delivery methods — smartphones, tablets, laptops, OTT — have emerged as potentially preferable for many of us.

Within the industry, figuring out what consumers consider "preferable" has become a multi-billion dollar game. And while the principals are quick to tout new subscription-based streaming apps as "the next big thing" when it comes to live sports, it's really all one big guess. The winner of the sports streaming battle will be decided by consumers — in other words, sports fans. Us, not them.

Back when we only had televisions, knowing what we could watch and where was as simple as picking up the weekly TV Guide. Now it's not that simple. For the leagues, pitting media conglomerates against each other is a reliable way to drive up the cost of live rights in a bidding war. For consumers, it's a headache.

Take the NBA's new 11-year contract with NBCUniversal. A generation ago, such a contract might simply have meant the NBA and WNBA games were shifting to NBC. Now? The announced deal means fans will have to know whether the game is on NBC, Peacock, USA Network, Sky Sports, or Telemundo — not all of which might be available for viewing on every preferred device.

"It's really interesting in comparing sports to general entertainment in this way," said Puck's Julia Alexander, a former Editorial Director with Disney and the Director of Strategy at Parrot Analytics, on The Varsity podcast. "Discoverability is the main issue with streaming. It's because people don't know where their shows or movies are. ... The vast majority of people don't even know the difference between many of the different platforms."

Therein lies a major disconnect between the industry talking points and how consumers feel about all of this. To them, it's innovation. To us, it's annoying.

"Although you definitely lose the casual sports fan within the streaming system because of this, sports are really destination-based," Alexander said. "People know they want to go watch a tournament like March Madness, they know they want to watch a specific team."

Alexander went on to note how the "user journey," to use the tech parlance, is complicated and full of friction. That's a problem, and the industry principals know it.

Among sports fans, which medium is best poised to solve this problem?

Alexander believes it's ESPN.

"Think about the user journey," she said. "I'm going to open up my Fantasy app to see how my bracket is doing in March Madness. And it's going to say, 'by the way, this game is on that you have currently in your bracket, do you want to go watch it?' It automatically says, 'oh this is on ESPN+, which you'll have access to, or ESPN Flagship, or it's on Max — which ... based on what you're subscribed to, you can just open the app, or if you don't have it you can just subscribe to it. Here's how you can do it. We're enabling Apple Pay to make this easy.' "

That's still not as easy (or as cheap) as flipping open a TV Guide and turning on a linear television set, but it's better than many of the alternatives.

"Solving for the headache around sports especially, I think, is the real big opportunity for a lot of these players," Alexander said. "Apple should have figured this out first and foremost. But I actually think ESPN, based on everything we've seen them talk about, is the closest to developing it — or at least investing in it."

If Alexander is correct, there's good news on the horizon. We're close enough to solving the main consumer hassle in a fractured sports media landscape, it's possible to envision what the long-term solution looks like. It's even possible to see who might solve it first.

The bad news is that all of this still debatable, which suggests the solution is still years away.

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