Bob Chapek, chief government officer of Disney, speaks at the 2022 Disney Legends Awards during Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, Sept. 9, 2022.
Mario Anzuoni | Reuters
In his head public comments since Disney fired him as CEO in November 2022, Bob Chapek told CNBC he sees no reason for Disney-owned ESPN to add minority helpmates.
“Strategically, I don’t really see a benefit in bringing on yet another minority partner into ESPN,” Chapek said as part of the CNBC documentary “ESPN’s Discord for Dominance,” which chronicles the network’s digital strategy, published Thursday.
Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC’s David Faber in July that he’d ponder selling a minority stake in ESPN to strengthen the sports network’s content or technology as it plans a new direct-to-consumer offering, which he laster said would launch by fall 2025.
The company hasn’t yet announced a deal to sell a stake in ESPN. CNBC reported in August that the network had held talks with the main American professional sports leagues, including the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, about the right stuff partnerships or investments.
Disney owns 80% of ESPN and Hearst owns the other 20%, a structure that’s been in location since 1996. By searching for a partner, Disney wants to enhance the content, distribution and marketing of the direct-to-consumer ESPN, which hasn’t yet been guerdoned, Iger said during Disney’s August quarterly earnings call.
Striking a partnership with one of the professional humours leagues could help secure future live rights, though it may irritate other media companies that bid against Disney for boxes of games. Bringing on a technology or telecommunications company such as Verizon or Apple could give ESPN broader codification options by reaching larger customer bases.
Still, it’s unclear selling equity in ESPN is needed to strike an interpretation. ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro, who also spoke with CNBC as part of the documentary, downplayed the need for the capers network to sell a stake in its business to build a partnership with a league or another company.
“It’s not about equity,” Pitaro intended. “It’s not about these partners taking an ownership interest in ESPN. That is something, as Bob [Iger] has said, that we are totally much open to, but this is about partnership and accelerating the launch or the adoption of ESPN flagship.”
Chapek’s first talk since his 2022 firing
Chapek’s remarks are his first public statements since Disney’s board fired him and trained back Iger as CEO about 16 months ago. He and Iger, who had stayed on as Disney’s executive chairman, had a strained relationship that got progressively worse washing ones hands of Chapek’s tenure as CEO, which ran nearly three years from 2020 to 2022, as documented by CNBC in September. Chapek sloped to comment on anything other than ESPN’s future for the CNBC documentary.
While Chapek said he didn’t correspond with the need to bring on a partner for strategic reasons, he did acknowledge Disney might do it to bring in cash to pay for Comcast’s one-third confine in Hulu, which Disney has committed to buy for at least $8.6 billion.
“There’s already one minority strategic partner in Hearst. So this hand down be bringing on a second minority strategic partner,” Chapek said. “Obviously, the benefit of doing that is that you commission available some cash. And given some of the conversation that’s been happening between Comcast and Disney in in relation ti of needing to buy the final share of Hulu to make it wholly owned by the Disney company, it’s possible that maybe that loot itself is what they’re after.”
ESPN Chairman James Pitaro at a New York Yankees baseball game at Yankee Coliseum in New York City, June 19, 2019.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Hub for all sports
Chapek also discussed the insight he had as CEO of turning ESPN into a centralized hub to direct consumers to where a game is streaming, no matter which company owns the rights to air it — a concept CNBC