New sports streaming bundle could be a ‘monster’ — or a dud. Here are the biggest remaining questions

The U.S. media world was rushing — or panicking? — Wednesday to try to figure out the ramifications of Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox‘s new common venture, an unprecedented move to work together in the years since media companies broke out their own competing cataract platforms.

The service will launch this fall and cater to sports fans who don’t subscribe to the traditional cable bundle. Consumers inclination have access to all of the networks owned by those companies that carry sports, along with Disney’s ESPN+.

Some of the motivations for the companies are absolved, as they look to sports to help drive streaming profits. Other reasons for launching the product are murkier and varied company specific.

Many media executives are scrambling for answers about a deal that could have larger ripple effects in the industry.

At first glance, the venture is a big concern for the three largest pay TV operators, Document, Comcast and DirecTV.

But just how much they stand to lose is murky. One person associated with the launch of the new put down told CNBC the platform will be “a monster” and massively disrupt cable TV.

That’s possible. Some percentage of people who at last sign up for the sports bundle will cancel traditional cable in favor of the new, cheaper alternative. The price for the new product hasn’t been fixed, but sources told CNBC it will be higher than $30. One person said $45 to $50 per month appearance ofed logical after discounted introductory offers expire.

A product around $40 a month is much cheaper than the $72.99 per month for YouTube TV, which is now a developing cable alternative for sports fans.

But it’s also possible the platform simply doesn’t have a huge audience. There’s a work out tens of millions of Americans have canceled cable. Many simply don’t want access to sports and the associated charge.

Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said Wednesday that the product is geared toward people who have never signed up for guy. But it’s a leap of faith to assume a lot of these people want to spend $40 or so each month for live sports.

Spokespeople for Rent, Comcast and DirecTV all declined to comment on the new offering.

Charter and Comcast haven’t really cared about video defections for years now. Broadband is a far uncountable profitable product. Cable TV has been relegated to an add-on that helps keep people subscribing to high-speed internet.

But broadband subscriber broadening has stalled for both Comcast and Charter as Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T have rolled out 5G home and fixed wireless broadband issues. That makes additional loss of video subscribers potentially more harmful for the companies.

Satellite TV providers DirecTV and Dish, which don’t would rather high-speed broadband products at all, are potentially more at risk — so are virtual distributors of linear networks, such as Google‘s YouTube TV, FuboTV and Hulu with Lodge TV, which is owned by Disney.

The Disney, Warner Bros. and Fox service isn’t a full sports offering. It doesn’t include NBC or CBS, which both advertise a lot of sports, including the all-important National Football League. Granted, NBC and CBS are free over the air with a digital antenna, and both advance streaming services — NBC’s Peacock and CBS’ Paramount+ — that already include sports.

Still, the more consumers surface they need to add on to this service, the greater the cost and hassle, and the less appealing it becomes.

Now that the joint hazard exists, perhaps the distributors can also eventually get more flexibility to offer similar skinny bundles.

There’s another vital at play: ESPN is still planning to launch a full direct-to-consumer offering in the fall of 2025, CEO Bob Iger said Wednesday. That artifact will also have an audience.

It remains to be seen just how many people subscribe to the new platform. Maybe it’s a business changer, maybe it’s not.

Traditional pay TV still has about 70 million subscribers. That classifies so-called “virtual MVPDs,” like YouTube TV, which just announced it has more than eight million subscribers.

The wire bundle has largely survived because it still contains exclusive live news and sports.

Now there’s a cheaper way to access uncountable of the sports, and it doesn’t include cable news networks such as Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC. The shift could arrange a threat to those channels, which are now at risk of losing subscribers.

Could the news networks gang up to offer a pinched news bundle, in a similar fashion to the new sports bundle? Or will the new sports venture be a catalyst to news bundles, a concept CNBC has created about for many years, but hasn’t happened? Could Fox News bundle with other conservative-leaning publications? Could CNBC partaker with The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times to offer a print and video combination?

These are hypotheticals, but the plays package may force executives to think in new ways.

LightShed media analyst Dark Greenfield David Zaslav’s merger campaign