Time Not Right for ESPN a la Carte: Chapek

There’s no ad-supported Disney+ offering in Disney’s future, CEO Bob Chapek told a virtual Credit Suisse investor conference Monday. “We're always reevaluating how we go to market across the world, but we've got no such plans now to do that,” he said: “We're happy with the models that we've got,” but “we won't limit ourselves and say no to anything.” On Chapek’s previously announced intentions to debut new Disney+ content on the service weekly, the plan is to “hit that cadence this year,” he said. “Something new can be a new movie, a new piece of content or something new added to the library,” plus a new season of episodic TV, he said. Chapek wouldn’t comment on when the timing will be right to shift ESPN to an a la carte offering. “We bought flexibility into every new media rights deal that we've done in terms of sports rights,” he said. The “speed of the transition” will depend on how fast “consumer behavior” evolves, he said. “When full content migration to such a platform makes sense, we'll be prepared to do that.”