I have two reactions to the news, first reported by The Information, that Amazon might partner with ESPN as it re-imagines itself as a streaming service. First, the lights are on in Bristol and Jimmy Pitaro is putting his Cornell education to good use. Second, that situation in Bristol—increased cord-cutting and decreasing profitability—must be pretty acute for ESPN to want to team up with Amazon.
On the one hand, Amazon makes good sense as a partner for ESPN’s future streaming business. There are something like 200 million Amazon Prime members who are all automatically signed up for Prime Video. That’s an awful lot of incremental eyeballs that might like to watch an ESPN streaming service, although it’s likely many Prime Video subscribers already get ESPN via a cable connection. Who knows how many of the remaining cohort might pay to stream ESPN for as much as $35 per month, as The Information has also reported? That seems like a long putt to me.
