Name: Disney’s Bob Iger Isn’t Worried About Losing ESPN Subscribers
Uploaded: 2016-07-12
Duration: 4 min 15 s
Description: Viewers are turning to mobile.

[ MUSIC ] I wanna switch gears a little bit and also go to you guys in just a couple of minutes. But on the ESPN side because if you're talking about technological transformation there's definitely a lot of that going on in the sports world. So you had phenomenal ratings for several live sporting events recently. The NBA finals was highest rated, I think on ABC or ESPN since 2006. At the same time there's been a slight slip in subscriber numbers on the ESPN side. So how do you think about what's going on, is this an exciting time to be in the sports broadcasting business? Is it a challenging time? I actually spent 13 years of my career at ABC Sports working for a guy named Roone Arledge who was know as someone who embraced technology and He adopted slow motion and you know rear angle camera and live satellite technology etc and so on so and he was quite inspirational to me. I think this is the most exciting time in sports media for a variety of reasons. It starts with the power of live and the power of sports and the power of the brand ESPN but Live in sports today has never been more popular. And then when you think about technology and just what I was talking about, first of all the technology that can be now used to tell the, now we don't tell the story as much as we show the story, sometimes we tell it. But if you talk to Draymond Green who's here you'd say well he tells the sports story and we cover him telling that story. But the technology that is now available to us to do that is unlike any we've ever had before and that makes the experience of watching the sport, I think, even better. Secondly, just think about the different places you can now consume sports. So you talk about losing some subs Were ratings being down we had the highest number of people streaming game seven of the NBA finals than we've ever had before and what's great about the technology that's available today particularly mobile technology and the technology that enables us to stream at a higher quality without the interruption and basically a better fan experience. It's unbelievably exciting you know the number of people yesterday I didn't home in time to watch the Portugal France match- That's okay yeah. I went home to watch, you don't want me to talk about it? No you didn't miss much was what I was gonna say [ LAUGH ] I thought it was, I got home in time to see the overtime periods. But I was in a place where people are watching on iPhones all over the place. That's incredible because back in my day if you wanted to watch something on sports you had to go home and watch on a fixes television set on a wall or you had to go a sports bar. Those that existed back then. Now, you can watch wherever you are, and when you think by the way, some of the technology that Ronnie's invested in, that others invested in, you'll put some kind of glasses on and you just look up and there'll be a gigantic screen in front of you with and ESPN, hopefully ESPN, live sporting even on. So, I think it's a great time to be in that business. I think we're going through a transition that involves the distribution side of that business, but one that I'm convinced that, since sports is so great. I mean, you can't, when you think about storytelling, you can't tell a better story Than the NBA Finals. Seven games. The team, they won the most games ever. Draymond probably doesn't want me to talk about this but. Breaks the record for the most games, has a guy who wins the most valuable player award, unanimously playing Lebron James. Rematch of the games series the year earlier. Goes to game seven. No idea what the outcome is. Goes down to the last Shot of the game. That's a great story! So I think, when you think about content and IP, fantastic. Unfortunately we have the NBA rights for a long time. [ LAUGH ] Yes, and you're paying for it. You're paying a lot of money for it, but- We're paying a lot of money, but I think for a good reason. It says a lot, you don't You pay money for things that are of value that other people want. So, we're paying alot of money for a very good reason. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]