And now, Iger said, ESPN was looking better than it did in August 2015 when he raised concerns about subscriber losses.
“What we’ve seen since then is somewhat of a moderation of losses stemming from the skinny bundles,” he said. “We also have a number of new platforms coming into the market.”
Iger cited AT&T’s direct-to-consumer platform, Hulu’s upcoming skinny bundle, and Sling’s existing business as examples.
Iger was confident that these new ways of distributing Disney content would be a game changer for the next generation. He said the company believed the new bundles “will be attractive for millennials who thought the expanded price of bundles was too high and the user interface” wasn’t good enough.
He was also optimistic about the fact that ESPN “adopts very well to mobile platforms, and that’s where we’re moving. So we feel really good with ESPN. We’re dealing with some near-term issues with ESPN, we’re eyes wide open on that. But we think the long-term revenues are going to be just fine.”
Iger stressed that the company was seeing growing revenue from these digital bundles – revenues that haven’t been included in Nielsen’s numbers, which show a rather precipitous decline in subscribers.
“I won’t say they’re dead wrong; i think it’s possible their sample was off,” he said.
“We’ve seen examples lately of samples being off in terms of predicting outcomes,” Iger added, citing the surprise win of President-electDonald Trump. Iger said digital revenue “is growing at a compelling rate and will grow at an even more compelling rate when new platforms” such as AT&T’s new bundle and Hulu launch.”
As for the suggestion by fellow media mogul, Liberty Media’s John Malone, that Disney may want to spin off ESPN, Iger laughed: “That’s his speculation.”
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