Disney will air the Super Bowl on ABC, ESPN, Disney+, ESPN2, ESPNU, and NFL Network. Local ABC affiliates are upset. They had one job. Now they share it with ESPNU.
ESPNU. The network that shows college volleyball to a nation of dentists' waiting rooms. It now carries the biggest television event in America.
The affiliates' complaint is simple. They pay Disney for the privilege of airing big programming. Disney then airs that programming everywhere else. It is like paying rent and finding out your landlord also lives in your bedroom, your kitchen, and a streaming app.
Disney's position is that more screens means more viewers. This is true. It is also true that more exits means fewer people in the room.
Station owners sell local ads around the game. Every viewer who drifts to ESPN2 is a viewer who skips the mattress commercial from a man named Gary. Gary built that mattress store with his hands. Disney is now sending his customers to Disney+.
I am told this is a business dispute about retransmission, advertising, and distribution rights. I stopped reading there. Nothing about it will move a chart in a way you can trade.
Retail traders will still try. Someone is buying Disney calls right now because a headline had the word Super Bowl in it. He will hold them through the second quarter. He will sell at halftime, during the show, and tell his wife it was a hedge.
The affiliates will complain, then renew their contracts. Disney will say thank you in six languages and on six channels.
Somewhere an ESPNU intern is about to run the most-watched broadcast of his life, and his mother still thinks he works in sports.
Photo by appshunter.io on Unsplash
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