Looks like Disney has made a play to enhance it offerings for video streaming by investing $1B in Major League Baseball Advance Media’s BAMTech. That’s one third of the current estimate value of the service. It will be done in two payments. The first half of it by the end of August, the second half in January. It’s done for ESPN.
How this works out depends on a lot of factors. And it’s a definite play for the future. Or, at least, how they envision it. They obviously see that the direct-to-consumer space as something that is about to take off.
Several questions came to my mind when I heard about this. One is, what content will they show? Will it be new content? Will they be cannibalizing their current material? Will they need to sign a bunch of deals to get compelling content? If it will be original, how will they go about creating it?
The major thing to remember is that, given current trends in the watching of digital video, it’s best to make moves like this now as opposed to later when the train has left the station.
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