Between the Football games, you may have seen that ESPN is losing subscribers in droves (7M lost in the last 2 years — about 7%). Not only is it dragging down Disney’s stock price, its a weight on the whole industry. This is an interesting problem to discuss in class. Of course, Disney’s corporate strategy always provides fodder for discussion (see our discussion of the multi-business strategy around Frozen). I have asked my class the following questions:

• Discipline. As a stand-alone business, you might start with what needs “fixing”? Why hasn’t Disney fixed it already and is there another company better positioned to fix it?
• Potential Synergies? Digging further, as a part of Disney’s portfolio, you might ask why ESPN would be worth more as a part of Disney than it would be as a stand-alone company or as part of another company. For the most part, Disney can’t leverage it’s content, characters, or brand to enhance the value of ESPN. What can they bring to the game?
• Should they sell it off? If Disney doesn’t add much here, who do you think could create more value with ESPN? What would be the next steps?

Contributed by Russ Coff