The upcoming sports streaming service from ESPN, Fox & Warner Bros. Discovery has found its boss.
The service, which doesn’t have a name yet, has appointed Pete Distad, a former Apple and Hulu exec as CEO.
The streamer was revealed last month and is set to launch later this fall.
Distad, who most recently served as an executive at Apple for a decade following six years at Hulu, will oversee all aspects of the joint venture, including overall strategy, distribution, marketing and sales.
At Apple, he was responsible for the business, operations and global distribution for Video, Sports and Apple TV+ and oversaw the MLS Season Pass. At Hulu, he was SVP, Marketing and Distribution.
Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch recently said that he projects the service to have 5M subscribers in its first five years.
The biggest missing piece is pricing. Murdoch hinted at a recent media conference that it could cost more than $50 a month.
Rather than bringing streaming-only programming to market, the service will bring together 14 linear network feeds from the JV’s member companies, offering coverage of the NFL, NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball. Paramount and NBCUniversal, significantly, are not part of the offering. Murdoch also said additional elements like regional sports networks or full-season offerings from leagues are not in the near-term offing.
“This is an incredible opportunity to build and grow a differentiated product that will serve passionate sports fans in the US outside of the traditional pay TV bundle,” Distad said. “I’m excited to be able to pull together the industry-leading sports content portfolios from these three companies to deliver a new best-in-class service.”
