There's increasing alarm from investors about Disney's ESPN, which is shedding viewers in record numbers, according to The Washington Post.
ESPN was thrust into the spotlight in November when the ratings company Nielsen predicted the sports juggernaut would lose 621,000 cable subscribers that month. Nielsen estimated the sports network would lose another 555,000 subscribers in December.
The staggering losses have led to calls by analysts for Disney to spin off or sell the beleaguered network, which has lost 9 million subscribers in three years, according to company filings.
The challenges ahead are not unique to ESPN. The pay-TV industry as a whole has seen many consumers trim back their cable subscriptions in favor of online video services — or, fed up with the rising cost of TV, forgo cable altogether.
"There's an underlying theme of the bundle being the problem," said Gene Kimmelman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. "People don't want to pay for what they don't want to get."
"Most of the Disney empire is healthy, but its stock price has been suffering to the downside because we have weak subscriber growth at ESPN," said Laura Martin, a media analyst at Needham and Co. "So that weak subscriber growth is a shadow over the whole empire."
ESPN and its siblings, such as ABC, account for the biggest chunk of Disney's business by far, pulling in $24 billion in revenue this fiscal year. The company's next biggest segment, theme parks, made $17 billion.
Since hitting a high of nearly $122 in the summer of 2015, its stock has dropped about 14 percent; that includes a 5 percent rally this week.
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