Streaming goes for the bundle. Isn't that just called 'cable'?

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Disney is making clear this week that, north and south of the border, bundling streaming services together in one package is the future. So we’d all be wise to hold our digital wallets tight because prices, like everything else, are set to climb.

Despite all kinds of political rhetoric in Canada and the U.S. about the trade between the two countries, Disney is steaming ahead and putting their stable of popular movies and TV shows alongside sports properties. In Canada, it’s also including a stable of drmas that live nowhere near Disney’s corporate lodgings.

Here, Disney has partnered with Bell Media to offer viewers a variety of bundling packages, with the biggest package offering TSN+ and Crave, alongside Disney Plus, in a combined subscription that will run you more than $460 per year.

In the U.S., Disney has launched a new ESPN streaming service called ESPN Unlimited — every ESPN property in the U.S. under the sun essentially — that you can package with Disney Plus and Hulu, which is also owned by Disney, into a similarly broad sports and entertainment package. In fact, Disney is going even further, with a separate bundle giving viewers ESPN Unlimited with Fox’s trove of live TV and entertainment programming.

This all comes after last week’s announcement that DAZN and Fubo are combining forces in Canada to offer joint sports bundles, with DAZN’s premium offerings now available on Fubo’s platform, and vice versa. Finally fans can get almost all the soccer they want in the same place — Serie A, English Premier League, Bundesliga, Champions League — but obviously at a price.

To date, Fubo has pursued a more varied rights model than DAZN. Whereas DAZN continues to only put sports on its platform — be they on demand, like with the NFL, or through linear channels like Red Bull TV — Fubo has long offered more than just sports. They also have a variety of what one might call “regular” TV offerings, such as CBC. Fubo launched in the U.S. in 2015 as a soccer-only distribution service, but in the years since has also grown its service to more than just sports.

“We do think there’s convenience in being able to go somewhere and get a package of channels or content that you’re interested in,” Ben Grad, Fubo’s senior vice-president of strategic partnerships and operations, explained to Postmedia. “But we also recognize that the price component is also a huge driver of value. So what is the right content mix for you based on your interest, and how do you get that at a price you think is valid?”

If this all seems familiar — a little like cable — you’re not alone in that thinking. Grad, who joined Fubo in 2017 from Verizon, agrees with how bundling is a return in some ways to how things used to be.

“I think there’s a segment of customers that they just want to keep it simple,” Grad said. “They just want it to be easy. They won’t have to think about, you know, which game is on.”

That’s why Fubo offers things like MLB Network for baseball fans. You won’t get every baseball game every day, but you’ll get plenty of baseball, nonetheless.

And on Thursday Fubo announced a new “skinny” package in the U.S., giving viewers a narrower option on their sports rights — no EPL, for instance — plus a selection of local TV stations.

This really is the future arriving but, all this said, it’s all comes at a much higher price than you used to pay for your cable package.

Some of this is the sheer bulk of programming that a streaming service offers. And, in a world where studios and networks aren’t generating revenue from DVD sales anymore, they’ve got to pay for the programming somehow, as well as make a profit.

Fair enough, one supposes, but it’s also a push to drain as much money out of consumers as possible. Just like how grocery chains are jacking up prices to keep their profit margins growing, far beyond the costs brought on by inflation, so are media companies. It seems wild that Sportsnet renewed with the NHL by paying an even bigger price for the next 12 years for broadcast rights than they did for the past 12 years — a contract we were told was a big money loser. But as Rogers has consolidated its hold on streaming and cable distribution in this country, they clearly see a chance to make a whole bunch more money.

Just look at how Sportsnet boosted the price for its top-end, get-everything, premium Sportsnet Plus package before the coming hockey season.

“Old wine, new bottles,” quipped Jon Festinger, a Vancouver lawyer with long experience in sports and entertainment law.

The future is indeed a return to the thinking that drove the cable TV industry, but with service delivered via streaming and at a higher cost to the consumer.

“Streaming has passed (traditional) broadcasting, so streaming is the new broadcasting,” Festinger said. “Broadcasting’s last must-see content concentration, due to leverage, was sports programming. Streaming services are breaking that down and pretty soon — five years? three years? — will be the place we turn to for sports.

“The same patterns that happened with broadcast sports will reoccur in the streaming context, meaning consolidation of sports content on a few streamers who will then consolidate into just a handful of streaming sources that will be able to charge more and more for less and less.”

How’s your wallet feel now?

pjohnston@postmedia.com