ESPN developing daily SportsCenter, women’s sports show for Disney Plus

Disney Plus officially debuted its ESPN tile on Wednesday.

And it appears the integration between the two Disney-owned brands is just getting started, with CNBC’s Alex Sherman reporting that ESPN is developing two new shows for the Disney Plus streaming service.

The new projects include a daily edition of SportsCenter and a show focused on women’s sports. The daily SportsCenter will air live on Disney Plus in addition to being available on demand, while it’s yet to be determined whether the women’s sports show will air weekly or more frequently.

Both shows are expected to be geared toward more casual sports fans than ESPN’s traditional audience.

“Our research shows there’s very little overlap between people watching Disney+ and ESPN linear,” ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro told Sherman.

While it will certainly be interesting to see what a SportsCenter geared toward the casual sports fan looks like, the headliner here is the women’s show. On multiple occasions over the course of the last year, ESPN executives and personalities have hinted as the possibility of such a show following the explosion in popularity of women’s sports.

It’s unclear whether this show — which will also be targeted toward casual sports fans — is what they had in mind or if there are other women’s-focused projects at ESPN in the works. If nothing else, this should give ESPN a platform to tinker with what such a show might look like.

Both projects are a part of Disney’s ongoing efforts to increase ESPN’s presence on the Disney Plus streaming service. In addition to the tile, which allows viewers to watch ESPN programming without leaving the app, Disney has plans to make about 100 live games available to Disney Plus members without an ESPN subscription, including next week’s Monday Night Football Simpsons-branded altcast and five NBA games that will air on Christmas Day.

[CNBC]