Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | News | August 6, 2025
For years, the public — strangled by an $80(ish)-a-month cable subscription with 110 channels but only 10 we actually watched — begged for à la carte options. And now they’re here! We got what we wished for. Damnit. Now we can buy 10 different apps ranging from $6 to $22 each and still end up on YouTube, where some of us pay another $10 a month just to avoid ads for shows on those other streaming services we pay to subscribe to.
And now the big one has finally arrived: ESPN’s standalone app launches on August 21. It’ll cost $30 a month and include all ESPN programming — college football, NFL, and Pat McAfee — that has kept millions tethered to their cable boxes. There will also be plenty of fantasy and gambling integrations, so the same company can show you the games and provide all the betting advice you could possibly need.
Starting next year, that will also include NFL Network, which is being folded into ESPN under a deal that gives the NFL a 10 percent stake in the network. That merger will grant ESPN the rights to RedZone, additional NFL games, and presumably, all the Rich Eisen content you can handle (I almost made the “all the Rich Eisen content your dad can handle” joke until I realized that I’m the dad now. Damnit).
At any rate, it’s all great news — if you think sports leagues should have equity in the networks that cover them, giving ESPN every incentive to ignore or spin the frequent misdeeds of a league that’s never short on scandal. The deal still requires approval, which probably means a few more rounds of culture war squabbling and capitulation to the Administration before it goes through.
ESPN, of course, is owned by Disney. And for various price points (depending on whether you want ads), you’ll be able to bundle ESPN with Disney+ and Hulu, though Hulu is also being fully integrated into Disney+. By next year, the standalone Hulu app will no longer exist; it’ll just be another tile in your Disney+ app. If you’re overseas and watch via Star, that service will be renamed Hulu to give the brand global consistency. I’m certain price hikes will follow.
Finally, there’s one more channel still anchoring some to their cable boxes: Fox News, pumped directly from cable into the bodies of Florida retirees via a biomechanical umbilical cord. But even they can cut the cord now. Fox is launching its own streaming service as well. Now they can watch Fox News with the 5G they get with their vaccines!
Fox One debuts on August 21, too, at $19.99 a month — a small price to pay for 24/7 culture wars, Hillary email throwbacks, and Sydney Sweeney rage bait. It will include Fox’s live NFL broadcasts, but it will not include Fox’s animated shows (The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers), because those are owned by Disney and air on Hulu — which, again, is being absorbed into Disney+, which you can subscribe to in a bundle with ESPN!
Got it?
God, I miss cable.
