A move by the Walt Disney Company to integrate sports content from ESPN Plus into Disney Plus has boosted its rank among sports-inclusive streamers on Gracenote’s Data Hub, according to an analysis of the company’s reporting this week.
Disney Plus now accounts for 32.9 percent of all available sports programming across the leading streaming services, Gracenote said, attributing the share to Disney’s integration of an ESPN Plus content tile within the service late last year.
Crucially, the availability of ESPN Plus programming within Disney Plus doesn’t mean all subscribers have immediate access to it. As with the company’s decision to integrate a Hulu content tile some months ago, only customers who opt for the Disney bundle with ESPN Plus, or who have a separate ESPN Plus subscription under the same e-mail address, will be able to watch content from the service within Disney Plus.
That said, a handful of sports programming has crossed over between ESPN Plus and Disney Plus, including the recent Four Nations Face-Off hockey tournament. The championship game streamed between Canada and Team USA streamed earlier this month was available to all Disney Plus subscribers, even if they did not have ESPN Plus as part of their service.
Amazon still remains the largest distributor of streaming sports programs, with a 34.8 percent share, Gracenote revealed. The other major sports-inclusive streaming services are Netflix (23.4 percent), Paramount Plus (7.7 percent) and Apple TV Plus (1.3 percent).
Amazon is the dominant platform in terms of overall content delivery during the first quarter (Q1) of 2025, according to the February report from Gracenote. The tech giant accounted for 69 percent of all available programming, including 74.6 percent of all available movies and 57.5 percent of all TV shows.
By comparison, Netflix, Amazon’s closest competitor, had a 17.9 percent share of all programming, including a 16.9 percent share of movies and 19.7 percent share of TV shows.
Sports continues to be a major focus among the five largest players, with the services incorporating at least 500 new events and sports programs into their platforms during Q1. The five services increased sports programming by more than 72 percent when evaluated against a comparable period last year.
“Live sports programming continues to be an important driver of user growth, retention and engagement for streaming services,” Bill Michels, the Chief Product Officer at Gracenote, said in a statement. “We are also seeing that relevant metadata, such as synopses, scores, highlights and imagery, have the power to help streamers build world-class user experiences that keep users engaged beyond the live game.”
The genre accounting for the biggest share of content across the five services is drama, Gracenote said, though that changes when services are evaluated at a micro level. Disney Plus, for example, has more movies and TV shows that fit into the genres of documentary, comedy, children and adventure.
