Key Points
- ESPN launched the “Always in Season” campaign to promote year-round value and reduce churn for its ESPN Unlimited streaming service.
- ESPN Unlimited costs $30 per month and offers the full ESPN cable multiplex without a traditional pay TV bundle.
- The campaign emphasizes ESPN’s breadth of live events and programming beyond football to keep fans engaged year-round.
ESPN has launched the next phase of its marketing campaign for ESPN Unlimited that promises year-round sports coverage, the sports network revealed on Friday.
The promotional campaign, called “Always in Season,” is an apparent effort to keep fans from canceling their ESPN Unlimited streaming plan by promising that “when one sport ends, another begins on ESPN,” the network affirmed.
ESPN Unlimited is the first streaming plan that brings the entire ESPN cable multiplex online, without a traditional pay television bundle. It costs $30 per month and launched in mid-August, timed to coincide with the start of the National Football League’s (NFL) season. Monday night NFL games are broadcast on ESPN and ABC.
Seasonality can be a problem for streaming services that mainly promote themselves as super-serving sports fans. Fubo, a cable-like streaming service that shares common ownership with ESPN, generally sees higher interest just before the start of the NFL’s regular season, on account of its offering of live football games from ESPN, CBS, NBC and Fox. Fubo’s subscriber count tends to drop between the first and second quarter of each year, once football season ends and the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament, known as “March Madness” begins. (Fubo doesn’t offer Warner Bros Discovery’s sports networks, which share rights to the NCAA March Madness games with CBS.)
With football season less than two months from ending, ESPN is trying to avoid a Fubo-like situation by adjusting how it markets ESPN to sports fans, reminding them that the network carries more than 47,000 live events — including National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) games, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) events, professional tennis, women’s sports and college sports — along with sports-related programming like the highlights program “SportsCenter” and news magazine show “30 for 30.”
“Always in Season represents the purpose and promise of what we do at ESPN — every day is game day, every day is SportsCenter day, every day is ESPN 30 for 30 day,” said Jo Fox, the Senior Vice President of Marketing at ESPN. “There is always a reason to watch ESPN, no matter what sport is in season. Each day, there’s another moment, matchup or reason to be a sports fan — and we’re here for all of it.”
ESPN plans to promote itself as the worldwide, year-long leader in sports through partnerships with brands like Uber, Walmart’s Vizio and electronics retailer Best Buy. The network didn’t offer specific insight into what those promotions or activations might look like.
Publicis worked with ESPN on media planning initiatives, and creative spots were produced by Shadow Lion with support by ESPN Creative Studios.
