Clark Howard

ESPN Plus streaming service coming for $5/month

Disney is ready to give sports fans a brand-new way to watch their favorite games with a new mobile-friendly streaming service called ESPN Plus that’s set to launch soon.

RELATED: Disney is parting ways with Netflix

Disney readies its first streaming service

Disney CEO Bob Iger announced ESPN Plus on February 6 during an earnings call.

ESPN Plus will give fans unfettered access to thousands of additional live events that are currently unavailable on the ESPN linear networks. This will include games from Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer and the NHL, plus a broad range of college sports.

Also featured on the new service will be the full library of ESPN Films, including the very popular “30 for 30” documentary series, plus a new raft of exclusive content for Plus subscribers.

“It will basically enable people to see ESPN just about any way imaginable,” Iger told investors during the earnings call.

Priced at just $4.99, ESPN Plus certainly won’t break the bank. But if you want to stream ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU or other linear channels, you’ll need a subscription to an existing service that already offers those channels.

ESPN Plus will be available for iOS, Android, tvOS, Chromecast when it launches in the spring. Additional platforms will be added over time.

This steaming effort is a chance for Disney to dip its toes into the market ahead of next year's launch of a previously announced streaming service that will be dedicated exclusively to the company's non-sports entertainment. Disney has said it will pull back content from Netflix when that happens in 2019.

Meanwhile, in other Disney news, The House of Mouse has signed “Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to write and produce a new spinoff series in the Star Wars film franchise.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, what the GoT co-creators develop will be separate from the upcoming trilogy "The Last Jedi" director Rian Johnson is penning and the upcoming "Star Wars: Episode IX" being done by director J.J. Abrams.

Benioff and Weiss will begin work on the first of their Star Wars films after their hit HBO series winds down with a final season in 2019.

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