Walt Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger said in August it was seeing "modest" declines in ESPN subscribers as viewers move to cheaper digital platforms, but was confident of navigating the shifts.
The company earlier this month reported higher quarterly profit that beat Wall Street forecasts as cable networks including ESPN brought in higher advertising revenue and collected more fees from pay TV distributors.
ESPN is reorganizing and eliminating over 300 positions, Reuters reported in October, citing a person familiar with the situation.
Live sports are one of the few types of programming that still draw massive audiences at one time, making them valuable to advertisers. And for many customers, sports is the reason they keep their pay TV subscriptions.
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(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Gopakumar Warrier)
