If the importance of sports in the entertainment business needed underlining, it came in Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner's repeated references to ESPN on Monday in his statements about Disney's $19-billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC Inc.
Analysts say that one result of the combination may be the merged company's enhanced ability to package the sports programming of ESPN--Capital Cities' 80%-owned cable-TV sports network--with Disney's own sports and entertainment offerings.
This is particularly true abroad, where analysts think there is a major opportunity to promote American sports.
"If you look around the world, there's been a tremendous explosion in new private TV stations and a tremendous demand for new programming," said John Mansell, an analyst with Paul Kagan Associates.
To the extent that Disney can broaden its base of offerings to tap that demand, he said, it may get a leg up on an undeveloped but potentially huge global market for sports programming.
Eisner, at the news conference announcing the deal, mentioned the potential of markets such as India and China, and said that he expects to market ESPN and its cable-TV cousin, the Disney Channel, together in foreign countries.
Observers also expect Disney--which already owns pro hockey's Anaheim Mighty Ducks and is buying a 25% stake in baseball's California Angels--to keep pushing for franchises in the National Basketball Assn. and the National Football League.
The NFL, historically wary of corporate-owned franchises, was cool to Disney's advances this spring, after the Rams and Raiders had fled Southern California for St. Louis and Oakland, respectively.
But the NFL, unlike Major League Baseball, has been aggressively trying to sell itself abroad, through the Europe-based World League of American Football. If linking up with an even bigger version of marketing dynamo Disney can further the effort to penetrate foreign markets, team owners may give the Mouse Factory another hearing.
"Disney has enough clout and good image to be taken seriously [by the NFL] if its offer is right," said Barry Frank, a broadcast executive International Management Group, the powerhouse sports agency.
Baseball, with its tremendous popularity in Latin America and Japan, has "the single best opportunity of all American sports to go international, and so far they've blown it," said Roger Noll, a Stanford University economist who studies pro sports.
