How ESPN went from Disney’s financial engine to its problem

ESPN has been Disney’s financial engine for nearly 30 years, powering the company through recessions, box office wipeouts and the pandemic. It was ESPN money that helped Disney pay for acquisitions – Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, 21st Century Fox – and build a streaming service, transforming itself into a colossus and perhaps traditional media’s best hope of surviving Silicon Valley’s incursion into entertainment.

Those days, ESPN’s best, are over.