ESPN Floats a Netflix-Style Trial Balloon. But It’s Not Giving Up the Bundle.

ESPN has already said it may let you pay for its sports programming on the Web without subscribing to a traditional pay-TV package. Now it is floating the idea of selling some of its stuff directly to consumers, just like Netflix does.

ESPN boss John Skipper says that in 2015, the company may sell a package of Major League Soccer games to Web viewers, who could pay for the games without subscribing to ESPN itself. That would essentially replace the MLS Live service that the league currently markets to fans on its own, which costs $65 a season and gives subscribers digital access to most of the league’s games.

If ESPN goes through with those plans, it would mark the first time the network has served up sports on an a la carte basis. And if you’re a certain kind of TV-of-the-Future thinker, you can argue that it’s evidence that the bundle that supports the entire TV Industrial Complex is starting to unwind.

But the other way to look at ESPN’s trial balloon is that it shows the cable company’s commitment to the cable business model, where pay-TV subscribers pay a lot of money to get all of ESPN’s programming, and all of ESPN’s channels, whether or not they actually want ESPN. That’s because ESPN isn’t taking anything out of its bundle -- it’s just talking about adding a premium tier for a tiny slice of fans willing to pay extra.