Time Warner is Expanding TV Everywhere to Include Live ESPN Sports

The Time Warner Cable and ESPN TV Everywhere partnership will be the first big test of the stickiness of access to live sports in an authenticated service. We think that the cable operators' high-definition capabilities, growing VoD libraries, and aggregated live sports are among the chief weapons at their disposal to fend off cord-cutting. It will be quite interesting to see if TWC will report any figures on the usage of the ESPN content, as well as any impact this has on customer satisfaction and retention.