The news that ESPN plans to migrate its flagship pay TV channel over to a direct-to-consumer streaming platform is a landmark moment in sports media – a tipping point where OTT will now be seen as the natural home for premium sports rights. Sports has been pay TV’s last wall of defense against OTT services. If a titan of legacy sports media like ESPN gives way to a pure-play OTT strategy, its contemporaries will be forced to follow suit in quick succession. This follows news from the Wall Street Journal that an internal project at Disney (code named ‘Flagship’) is set to migrate ESPN’s main cable channel over to OTT distribution within the coming years. Talks are reportedly already underway…