All anyone can talk about is “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and the more than half-billion-dollar haul that the Walt Disney Company pulled in over the weekend.  The press has been breathless and Wall Street analysts are mostly giddy about Disney’s prospects.  But on Friday, just as the entertainment giant was beginning to count its record box office take, Richard Greenfield, a longtime media analyst at BTIG Research, urged his clients to sell their Disney stock. He became the only analyst to have a “sell” rating on the company.  To Mr. Greenfield, “Star Wars” is a sideshow, masking what he believes are deeper financial and strategic challenges at Disney. The company’s problems, he says, have nothing to do with Darth Vader or Donald Duck. Instead, Disney has a looming issue with ESPN, the sports television juggernaut.  In a report titled “Even the Force Cannot Protect ESPN,” he argues that Disney’s successful film business, which includes Pixar, has distracted investors from an impending slowdown at ESPN as viewers cancel their cable subscriptions (the “cord cutters”) or never sign up for cable to begin with (the “cord nevers”).  Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG Research, explains why he shorted Disney despite the record debut of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens.'  “Investors must remember that at its core, Disney is a cable network company that has the highest level of fixed costs (sports rights) in the industry,” he wrote. “ESPN now appears poised to become Disney’s most troubled business as consumer behavior shifts rapidly.”  In the past year, HBO and CBS have begun “unbundling,” meaning that they now offer their programming à la carte for a monthly fee that’s far less than a bundled cable bill. Mr. Greenfield believes that as more cable networks shift to selling their programming this way, ESPN will have to follow suit. But he says it will not be able to sign up enough viewers to pay a monthly subscription fee that would offset the loss in cable subscribers who now pay a monthly carriage fee (about $7 a household) whether or not they watch ESPN.  These lucrative fees currently cover the enormous cost of licensing live sports programing. Mr. Greenfield has been especially critical of ESPN’s aggressive sports-rights acquisitions in recent years, which he says has been driven in part to block the growth of rivals like Fox and NBC.  ESPN’s problems first spilled into the open in August when Disney reduced growth expectations for its cable network division and its shares plummeted. The news alarmed investors in television companies, sending the stocks of Time Warner and 21st Century Fox down along with Disney’s.  In an interview, Mr. Greenfield said he believed that “the expectations seem too high” for Disney. He expects the company's stock to fall to $90 in the next 12 months; it closed Monday at $106.58.“It puts incredible pressure on the films. They all have to be massive successes. That’s just tough.” Mr. Greenfield is especially worried about earnings in 2017 and beyond, when he believes the cord cutting may push Disney to pursue an à la carte subscription offering, given that 44 percent of the company’s profits currently come from cable television.  Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive, has said that he could imagine ESPN selling the sports network over streaming video via a so-called over-the-top, or O.T.T., subscription, calling such a move “inevitable.” But he also seems in no rush to make such a move — and for good reason.  “There are many commonly held beliefs/myths/legends about ESPN,” Todd Juenger, an analyst at Bernstein, wrote over the weekend, partly in response to Mr. Greenfield. One such belief, he wrote, is that “ESPN is what holds the bundle together.” But he said: “Maybe that is true, but in a different way than most people intend. If ESPN went O.T.T., we don’t think the bundle would collapse because millions of households would drop cable and subscribe to ESPN. Instead, if ESPN went O.T.T., we think other networks would respond in kind, and perhaps millions of households would drop cable to avoid ESPN (and other expensive sports networks) and take advantage of the rich array of entertainment video options.”  Mr. Iger has acknowledged that television is a mature industry now being disrupted by streaming technology, which makes its future uncertain. But Mr. Iger, 64, may not have to wrestle with these challenges; those will most likely be left to his expected successor, Tom Staggs. (Mr. Iger’s contract ends in mid-2018.)  Most analysts wave off concerns about ESPN, arguing that this won’t be a problem for some time and that live sports will remain the most desirable programming for viewers who still want a bundle of channels. And, they say, it’s the cable companies that will feel the most pain.  “We think that the turmoil and disruption will most be felt by the distributors and some of the weaker programming content companies,” Martin Pyykkonen of Rosenblatt Securities wrote to investors, also seemingly in response to Mr. Greenfield. “For Disney, we think it’s a reasonable bet that they will be a necessary part of almost any skinnier programming package going forward.”  All that may be true. It’s also possible that shifts in television habits will change more slowly than some of the most dire predictions.  Disney may have seen all of this coming: It has spent the past decade diversifying its business by adding big franchises like Star Wars, Marvel and Pixar while expanding its theme park business.  So while the entire television industry may be challenged, perhaps Disney will be able to weather the storm better than many others.  Given all the brands Disney has accumulated, Mr. Greenfield conceded, “It would be more fun to be them than anyone else.”  Still, Mr. Juenger said, “We do have concern, however, that once ‘Star Wars’ is digested, the focus will return to affiliate fees.”  But at least for now, it’s a whole lot more fun to talk about Han Solo, lightsabers and Chewbacca than cord cutting, over-the-top and affiliate fees.  A version of this article appears in print on December 22, 2015, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: At Disney, a Dark Force Looms Large: Unbundling. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
With more television networks bypassing cable packages and offering à la carte subscriptions, some predict trouble ahead for ESPN.