I’m Dylan Byers, and welcome back to In The Room.

Thus far, Bob Iger’s strategic approach to his second tour at Disney seems to revolve around skillfully and quickly reducing the company to its core businesses. But in the wake of his “everything-is-on-the-table” remarks on CNBC, long-dormant whispers regarding a blockbuster combination with Apple have returned with a vengeance. Herewith, a look at the logistics, logic, and obstacles surrounding this hypothetical megamerger.

Similar assumptions have been made about Amazon (which did buy MGM, after all) and Microsoft (which bought Activision) and Alphabet (whose most valuable acquisition was surely YouTube, which now has the rights to NFL Sunday Ticket). In this turbulent and transformative era of media consolidation, Mega-FAANGS are seen, often inexplicably, as plausible buyers for every decent (or halfway decent) entertainment asset that may or may not be for sale, Biden antitrust enforcement paratroopers be damned.

Of course, tech firms are far more strategic than that, obviously, and none more so than Apple, which prides itself on the Jobsian koan that “innovation is saying no to 1,000 things.” And, indeed, despite its unparalleled war chest, Apple has rarely gone outside Cupertino to buy what it would rather create in-house. “Generally, in the history of Apple, we haven’t made huge acquisitions,” Cue told me on stage at SXSW, before citing one of Jobs’ too-often-used Wayne Gretzky quotes: “You have to skate to where the puck is going, not to where it is.” (Cue is a big sports guy.) A thorough review of the Apple executive’s oeuvre reveals that this is part of the stump speech: “We say no to almost everything,” Cue told CNBC earlier this year, before once again citing Gretzky. “When you get as large as we are, it’s easy to think you can do anything or everything, and it’s just not true.”

To date, Apple’s foray into streaming has been executed rather cautiously. They’ve acquired talent—Sony Pictures’ Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amburg, most notably, and former HBO chief Richard Plepler, via a deal with his production company—rather than companies. And yet, the rumors of Apple’s acquisitive appetites persist, especially when it comes to Disney. The Disney brand, studio, and I.P. library seem tailor-made for Apple’s streaming ambitions—timeless, upscale, brand-safe, etcetera. And, of course, the two companies have played their part in fueling that speculation. In his 2019 memoir, after revealing the emotional exchange he’d had with Jobs in the final minutes before Disney’s acquisition of Pixar (when the Apple co-founder revealed that his cancer had returned), Iger wrote: “I believe that if Steve were still alive, we would have combined our companies, or at least discussed the possibility very seriously.”

The penny ante to such a deal could conceivably come in an Apple tie-up with ESPN. In Sun Valley, Iger said Disney was seeking a “strategic partner” that could help provide “content or distribution and marketing support, or both” to help ESPN become a full-fledged streaming business. Apple obviously has that distribution and marketing power, and obviously sees sports as a way to fuel subscriptions to its streaming platform: the company acquired Major League Baseball rights and struck a ten-year, exclusive worldwide rights deal with Major League Soccer. Apple’s role in luring Lionel Messi to the MLS via a first-of-its-kind profit-sharing agreement, wherein Messi takes a cut of the revenue for new subscriptions to Apple TV+’s MLS Season Pass, is even further evidence of those ambitions and an appetite for creative dealmaking.

In any event, it’s a favorite talking point among the CNBC set. Earlier this week, Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said it was “a matter of when, not if, ESPN and Apple get together,” and argued that Apple would be wisest to buy ESPN outright—for an estimated cost of more than $50 billion, which is couch cushion money for Apple, but a third of Disney’s market cap—“to boost its streaming future and further tap into its massive installed base of 2 billion iOS devices worldwide.”

Of course, Iger would have to put it up for sale, and one Disney veteran with insight into the company’s thinking told me last week that Iger is “serious about wanting to keep majority control of ESPN.” On the other hand, everything is negotiable, particularly as Iger seeks to service his debt. Iger’s decision to break out ESPN’s numbers, as he noted earlier this year, seems like a strategic gamble to get the market (and suitors) excited about the possibility of a deal. “As with everything, there’s always a price,” one veteran media executive told me this week. “So who knows how low it could go. And how badly Bob needs cash.” Ostensibly, this is exactly what Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs have been brought in to help Iger figure out.

On the Apple side, the calculations may be more conservative. “It’s definitely a possibility, but doubtful,” one veteran media executive with insight into the ESPN business told me. “Apple has generally not been aggressive in terms of M&A deals, at least in terms of high-valuation transactions. They have been passing on major opportunities—NASCAR, NFL, college football, etcetera. They are slow when it comes to bold and decisive content decisions.” But, the executive added, “this actually would be a good strategic move for them. The window is now. Historically, they’ve missed those strategic windows when it comes to transformative content.”

Ever since Iger returned to Disney, analysts and observers have been awaiting the sort of dealmaking masterstroke that defined his first tenure in the seat. But what’s becoming increasingly true in the second Iger tenure is that success is less about transforming Disney into a modern streaming competitor than skillfully and quickly reducing the company to its core businesses. And as Iger signaled in Sun Valley, he doesn’t seem to love the burden he’s undertaken but instead still loves the company that he’s undertaken it for. Nevertheless, he appears cleareyed about the opportunity and the reality. ESPN is, by far, his most valuable linear asset. And if Apple doesn’t want it, he’ll find that other strategic partner—and fast.