The Walt Disney Company appears ready to do something it’s never done before. In the company’s quarterly investors call earlier this month, CEO Bob Chapek suggested that Disney is ready to expand beyond movies, TV and theme parks to get into a new business for the company.

Gambling.

As a company that built its reputation upon family entertainment, Disney long has opposed gambling. The company has lobbied against the expansion of gambling anywhere near its Walt Disney World Resort in Central Florida. Its Disney Cruise Line ships defy industry trends by not having casinos. When Disney bought Fox, it tried to exit a deal for a Fox-themed park at a casino resort in Malaysia. Disney officials denied that gambling played any role in that decision, but it certainly continued a long trend of Disney distancing itself from the gambling business.

A few years ago, while visiting Disney World, I tried to check NCAA tournament scores on ESPN.com while my phone was using Disney’s Wi-Fi network. But the Disney-owned website would not load. Instead, my phone displayed a message that the site was blocked on the network because the site contained “gambling content.”

There wasn’t any gambling content on ESPN.com at the time beyond mention of the point spreads that newspapers and other media long have published as a proxy for estimating how close or lop-sided a game is expected to be. But now Chapek wants ESPN to embrace the gambling business that Disney once worked to block.

“As we follow the consumer, we necessarily have to seriously consider getting into gambling in a bigger and bigger way, and ESPN is a perfect platform for this,” Chapek said.

Chapek pointed to the popularity of sports betting among the younger consumers that Disney and ESPN need to replace aging sports fans. I don’t know if Millennials and Gen Z love gambling in general any more than their parents. But with popular culture fragmenting, it seems that the young people who still choose to follow sports tend to be the ones who also embrace fantasy leagues and betting.

“We have some concerns as a company about our ability to get in (gambling) without having a brand withdrawal, but I can tell you that given all the research that we’ve done recently that that is not the case,” Chapek said. “It actually strengthens the brand of ESPN when you have a betting component, and it has no impact on the Disney brand.”

Disneyland has bars now. Some cast members wear beards or show tattoos. The world did not end when Disney made those changes, and it won’t end if ESPN partners a sports book. Rising prices and lackluster entertainment threaten a “brand withdrawal” for Disney much more than abandoning outdated attempts at virtue signaling.

So long as Disney offers great family entertainment, the company will do fine. Well, just so long as families don’t have to win a three-team parlay to afford to a trip to Disneyland, that is.