Posted on 09/07/2023 2:10:43 PM PDT by jeannineinsd
In the summer of 2014, the cable and satellite bundle peaked. One hundred million households were subscribed to ESPN, the most successful channel in the history of cable, and the apex of the greatest business in the history of media had been reached.
But no one knew it.
Cable, satellite, and media executives were all blissfully unaware of what was coming. Fox Sports FS1 had launched the prior year — yours truly appeared on the very first show in the history of the network, a 2013 college football preview show. In the summer of 2014 the SEC Network would make its debut. The SEC Network was, in fact, the single most successful cable and satellite channel debut in the history of the cable industry. With the launch of the SEC Network, ESPN, the channel’s owner, stood at the pinnacle of its power, the company seemed indestructible, a gold plated money minting machine.
Billions of dollars in profits flowed off ESPN each year, enabling all of Disney to flourish. It was the crown jewel of the company, a profit spigot, the Titanic of the cable fleet.
But an iceberg loomed ahead.
And almost no one saw it coming.
The era of cable and satellite cord cutting began in the fall of 2014.
Quietly, at first.
So quietly, in fact, that most at ESPN and in the cable industry refused to acknowledge what was occurring. A few million here, a few million there, slowly a trickle turning into a stream and then the stream turning into a river and before long there was a flood of cord cutters.
(Excerpt) Read more at outkick.com ...
My Summary: Clay is predicting disaster for ESPN specifically and all media companies in general due to the fact that most of ESPN's paying customers do not watch the programming. ESPN is currently bundled into cable packages. All cable customers pay for all channels in their bundle, if they watch that particular channel or not.
ESPN's parent company Disney has stated their intention to eventually move all of ESPN's programming on to a streaming service, ESPN+. Most of ESPN's paying customers will not then continue to pay for ESPN. There are many rabid fans of ESPN who will pay for a streaming service, but then the company runs into the problem of problem of needing to price the product high enough to continue the pay the sports leagues for the rights to their games, while simultaneously needing to keep the price of the service low enough to attract paying customers.
Sports Armageddon is coming. These crazy salaries are simply not sustainable.
ESPN has been in big, big trouble of a long time. They continue to have massive layoffs and replace decent talent with affirmative action hires- making the situation even worse.
I tend to doubt all of their programming will go streaming. College football will move to another network as the SEC, ACC, etc won’t want everything streamed.
They (Disney/ABC/ESPN) already lost the Big 10
Well, that’s just capitalism, isn’t it?
Some will want to pay for ESPN, but how much are the most devoted sports fans willing to pay?
Time will tell. Maybe the whole business model of sports is going to fundamentally change. I’ve heard the NFL makes more money from TV money then they do from selling tickets at the stadium. No way they can have players with multimillion dollar contracts without TV money.
I’ve pretty much switched to just watching the highlights, can’t sit through whole games anymore, especially with all the woke commercials you have to deal with.
I think football conferences are going to go away, and we’ll have one big organization for all college football, and dividing teams into divisions.
Well, if these athletes are being paid to promote food and gasoline, then that’s the only way their getting any munnies from this household. Which has been our SOP for a couple decades, since the boys moved out.
I do as well-= as we’ve previously posted. But they still won’t want all their games streamed.
People don't want to watch the wokeydokes trash the country.
Be it their programming or the actual sport.
Shut down the NFL...I only watch college football and basketball anyway..
The same can be said for “news” broadcasters like CNN, MSNBC and yes, Fox News.
The public is fed up with the government propaganda.
Fed up with the woke tv commercials.
Fed up with the diversity TV shows that cast 40% black characters even though they are only 13% of the population.
Death to cable. Death to PBS. Death to NPR.
Does this mean that while I’m at the gym I won’t look up at the TV and see two black guys and a bimbo talking about football? What a tragedy.
I knew ESPN was dying when I turned it on late one night and saw them broadcasting a poker game for the first time.
I cut the cable years ago and now I only have streaming. I like it much better than cable because I can watch what I want when I want.
I saw ESPN broadcasting Cornhole.
I am not a sports fan and would love to see ESPN go down the drain. Why should I pay 10-20% of my cable bill for a bunch of grown men play games? These grown men can’t seem to find a real job, so the rest of us should subsidize their lack of planning.
Wow. LOL. In six months they’ll be broadcasting spelling bees.
I think ESPN actually does broadcast the National Spelling Bee.
I know they show the July 4th Nathan’s Hotdog eating contest.
They may only be 13% of the population, but I’ll bet they’re at least 40% of the TV viewers in this country at any given time.
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