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.
People don't want to watch the wokeydokes trash the country.
Be it their programming or the actual sport.
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 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 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.
I wonder if he could repeat himself a few more times and stretch that article out just a little longer.
if your cable tv bill not counting internet or phone service is say 100$ a month, ESPN alone is about 15$ roughly, maybe more. They charge the most to cable companies as a carrier
A couple of years ago I mentioned to a family member that I can’t remember when I really watched ESPN, when it used to be a regular event. His response was, “you know, me neither, but I’d forgotten I did used to watch a lot”.
The programming became too much opinion, which then went woke, with less live sports.
The only reason I have cable, at this point because I don’t watch Fox News anymore, was for my Red Wings hockey...it’s the only way to get it (without doing an NHL.com subscription with a VPN to spoof my location, you can only get out-of-market games). At this point, it’s too expensive an option just for that.
Cable bundles should have died years ago. It’s a dinosaur of a business model.
The regional sports networks are the canary in the coal mine for the cable bundle. I used to work for Fox Sports Pittsburgh and I can tell you, the pain is real.
Not only are cords being cut but cable companies do not pay the same rate as one another. It’s like a UAW contract, you pick a company, freeze it and isolate it.
We could pick up county by county viewership and extort (I purposely use that word extort.) more from certain cable companies than another. The further you got away from your major league city, the less you paid. The closer you were, the more you paid. Advertising was a joke, it was gravy, stellar ratings basically paid for production and a bloated staff’s salary. The fortune was made in the bundle.
We were on 24/7/365 and had ratings 70 times or 210 hours during the winter (Pittsburgh Penguins.) and 150 times or 450 hours during the summer (Pittsburgh Pirates). So of the 8,760 hours in a year, people watched our channel 360 of them. We could actually sell time in only 4% of our broadcast day that advertisers would buy.
However people in PA, WV, OH and MD paid us $7 a month. In turn the Pittsburgh Pirates, the worst team in baseball, had one of the best local TV packages valued at $50-60 million.
The cable cutting killed the RSN’s. Most of them, believe it or not, have small to no ratings. No value whatsoever. When they started losing 30% of their base revenues cable companies could say no to any price increase, they couldn’t bundle 10 networks with it.
I would say I feel bad for my old industry and co-workers but I don’t. The TV business is absolutely filled with executives and managers that are the dumbest people you will ever meet that all believe they are smarter than any person in the room. No lie, no exaggeration, no bias. I lived it for more than 10 years.
His doom and gloom about sports costing a fortune for fans in the future is not going to happen.
There are just as many dumb people at Google, Amazon, Apple and Netflix that think the “halo effect” of having a sports league is worth the billions they paid for it. That will get the sports fans through the next 10-15 years.
It’s a debt that is coming and will have to be paid but there are even bigger pockets being controlled by the same old dumb TV people.
Too long don’t care enough to read. ESPN had the same number as CNn MSNBC, History Channel, and Hallmark. Having the subscription was mandatory to have cable service. I know I paid them for many years but I actually never ever watched. I don’t care at all about sports. Bunch of dudes bumping into each other or throwing objects back and forth or waving sticks around and counting how many times they did things. Pretty stupid. I have better things to think about. Just because I was a clumsy clod they would not let me play, well F them. My revenge is my knees are in great shape and so is my spine. I’m 66 years old and my skeleton works perfectly. hahahahahahaaaaaaah!
I just want to watch SEC games but can’t. The other options are too expensive. This just sucks. Go Dawgs!
Did anyone go to the link and read the whole story ?
Did you find the video you are forced to have run was annoying, even without audio ?
Won’t be going to that site again.
ESPN’s coverage of the US Open this year has been shockingly bad. Broken network.
Great article and analysis. Yes, I cut cable a long time ago. I have internet, Netflix and Amazon. But I mostly watch YouTube!
If cable bundling is brought down that would be a good thing. Creative destruction and all that. ESPN is the behemoth that no one really watches, except for actual live football, maybe basketball but IDK about that. Beyond that, ESPN is like airport CNN.
Read an article couple months ago about Barstool sports positioning themselves to step up as the new ESPN.