The money for cable companies is in delivering internet. As the number of subscribers goes down the per cable channel costs increases. That increases the overall cable bill for subscribers and the more people cut the cord. ESPN is the prime example of business go wrong. They have committed to multi-billion dollar sports contracts while cable subscribership tanks. They post loss after loss each year.
The move will be to streaming sports in the future. The seeds are already planted. For college football, conferences have their own streaming apps with content from universities, FOX or ESPN. The networks carry the big football and basketball games. Eventually, it will be in the interest of college football conferences to stream their games only and take the revenue from streaming subscriptions. The same will happen with pro sports. There are apps for the NFL, NHL, MLB and more. Why give networks a cut when leagues can do it theirselves?
Everything you said is correct—but as I discussed there are physical reasons why cable TV will be hard to kill.
The entire entertainment/sports industry is heading towards a crisis—the numbers just don’t work for anybody—cable TV or streaming.
This is going to be lose-lose-lose-lose-lose for all the participants in the medium term.
The latest Spectrum/Disney deal was an attempt to delay the inevitable collapse of both cable TV and streaming.
Making money delivering the Internet is a solid business—selling entertainment and sports in any format is not.