
ESPN Loses 621,000 Subscribers; Worst Month in Company History - kelukelugames
http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-621-000-subscribers-worst-month-in-company-history-102916
======
Phlow
I would pay ESPN $10 a month for an ESPN streaming app that had access to all
the college football games (no blackouts), alone, as long as it didn't require
a cable subscription. The current ESPN streaming app is garbage, compared to
Netflix, and other on-demand interfaces. It's not available on my Smart TV.
The quality of the streaming is terrible. It's slow to bring up video. The ads
are repetitive and annoying, and it's a second class citizen with wait screens
while local ads are up on broadcast.

Comcast recently decided to institute a 1TB/month cap in my area, with a
charge of $10 per 50GB after up to $200, or $50 for unlimited (opt-in, by the
sounds). There are no technical reasons why they did this, it was entirely to
gain more revenue to make up for the cord cutters. Their own streaming service
doesn't apply to their data cap.

The whole thing is garbage and needs to be completely changed. The moment
Google Fiber or something better comes along in my area, I'm going internet
only, and I'll just go without until they realize how badly they've managed to
move with the trends and start fixing it.

~~~
IBM
Would you spend $25-35 per month for ESPN? Because that's what it would
probably cost if it wasn't subsidized by the bundle.

Your answer to that question may in fact be yes, but the economics don't work
out. Disney would make more money getting $6 from every cable subscriber than
try to scratch and claw to scale up an OTT service like Netflix that would
inevitably cannibalize their current business.

The only thing that will change the economics is when the market forces their
hand, which is what this story is about.

~~~
tomjakubowski
ESPN does more than just broadcast live sporting events. They have to fill a
whole 24 hours every day, so they also produce original programming
(Sportscenter, PTI, Around the Horn, etc.). The original shows are surely
cheaper for ESPN to produce than the live stuff (broadcast rights are
expensive), but many viewers get almost no value out of them in the Web era.
(I can get my "hot takes" from Twitter and blogs, thank you very much.)

If I could pay _only_ for ESPN's coverage of live events in
$SPORTS_I_CARE_ABOUT, I would do that happily. And I do pay for similar
products, with my MLB.TV and NBA Game Time subscriptions, but that's only
because I'm lucky enough to live outside of my favorite teams' blackout areas.
Even then, though, I miss out on national broadcasts, which are blacked out,
and I have to either go to a bar or find an illegal stream on the Web to watch
the game.

~~~
monksy
> my favorite teams' blackout areas.

This is why I won't get NHL Game cast or MLB at bat. They're not providing a
service I want/need.

~~~
rconti
That model is fucking insane. I've gotten all of my TV over-the-air for years,
which includes a surprising number of NFL games though almost no local
baseball/hockey.. which is ironic, because the channels that air that stuff
are _actually worth the money_ to me, if I didn't have to pay the ESPN tax.

I considered the NHL all access even though I don't watch a ton of hockey,
until I realized they blackout local games. Totally untenable model.

I _do_ pay NFL.com for streaming. $100/year, I can watch any game I want at
any time, and they also do those glorious condensed games that only take 45
minutes to watch, so I can sneak in a game I missed. The only drawback (and
this is a biggie for some, I'm sure) is that they're not live; 10:30am PST
games up for streaming by 1:30pm; 1:30pm games by 5pm, for example. That
doesn't matter to me because I'm not likely to "waste" 3 hours of midday on my
2 free days of the week watching football; I'd just DVR it and watch it in the
evening if it was available OTA anyway.

I'd also pay to stream F1 races, but that's not available either. I like some
sports, but I just don't have any interest in the sports industrial complex.

~~~
dba7dba
I can't justify spending hundreds of dollars every month to pay for cable-
internet/basic-cable-tv-package/wireles-phones AND super-cable-tv-package that
actually includes ESPN and other sports channel. For an average family of 4-5
wirelss phones and average income, paying for cable-tv + super-cable-tv seems
too much. And it is. Just to get content to show on the displays, a family has
to essentially spend $ that can easily pay for a new CAR.

And because we cut cable-tv to stay sane financially, we get very little
access to live sports games on over-the-air TV.

You wouldn't believe how LITTLE sports my kids watch on TV spontaneously,
compared to how much I used to watch when a lot of important games were shown
over-the-air TV.

What little they watch, it's from youtube. For some highlight or some
incredible goals. But that's unlikely to turn them into a fan (serious or
casual) of a particular sports or pro team.

The greed powered cable-tv movement has really driven a lot of fans away from
pro sports teams.

This imo is a classic example of greed for short-term gain costing dearly in
long-term.

Many kids in cable-tv-less households really don't interact with pro sports
teams. What do you think the kids from such family will do when they grow up?

~~~
monksy
> greed for short-term gain costing dearly in long-term.

Pretty much summarizes amaerican business right there.

------
ChuckMcM
My wife and I "cut the cord" as it were this year, now with OTA TV and a
Netflix and Amazon prime account. OTA reliably gets you local and national
news, Netflix and Amazon between them reliably get you movies and recent
television shows. And of course with Amazon you can rent/buy stuff.

What you don't get are sports. You find that more and more those sports have
become the single reason you might want to buy a cable/satellite subscription.

I welcome their final capitulation to the point where I can subscribe to just
my teams and not suffer blackout rules in my home market.

~~~
admyral
My better half primarily watches E! (Keeping up with the Kardashians), HGTV,
Food Network, etc. All have full episodes online, but require the cable
subscription login dance. Even if I could get the live sports I wanted, I
don't foresee these "middle America" networks and shows embracing cord cutting
anytime soon.

~~~
zaphar
The singular feature of Sports is that the content is for the most part
exclusive. You can't watch your hometown team anywhere else.

The Food Network shows have stars but the content and the stars are easily
replaceble. Just look at Youtube cooking and home improvement shows. They
offer the same content at approaching the same quality. I can easily see those
types of shows getting replaced by viewers, and I can see it happening soon.

Those specific shows may not embrace cord cutting but they _will_ and indeed
are getting replaced by shows that do embrace cord cutting.

~~~
twic
Good point. But I suppose there are a handful of other shows which have the
same naturally monopolistic property as sports. For example, there is,
mercifully, only one Kim Kardashian, so there's no way to directly compete
with that show.

~~~
zaphar
I don't know. It's true that there is only one Kim Kardashian. But Kim
Kardashian archetype isn't that hard to replace. She's not famous because
she's Kim Kardashian. She's famous for a bunch of other reasons that are not
that difficult to replace. Even that show isn't really a monopoly that
matters.

------
protomyth
_It just impacts ESPN the most because ESPN costs every cable and satellite
subscriber roughly $7 a month, over triple the next most expensive cable
channel._

 _Yep, if you have a cable or satellite subscription, whether you watch ESPN
or not, you 're paying ESPN over $80 a year._

At some point, the decline will be enough to kill these deals.

~~~
byuu
> Yep, if you have a cable or satellite subscription, whether you watch ESPN
> or not, you're paying ESPN over $80 a year.

And that right there is one of the main reasons why I don't have a cable or
satellite subscription anymore. Very tired of subsidizing channels I never
watched. Most especially ESPN. That and the trend of, "oh you want AMC? Well
you'd better buy the super premium $140 a month 200+ channel package! You
can't get it with just the $80 a month 120 channel package." And, of course,
the ads. My money or advertisements: pick _one_.

~~~
rjvir
Bundles are often great deals for consumers. The TV bundle is the result of
decades of scale, iteration, and the free market.

TV has a lot of weaknesses, but I don't think its bundle economics are one of
them.

The most successful alternatives to TV are also bundles, and the bundling is a
critical part of their success. Imagine instead of paying $10/month for
Netflix, you had to pay for each show a la carte (like iTunes). That would be
worse for consumers - and creators.

~~~
Retric
There is nothing free market about Cable TV. Free markets needs Substitute
goods aka BMW vs Audi not ESPN vs Syfy or other matchups where a and b have
different consumers.

Remember copyright creates monopolies and monopolies are not free markets.

~~~
zerocrates
Pretty much no market in existence is completely "free," but this is a pretty
limited view of things.

Is there nothing free about the market for software because only Adobe can
sell Photoshop? Presumably then there are also no free markets for, well, any
type of cultural product. In a sense that's true and Disney is the only game
in town for _Rogue One_ , but I'm not sure it's a terribly useful analytical
framework.

"Monopolies are not free markets" is also an interesting claim on its own.

~~~
lmm
> Is there nothing free about the market for software because only Adobe can
> sell Photoshop? Presumably then there are also no free markets for, well,
> any type of cultural product. In a sense that's true and Disney is the only
> game in town for Rogue One, but I'm not sure it's a terribly useful
> analytical framework.

Rather than a binary it's probably best to think about the extent to which one
thing is a substitute for another. Photoshop is a tool, and there's no
fundamental reason a competitor couldn't make a program that does the same
things; to that extent, there's a free market in image editors. To the extent
that there are things that you can't substitute (e.g. plugins that use a
photoshop-specific API), there isn't a free market there - it's not black and
white, rather there's an extent to which the market approximates a free one.
Is Star Trek a substitute for Firefly? To a certain extent yes, but probably
less than the Photoshop alternatives.

> "Monopolies are not free markets" is also an interesting claim on its own.

Huh? That's completely standard, established economics. ("Free market" is an
economic term of art that doesn't always mean what it sounds like).

------
IBM
Sports is the thing that holds the cable bundle together. If that gives, the
whole thing will fall apart. Right now the economics for content owners favors
bundling (example: Disney forces cable companies to take a bunch of other
channels with ESPN).

In this really good report [1] about Apple's TV efforts (with obvious
entertainment industry sources) they had this line:

>Mr. Cue has said the TV industry overly complicated talks. “Time is on my
side,” he has told some media executives.

Eddy Cue is absolutely right.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-hard-charging-tactics-
hur...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-hard-charging-tactics-hurt-tv-
expansion-1469721330)

------
protomyth
I figure that the NFL and NBA will eventually be the only broadcast outlet for
their games. MLB has a bit of a different setup (local team contract with
local provider and then national contract), but I would bet the national
contract will go away. The MLB is already doing well with the national
contract getting in the way of a great viewing experience[1].

Apple is probably right that the future of TV is apps. I would expect college
conferences / NCAA to unite and do the the TV as some point.

I see ESPN (or their replacement) as basically Netflix for sports that cannot
build an infrastructure that allows for subscriptions. Although, the MLB has
done service for others and might just do it for other sports.

I would say some of the value of the commentary on ABC / ESPN is diminished by
their talk of politics. It has become something of a joke about what Bob
Costas will lecture us on this week. People go to sports to escape and be with
friends, and not be lectured to. Looking at the feeds I follow this is a bit
of the loss of people.

1) I do love them having multiple separate streams per game (Home Audio, Away
Audio, Home Video, Away Video plus alternate language for some things). The
bitching my parents do when the game is on ESPN or Fox is pretty heavy because
of the degraded viewing experience and inconvenience of it. Plus when they
aren't showing the game and my dad has to revert to internet radio generates
some commentary.

~~~
chiefalchemist
Those are all traditional sports. Sports that are getting less and less
participants at the youth level. ESPNs focus is dated. The fact that there are
options to watch other things only compounds their rust. All in all, this
isn't really a surprise.

~~~
formula1
The rise in esports and computer games doesnt necessarilly dictate the losing
in popularity of conventional sports. ESPNs statistics can just as easily
(with more evidence) be correllated by their focus on drama in sports. Ive
seen numerous complaints about espns love of the kardashians or other non-
sport related aspects.

I dont think the tech industry or a rise in videogames is necessarilly a
driver in popular culture. Sports stars are viewed as heroes and often are the
subject of jealousy and interest while success in videogames Is associated to
a sacrifice of health and looks. There also is fun/humorous cultish mentality
related to sports. Instead its viewed as depressing to the point of mental
illness. In sports, celebrating your team in a big way is celebrated in a way
everyone can get involved.

There is still a lot of good reasons why sports will not die and a lot of
reasons why espn has activily repulsed its audience

~~~
duaneb
It's definitely not just esports. I've noticed more people in their twenties
are getting into football (soccer) and x-games style alternative sports. I
don't see the domination of NFL, NBA, and MLB continuing for many future
generations.

College sports completely baffle me.

~~~
dajohnson89
Most cities don't have a local pro sports team, but have a local college team.
Being able to go to the stadium of the club you support is a big deal.

------
kareemm
I worked at ESPN from 2002-2005.

ESPN execs have been aware of the problem since at least that long ago.
Subscriber fees are where ESPN makes most of its money, so the execs have been
understandably loathe to cut the cord. Even back in 2004 the goal was to drive
more cable subs and more revenue per cable sub because the revenue dwarfed
what they could make online (IIRC ESPN.com made ~$60M top line in 2004. Not
even a drop in the bucket compared to revenue from cable subscribers).

Strategically ESPN is in a difficult position. They provide distribution to
content providers (the leagues) in an era when the price of distribution is
approaching zero. Which is why you see MLB, NFL, etc going straight to
consumer over the internet with their own offerings. The importance of TV
distribution is diminishing, which leaves ESPN with no content (they've never
really been a content company) and no distribution.

Interesting times, indeed.

~~~
thomasthomas
_they 've never really been a content company_

you changed my perspective with this comment.youre so right. essentially
everything espn creates to fill time between live events is garbage.

only issue for leagues distributing content themselves is local/regional tv
contracts are a huge source of revenue for most teams. Tv is still the path of
least resistance to consuming content. local deals might not be as lucrative
if not on Tv. customers in a given region might not be 'stumbling' onto a
local game to watch as often if the game isnt on a tv channel

~~~
selimthegrim
The one time they had an interesting show (Playmakers), the NFL twisted their
arm to cancel it.

------
spo81rty
My complaints about the NFL is really the ridiculous length of the games and
slow pace. The games are just boring. I've turned to be more of a soccer fan.

In regards to sports revenues, I thinkit makes more sense for us as consumers
to just subscribe directly to the leagues for the content. I signed up for MLS
Live and can watch any game I want. Cut the cable stations out of it. Make the
leagues create a product that people want to pay for.

~~~
hackuser
At least as of 1-2 years ago, NFL.com rebroadcasted games with everything but
the plays themselves edited out. They took around 30 min. each, and were
pretty watchable.

~~~
hbosch
These types of game replays exist for both hockey and soccer. You lose context
sometimes but for the most part the games remain cohesive and very exciting.
Showing every pass, penalty, goal, turnover, and assist only couched by a few
contextual seconds on either end of the clip gives you the full impression of
the game without costing you an entire night... with the only setback being
that you can't participate in the next day water cooler, if that's your thing.

~~~
hackuser
To be clear: The NFL broadcast I'm talking about shows every play, every
moment of action. NFL games have 60 minutes of clock time; much of that time
is spent between plays in huddles, etc. Thus 30 min can show you everything.

------
tomohawk
Sports used to be the one thing people could just enjoy. There wasn't any
political bullshit or social shaming. Just competition and pageantry. It was
one of the very few things someone could just go all out for and not worry
about it. People of different political factions, races, and what have you
could all go to the same bar and just watch their team.

That is no longer the case, and so this makes following sports much less
desirable. The NFL has allowed players to hijack the sport platform to make
their own political points. This is like pissing in your drinking water. Since
the NFL did not remove or sanction these players, they are at least tacitly
agreeing with them. Note to NFL: on any given political issue, 1/3 will agree,
1/3 will be mildly uncomfortable, and 1/3 will be pissed off. Can you really
afford to lose 1/3 of your followers?

It just is mind boggling that the leadership of the NFL is so inept that they
didn't see this coming when they got in bed with the political folks. Yay!
Another aspect of life has been politicized for no good reason.

~~~
loso
The NFL has already been politicized. It has mostly tilted right wing. The rah
rah pro military stance after 9/11 (which I overall agree with) that still
continues now. The Breast cancer awareness ribbons. The debate over the
Washington Redskins name. The concussion issue. The harassment and trouble gay
players have. Controversy over coaching hiring.

There have been a bunch of political issues that have beset the NFL in recent
years. NBA players while not kneeling during the anthem, have taken a similar
stance as Kaepernick in recent years and their ratings are similar to the
years before.

~~~
gspetr
Other than the pro-military how is any of the rest right wing?

Do you think the NFL's refusal to allow Dallas' players to honor slain police
officers is also right wing?

~~~
loso
I was speaking in general that the NFL tends to lean more right wing, not
these particular issues. I probably should have made that more clear.

------
jknoepfler
so ESPN:

1\. consumes monopoly priced content (ESPN pays $1.9 billion/year for "Monday
Night Football") with waning appeal.

2\. produces content only to obsolete content providers (cable/satellite t.v.
providers), appears contractually bound to remain this way.

3\. (imo) has a dubious content model in the 21st century. The ESPN content
I've seen has been standard corporate-cable lowest common denominator garbage
that builds no trust with the audience.

I'd be surprised they weren't dying more quickly, but it has taken me years at
a time to get my older relatives to cancel cable subscription they never use
(not just sort of never, literally never).

~~~
marrone12
ESPN is unfortunately bound contractually that they have to delivery their
content through cable providers. I remember reading that if they developed
their own direct-to-consumer product, they could no longer be on any cable
channels.

That's why they've partnered with Sling TV and Sony Vue, whose numbers are not
included in the 650k loss. I'm sure those services each have a couple hundred
thousand subscribers, and anecdotally, many of my cord-cutting / sports fan
friends get their ESPN fix through those instead of a huge cable bundle.

~~~
Retra
I feel like they'd have enough leverage to get out of that arrangement,
considering the large number of people who only subscribe to cable for the
sports packages. It's not like cable providers are going to say "Oh, you put
your stuff online, well, we're just going to stop offering sports then", as
they'd just plain lose customers by responding like that.

At least, that's my naive impression.

------
dcosson
One thing about NFL rights that I haven't really seen discussed is they're so
regional, and that doesn't seem to make much sense anymore, at least in big
cities. Having lived in NY and SF everyone I know who's into football has a
different favorite team, since they grew up in a different place.

But the broadcast networks can all only show regional games in each area.
There's no way to subscribe to all games from 1 team because the networks all
get exclusive rights to different games. In the US there's not even a good way
to subscribe to all games on a single service other than I think direct tv
which is a pain in the ass and doesn't work for apartment buildings. This
doesn't solve ESPN's problem, but for the NFL offering these two services on
demand at different price points seems like such an obvious way to boost
viewership.

~~~
djrogers
The NFL Season Ticket package has been decoupled from DirecTV for a couple of
years now - you can watch your non-local games on pretty much any streaming
device.

~~~
dcosson
I think that's Sunday Ticket, and it's only sunday day games? So if your team
is playing Monday night, you'll still need an ESPN subscription, Sunday night
you need cable or an antenna that gets NBC, Thursday night you need twitter or
cable or an antenna. I think even Sunday day games in your local area you
might not get, so you need basic cable/antenna for that. And not sure if you
can watch many of these with a delay/on-demand.

Why can't there be one service that I can just pay for and turn on at any time
after it airs, like HBO Now?

------
carsongross
Cord cutting is a big part of this, but there is a cultural aspect in play as
well:

ESPN has been increasingly pushing a progressive narrative on its viewers,
many, perhaps most, of whom are conservatives. The NFL is seeing the same
thing, with big declines in viewership since the national anthem protests
began.

I see a lot of newly developed/developing antipathy towards professional
sports among my right-wing acquaintances. What's funny is that the reasoning
is often very similar to what my left-wing acquaintances had to say back when
I was at Berkeley.

As with the libertarian -> alt-right shift of the last five years, I think it
is one of the more interesting sociological developments I am aware of, and
largely unremarked upon by the press.

~~~
scurvy
Dropping NFL audiences have more to with the subpar product the NFL is
producing these days, than it has to do with national anthem protests. The
league is shooting itself in the foot via mismanagement.

~~~
PKop
If the league agrees with you on this reasoning (I've heard it pushed a lot
recently so I'm sure some do) they will fail to address the real contributing
factor for many abandoning the league this year which is: the national anthem
protests, and to some degree the multi season string of domestic violence
amongst players and the leagues handling of theses issues.

Those are the 2 reasons I and a lot of the people I talk to have stopped
watching. Subpar product on field has never been discussed. The quality of
play seems he same as it has any other year (from some highlights I've seen...
but I haven't watched a game so I guess I wouldn't know).

~~~
icebraining
The jingoism in the US is always surprising. Why is the anthem even playing in
a national game? Why should the players even be forced into this display of
subservience before doing their job? It's not like they're representing the
national team! What a weird society.

~~~
carsongross
It is weird. I think it is in part because America is the first enlightenment
nation. We have no blood or deep history binding us together, so superficial
and melodramatic shows of solidarity become much more important in generating
a stable sense social identity. Think of it as a bunch of deracinated
individuals attempting to say "see, 'we' are a 'we'!"

The puritans were virtue-signallers par excellance, so that probably also
flows through to what you see today.

~~~
lostlogin
What do you mean by "first enlightenment nation"? I haven't heard this before.
I thought the ideas of the enlightenment were first in various European
countries but I don't think that's what you mean?

~~~
cardiffspaceman
My parse is, the USA is founded on documents and philosophy instead of the
personal power of a string of hereditary leaders and/or their overthrowers. I
also feel the comment ignores the nuance of the fact that France's claim to be
"An" enlightenment nation, if France wanted to make such a claim, is not so
different than that of the USA just because France might be on its 5th
Republic. How long has the L/E/F motto been the motto of France or French
citizens anyway? The other side of that nuance being that perhaps French
nationalism has a different flavor because it could be about different forms
of nation at different times.

------
raverbashing
This is good news

Entrenched business need to suffer pain to move.

In this case, not ESPN necessarily, but NFL and other content providers

~~~
Analemma_
It's probably good news in the long run, but there might be some severe pain
in the short- and medium-terms if you believe Ben Thompson's argument that
"sports is the linchpin holding the entire post-WWII American economy
together". You can read his reasoning at [https://stratechery.com/2016/the-
sports-linchpin/](https://stratechery.com/2016/the-sports-linchpin/) and
[https://stratechery.com/2016/tv-advertisings-surprising-
stre...](https://stratechery.com/2016/tv-advertisings-surprising-strength-and-
inevitable-fall/), but it basically goes like this: (statements in parentheses
are the companies that are going to be hurting bad if sports takes a dive)

\- Sports are the only reason left to tune in to live TV

\- Live TV is the only reason to have cable (telcos, cable networks)

\- Live TV is the only reason to buy TV ads on broadcast networks (broadcast
networks)

\- TV ads are the thing propping up a lot of "old-guard" companies (retailers,
CPG companies, car companies)

Essentially the old order is a mutually self-supporting structure propping
itself up (Retailers and CPG companies need TV to reach a mass audience, TV
needs these companies to buy ads), and sports is the thing holding it
together.

Again, if this falls apart it might be for the best in the end, but it's going
to be a bumpy time if telcos, retailers, large consumer goods companies, and
broadcast networks all get hammered at the same time. Collectively they
account for quite a bit of employment and GDP.

~~~
howeyc
I'm not sure I agree with point 4. Does the articles you link go into how that
connection is made?

Why are internet (such as youtube) ads not enough?

~~~
Analemma_
The second link explains it pretty well.

------
wheaties
The lack of NFL on Netflix and Amazon Prime is the only thing that makes me
reconsider cable. I haven't but it hurts. Sports bars just don't cut it.

~~~
fingerprinter
NFL gamepass does the trick most of the time. Includes RedZone as well.

Sometimes a game is blacked out which requires a VPN to see any specific game,
but RedZone and NFL Live are always good, as far as I've seen.

[https://gamepass.nfl.com/nflgp/secure/schedule](https://gamepass.nfl.com/nflgp/secure/schedule)

~~~
jrnichols
The NFL is one organization that really needs to give up on the media blackout
nonsense, and get on the streaming game. the US version of GamePass doesn't
cut it. Consumers really do want live games, not restrictions saying that they
can't watch anything until everything for the day has aired. They don't want
wireless carrier exclusives, or expensive satellite add-ons.

The NFL needs to learn from MLB. The MBL.tv app on the Apple TV is fantastic.

~~~
slantyyz
>> The NFL needs to learn from MLB. The MBL.tv app on the Apple TV is
fantastic.

MLB even via the web browser is fantastic. I love how it lets you pick the
video feed and audio feed (including radio) to customize what you're watching.

------
Animats
Major League Baseball's World Series is in progress. This didn't show up
prominently on major news sources. It's three screens down even on the New
York Daily News front page, after an article about former nightclubs of NYC.
Unless you're looking for baseball news, it's invisible online.

Median age of baseball fans is 53 years and climbing. When the median age of
horse racing fans passed 50 years, racetracks started closing. Baseball as a
big commercial sport probably has about a decade to live.

~~~
thinkingkong
Link to some supporting evidence?

~~~
infosample
Median viewer by age in 2014 - MLB 53 and trending older / NFL 47 and trending
older / NBA 37 and remaining steady.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/06/what-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/06/what-
the-nba-gets-that-the-other-big-sports-leagues-dont/)

------
MicroBerto
This isn't complicated. Just notice how all of the "neo-liberal" channels,
magazines, newspapers, and other publications are getting PUMMELED.

I want to read (and hear) about SPORTS, not get bombarded with human interest
pieces or have Colin Kaepernick and European soccer shoved down my throat.

And I'm clearly not alone.

~~~
selimthegrim
I don't think that word means what you think it means

~~~
todd8
Just to second this observation, see "neoliberal" in the Wikipedia.
Nevertheless, I understand the parent comment's point (just replace "neo-
liberal" with "left-leaning").

------
douche
Their programming has been getting progressively more terrible over the last
few years. I used to watch SportsCenter religiously, but I just can't stand
the idiocy, the blatant shilling for the leagues, the political advocacy, and
the puff pieces anymore. I watched it for game recaps, scores, and highlights,
and just as MTV doesn't show music videos anymore, ESPN doesn't really serve
that niche anymore. I'm not tuning in to watch Skip Bayless and Stephen A
Smith yell incoherently at each others, or suspected-murderer-cum-saint Ray
Lewis blather.

The one really great source of content they had going, Grantland, and by
extension, 30 for 30, they loused up because of internal political games.

------
heisenbit
Editing, bundling and distribution adds value. But only so much value.
Information flows these days more freely and on-demand. Quasi synchronous
distribution of news has moved to social media. Like newspapers and telco's
already cable companies are struggling to demonstrate they are adding value.
It did not matter so much in the past but now more importantly they are
loosing the eyeballs gatekeeper (and thus pricing power) position.

Sports funding is heading towards a brick wall unless it finds other revenue
streams. Which is in part possible as they have unique advertisement bearers.
But as the bundling is not as big the pricing power of individual athletes and
teams probably will be less as an aggregate.

------
hossbeast
So does this reflect a waning interest in sports, or are these subscribers
going elsewhere?

~~~
adamnemecek
Pretty sure it's both. I think that esports are kind of displacing traditional
sports for 'millennials'.

~~~
ZanyProgrammer
What the hell is an esport? Sport themed video games? I'm 37 and have never
heard of them.

~~~
dangrossman
People competing in multiplayer video games. With professional commentators,
multiple camera angles, replays, custom graphics, sponsors, players that earn
a living playing on professional teams with coaches, and everything else you'd
get on ESPN watching a football game. I don't think any sport-themed games are
played professionally though.

[https://www.twitch.tv/](https://www.twitch.tv/)

At the time of my comment, Twitch is live broadcasting the Hearthstone World
Championship, Duelyst Pro League, Vainglory Evil Eight, Starcraft II World
Championship Series Global Finals, and SMITE Pro League.

eSports tournaments have paid out over $100 million in prizes. Some of these
tournaments are being carried live on cable channels in other parts of the
world where they're more popular.

~~~
xentronium
> I don't think any sport-themed games are played professionally though.

FIFA is somewhat popular.

------
mbloom1915
ESPN overpayed for rights fees years ago not expecting viewership to decline
at all - nevermind so rapidly. I'm sure even at those high prices they make a
boatload off ad revenue but clearly their poor content and lack of focus on a
live internet outlet for games is killing them. Also, all their good employees
left!! FoxSports has most of them..

------
lordnacho
The question is whether there's anything really unusual going on here. It's
quite normal for a business, especially one not owned by a family, to just
keep growing and growing until it pops or levels out. The NFL as well as the
Premier League are seeing a dip in interest, after a long period of expansion.

The story of sports in the last couple of decades has been for more and more
money to be poured in, more and more content to be produced. Well obviously at
some point there won't be anybody left to sell to. Same goes with smartphones,
cars, and everything else that you can think of.

Now as for this particular market, what might have changed? Well perhaps the
way we watch sports has changed a lot recently. You can basically pull live
streams or highlights from any major sports event for free. With a little
finesse (developer tools -> select ad elements -> delete) you don't even need
to look at the pirate ads. In fact it can be easier to steal what you're after
than to get it legitimately.

I doubt that people just don't want to watch sports anymore. Culturally,
sports are deeply ingrained in modern culture. It's just that the necessity of
paying these huge salaries means the networks are forced to try to sell you a
huge production: pre-match buildups, player bios, yesteryear clips,
postmortems, and so on. When you really just want to see the highlights.

As a European based NFL fan, I was quite surprised when I actually watched the
super bowl in the US. It's damn near unwatchable. Constant ads. A play,
another ad. I don't know if they even break a sweat, there's so many
stoppages. But the highlights shows, I like those. Very high quality
production, actually.

A pet peeve of mine is the analysis. If you watch enough of it over various
sports, you realise the pundits do not really say anything interesting. They
have their draw-on-screen replays and such, but there's no real intellectual
backbone to it. And they often say things that are not substantiated by the
stats. It would be good if there were clear schools of thought in sports
critique.

------
mbloom1915
The WORST part of all of this is how Disney owns a great video streaming
company who built our a killer product for the MLB, and they can't apply it to
the ESPN ecosystem, whose video player is TRASH.

------
webmaven
Odd no one has mentioned this, but it seems likely that Google is going to
make a play disrupting the market for live event video. On one side is an
infrastructure play by expanding GCP to include many video-specific
capabilities for streaming, transcoding, distribution, etc., following their
acquisition of Anvato.

The other side would be helping all those producers to reach consumers
(expanding the Play Store?) and possibly doing a revshare on targeted video
advertising by expanding Adsense For Video or the equivalent.

The only question in my mind is whether Google intends to become the Netflix
of live streaming events, or if they will be content to remain a market-maker
(AdSense/AdWords has worked out rather well).

I probably have some details wrong, but clearly _something_ is going to happen
in this space. Check out this job posting for example, and draw your own
conclusions:

[https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=219675...](https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=219675001)

------
bogomipz
Sorry I'm a bit cable-consumer illiterate, can someone explain is ESPN a
separate premium channel these days on cable? It used to be I believe included
in the offering just above "basic cable." Is this no longer the case? I am
guessing you subscribe to just ESPN now? Otherwise there would be no way to
get exact subscriber loss numbers correct?

~~~
maxerickson
It's still a packaged channel. The article links the source of the
information, Nielsen’s estimates the subscriber counts for a variety of
channels.

~~~
ghaff
I think his point is that, if it were universally part of basic cable packages
(which AFAIK, it used to be), it shouldn't drop more than basic cable
subscribers overall. So I suspect, though don't know, that because of its
increased cost to cable operators, it may be in a higher tier package on some
systems that many people are not taking.

------
brentm
One thing is clear to me and that is there will be many wounded companies in
the battle for attention. Pro sports and the ancillary industries surrounding
it are not immune. Twenty years from now I believe we will look back at this
period as peak pro sports.

------
the_duke
Just as a side note, I would never, ever watch actual TV in the US if I had a
choice.

The way in which you constantly get bombarded with intrusive, disruptive and
annoying advertising is just ridiculous. I don't know how anyone can put up
with it.

------
chiefalchemist
That popping sound you hear is the sports bubble bursting.

That said, best I can tell, ESPN is heavily weighted with traditional sports.
For example, there's very little support of soccer. In shot, ESPN is like the
GOP. That is dated and failing fast.

~~~
EpicEng
You guys live in such a tiny bubble. Soccer is gaining popularity, yes. That's
great, but the NFL brought in 11.6B last year. The MLS? 533M. Hell, _Hockey_
brought in seven times that. The NFL is the largest professional sports league
on the planet.

Soccer is still very niche here and most people watching ESPN simply don't
give a crap about it (myself included.)

ESPN is failing because their commentary is going downhill and they're trying
to become a pop culture entertainment channel. More soccer would just hurt
them.

~~~
j1vms
Association football (as in football or soccer, depending on where you are),
through its various leagues, has much higher combined revenues than the NFL.
In fact, the European leagues alone have greater aggregate revenue than the
NFL. The NFL is of course one tightly-coupled organization, so comparison
might not be "fair game". And yeah the MLS is even quite small compared to
several of its counterparts throughout the world. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_le...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue)

~~~
jonathankoren
What's your point? Liga MX probably gets higher rating in the US than the
European top leagues combined and it's what second tier?

No one cares about watching a bunch of foreign countries with team names that
don't even make sense play games at inconvient times on a third tier cable
channel that makes it impossible to watch any single team because it's just
random matches on random days.

Seriously, its European sports culture doesn't fit American sports culture.
The league change teams year to year. The names are incomprehensible
(Juventis? "Children"? Is that what that means? Where is this team even from?)
The clock is idiotic (Count down, and stop the clock when play stops. This is
19th century technology people.)

Soccer's problem in the US is that it's niche and doubles down on its nichedom
(I'm looking at you Real Salt Lake and Dallas FC.) The other problem is that
US isn't good enough at it, and so we don't care. (Yes, USMNT's ranking has
steadily improved over the last 20 years, but it's not a powerhouse.)
Conversely, the only time most Americans pay attention to soccer is when the
Women's World Cup is on.

~~~
jonathankoren
As I suspected, Liga MX is the most watched soccer league in the US.[0]

[0] [http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-soccer-
baxter-201...](http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-soccer-
baxter-20160501-story.html)

------
draw_down
If fewer and fewer people are watching football each year, I'm unclear what
NFL's argument will be for charging more for the rights, or even the same
amount.

~~~
a3n
Maybe they just want to suck ESPN dry before they bother going to the next
phase.

------
meddlepal
The content on ESPN is just plain bad. I don't watch it, I don't read it. The
on my thing I goto ESPN for is to see various game and match scores.

------
flylib
what's overlooked is this is bad for consumers who are sports fans, if
Fox/CBS/ESPN/NBC cut back spending for sports rights and get less games, you
will be at the mercy of the sports leagues online services to watch content
who will have all the pricing power and will force you into season passes,
this is naive to think it will just affect ESPN and not the other networks,
content will be getting significantly more expensive in the future across
sports/television shows

~~~
isuraed
They won't have all the pricing power because sports will be competing with
each other for viewership.

------
JustSomeNobody
Call me crazy, but I have an idea and it's been kicking around in my head for
a while. But, how about a wireless broadcast system for video. I hear you
laughing, but wait. Give me a second. Have large broadcast towers that
broadcast out digital (ok, analog signals that are carriers for digital
output) signals that can be picked up by antennas in the home.

Sounds crazy, right?

It could broadcast sports, news, entertainment, you name it. You could even
finance it with product placements (strategically placed in the videos) or
just short ads (I like to call them commercials, but I am not sure why).

You all are pretty smart, does this sound like it has any way at all of
succeeding? Talk about cord cutting!

~~~
LAMike
Sounds possible, the question is will this be like a pirate radio for video?
Or are you trying to legally license content and broadcast it locally.
Hopefully I'm not replying to a parody post

~~~
JBReefer
You are replying to a parody post. He's describing broadcast television.

------
pjc50
Cord-cutting?

~~~
tzakrajs
Netflix popularized the phrase in an attempt to create a movement of people
who turn of their cable tv service (cut the cord) and switch to Netflix.

~~~
Retra
That doesn't sound accurate.

~~~
tzakrajs
It is, but they have taken steps to distance themselves from that marketing bc
of their strategy for MPVD.

------
LAMike
Prediction: Disney will buy Netflix and in 2021 buy the rights to the next 10
years of the NFL for 20 Billion, and raise the price of netflix to $25/month.

------
fbreduc
i blame these sports orgs, tyrants of content down to the minute
details...like dang, give alittle to get a lot

------
cdevs
PlayStation vue is my new cable, month to month suckas

~~~
kodablah
Lots of cable subscriptions are sans contract. PSVue could actually be
considered part of the problem: they pay what is asked by these broadcasters
and they toe the line with their requirements of how you can consume the
content.

------
s900608
Lightning

------
s900608
Death

