
ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More - puppetmaster30
https://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-cant-afford-monday-night-football/
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kodablah
This is going to be one of many reasons there might be a lockout in 2020 when
it's CBA renewal time. This is going to trickle down to the players. NFL can't
continue charging exorbitant access fees which means they will have to request
a serious reduction in the salary cap (the owners aren't going to be willing
to eat these losses).

I think this is great thing as the economics of large sports salaries have
been artificially inflated by surreptitiously charging end users for things
they might not want. As the internet continues to alter the landscape around
content choice, traditional providers are going to have no choice but to push
back on the networks which will, in turn, push back on the leagues which will,
in turn, push back on high sports salaries. I wouldn't expect any of the
limited sets of providers to accept any more price hikes from the sports
networks. Sports costs have to come back down to earth as consumption
specializes. It already has or will happen with other forms of content too.

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eru
Those salary caps are really weird. In 'socialist' Europe, we have no cap on
football players pay, and the sky doesn't come down.

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kodablah
Neither does the US in sports like baseball. Nobody said salary caps are the
problem, so it wouldn't be the cause of the sky falling. It's about the salary
amount, not whether it's capped.

Salary caps are about how your society values parity in whichever sport it is
applied to. Regardless of the salary cap argument, do expect this to affect
soccer as well, though further into the future. Right now many of those
salaries, bumps for league promotion, etc are based on similar revenue sharing
based on TV deals. And as US soccer eyeballs have grown, US TV deals have just
added dollars to the already existing and new TV deals in soccer. They are on
the upswing at the moment (kinda), but as fans get fed up with these draconian
viewership requirements they are going to have to fight for the same in-
between viewers (i.e. ones that would watch, but don't have to at all costs)
that US sports are vying for across new mediums.

I should clarify that it won't affect the top teams in these situations. Man U
and Barca and what not will still be fine due to ancillary sales and their
brand. Rather it will affect the vast majority of other teams. Some owners are
willing to take a hit, but only so much and for so long (except the super rich
ones for which their team is their play thing).

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eru
> Salary caps are about how your society values parity in whichever sport it
> is applied to.

It's a bit more complicated than that. In Europe you also usually have a
relegation system. If I remember right, leagues are usually closed in the US?

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bearcobra
I think it's worth noting that this site is run by Clay Travis, who generally
seems to be an outspoken ESPN critic on political grounds. It's also worth
noting that ESPN currently down to 87 million subscribers from a peak of about
100 million in 2011, so they haven't lost 30% of their subscriber base since
adding MNF in 2006.

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rhino369
I think it's a bad assumption to think the NFL will demand more money when
ratings and subscriptions are down.

ESPN just has to be the highest bidder. Someone has got to air the games.

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endtime
What happens if the highest bidder can't pay the NFL enough to make it
worthwhile?

I keep seeing pictures of half-empty stands behind kneeling football players,
and ultimately if the NFL destroys its value by alienating too many fans with
politics, there's no reason the entire business won't or shouldn't collapse.

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brian-armstrong
I'm always a little shocked when people admit outrage over kneeling players
but don't seem at all concerned that the sport endangers the players'
wellbeing. What do you think contributes to this empathy gap?

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disease
In the case of many, many people I have met in the Midwest: the answer is
racism. These people for some reason can't seem to grasp the simple fact that
players are protesting the fact that black people are being shot and killed
for either petty crimes or no crimes at all. You certainly don't have to agree
with their protest, but not being able to empathize reflects much poorly on
you than it does them.

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ZoeZoeBee
Here we have a glaring example of the issue. You use feelings instead of data
to make your point, the problem is your anecdotal assertions are not backed up
by reality. 90% of those killed by police were armed.

So far this year 15 African Americans have been killed while unarmed to 21
White Americans and the numbers are similar for the previous years where data
is available

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-
shoo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-
shootings-2017/)

[ Edited Below Rate Limited Reply ]

It is about Ratios WillyOnWheels except police aren't killing a bunch of
people for no apparent reason, so ratios will never be one to one based on
racial data alone.

More than 90% of police homicide victims were armed, the vast majority of them
were during the commission of a crime.

Do we want to go over violent crime stats and how that relates to the
likelihood you will be killed by police.

It is your half-assed attempt to apply normative statistics to a non-normative
issue that shines a light upon your ignorance and all who parrot the same
statement without ever delving into the data

Of course the numbers are irrefutable, so down vote away

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WillyOnWheels
It's about ratios.

There are about 220 million White Americans. Your data claims 392 White
Americans have been killed police in 2017 so far.

There are about 35 million Black Americans. Your data claims 190 Black
Americans have been killed by police in 2017 so far.

If Black Americans were killed by police hypothetically at the same rate as
White Americans, 62 Black Americans would be dead.

Do you see the huge disparity there?

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DamnYuppie
What you analysis fails to factor in is the number of crimes committed by
each. In that regard blacks commit far more crimes then whites.

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cannonedhamster
Or Blacks get charged far more than whites, or that Blacks are policed more
heavily, or that it has to do with poverty more than skin color, etc.

The issue is that the data can't be conclusive unless you have an issue where
you took two groups of people, gave them the same economic starting point,
gave them the same systemic disadvantage, same opportunities and then could
make a determination as to whether or not it has anything to do with culture.

Or you could easily look into the fact that economically there is a long
history of repressing people of color and that systemic collection of
repressions them still exist leading to the exact outcome expected, but still
blame those people for "not picking themselves up by their bootstraps". It's
as though you haven't seen Trading Places.

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jly
> But can ESPN exist as a network without NFL games?

Yes. It broadcasts < 20 NFL games per year. This is not a lot of airtime for a
24h sports network. It does spend a considerable amount of time _talking_
about NFL, but that can continue whether it broadcasts their games or not. It
has a 3-hour lead-in show on Sunday morning that gets sizable ratings while
broadcasting zero games that day. Nobody subscribes to ESPN/cable just for
MNF.

In contrast, ESPN broadcasts dozens of college football games per year and
spends probably an equal amount of time - or more - discussing those. It
spends about $1.4b per year in total on those TV rights which have lucrative
advertising and cable subscriber value. That's in addition to all of the other
sports ESPN broadcasts.

ESPN will bid less for MNF because they can't afford it any more but mostly
because the ratings don't fully justify the current cost. The overall success
of ESPN doesn't hinge solely on whether or not they broadcast any NFL games,
it's based on how sensible the price is for the rights they own. They have
plenty of other content to fill airtime that people watch and will pay a
reasonable subscriber price for, even if that's not quite as much as they
extract now from cable providers.

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acjohnson55
My thoughts exactly. Their problem is that cable TV as a whole has
increasingly viable substitute goods. But there's no reason ESPN can't play
that same game. I imagine it's only a matter of time before they put together
streaming packages they sell direct to consumer. But they'll ride the value
revenue till the wheels fall off first.

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toomuchtodo
The problem is ESPN was able to capture an outsized amount of revenue due to
cable TV providers bundling it with other channels, so you had large amounts
of people paying for it but not consuming it.

Cord cutters are upending the model, requiring ESPN to swim on its own without
subsidies; my personal opinion is that there aren’t enough sports fans to
support it except as an over the top app similar to what HBO GO is trying to
do.

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acjohnson55
Yeah, I agree with you that the gravy train is ending. But I think we mistake
the ability for a business to exist at its peak or grow continually for its
long-term viability. Look at the record companies. We're nearing two decades
since the MP3 revolution, and most of the companies are still around in some
form. ESPN, too, will have to adapt to a new post-bundle reality. But I see no
real threat to their overall status as _The Worldwide Leader In Sports_. I'm
not shedding any tears for them. They simply have to innovate.

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toomuchtodo
Sears is still around too, but just barely. These companies that have been
passed by innovation/disruption can exist in zombie form for a _long time_
until they finally die. See: Tower Records [+]

[+] [http://www.npr.org/2009/12/29/121975854/2006-and-the-
death-o...](http://www.npr.org/2009/12/29/121975854/2006-and-the-death-of-
tower-records)

~~~
acjohnson55
My point is simply that it's ESPN's underlying business model that is drying
up, but not its core asset of mindshare within the sports world, which remains
extremely strong. I'd argue that Monday Night Football is more or less
irrelevant from this perspective. They'll drop it to give themselves more
runway to figure out what's next.

At the end of the day, I don't really care much whether ESPN stagnates like
Sears or reinvents like Apple. But I think they live or die from a position of
strength, present storm clouds aside.

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saluki
I would like to see MNF go back to an over-the-air network.

MNF has a long tradition before moving to ESPN. There are lots of fans who
don't have a pay tv package that have been missing out on MNF.

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SpikeDad
That's an assumption that the NFL (or any sports league for that matter) do
things that are beneficial to fans as opposed to beneficial to the bottom line
of owners.

I can name a hundred things leagues have done to dilute and harm their
respective games in order to increase profits.

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poulsbohemian
Long time NFL GamePass subscriber here... no commercials, watch any game I
want when I want - it's a completely superior experience to cable / OTA. I get
that the NFL wants to maximize its revenue by selling rights, but they could
likely provide their own real-time streaming service and every football fan on
the planet would be happy to pay for it.

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apendleton
Yes, but nobody else would. Lots of the people paying for ESPN don't do so by
choice, they do so because it comes as part of their cable package whether
they watch it or not (this was me pre-cord-cutting).

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Digory
Gamepass is $75 right now.

Back of the envelope, every viewer of MNF would need to pay $200 just to keep
MNF and one wildcard game. More to get Sunday, Thursday, the playoffs and the
Superbowl. Easily $300 - $400 per viewer a year.

That's a hard sell.

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PatientTrades
ESPN's downward spiral perpetuated when their talk show hosts started pushing
their politic agenda and a liberal bias (Not saying a liberal bias is wrong,
but many people get turned off by it). Sports should be an escape from the
daily political circus and a time to relax and enjoy entertainment. FS1 is
quickly becoming the destination for many sports fans and ESPN will continue
to lose viewers if they don't change.

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RickJWag
It's no mystery why ESPN is going down.

They placed their emphasis on things other than sports. Sports fans will pay
for sports, not politics.

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daviddumenil
One option that other TV rights offerings have taken up is to split the
package into tiered offerings.

That would allow the NFL to maintain ESPN as potentially the top tier while
introducing new suitors with lower tiers and maintaining their revenue in
aggregate.

The losers in this scenario are the fans: forced to purchase several
subscriptions if they want to watch every game.

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exabrial
Once the NFL became political, a lot of hardcore fans stopped using it as an
escape from the madness ever present in the news and social media. Seeing
falling revenues doesn't surprise me.

The irony of my comment is I'm making plans to watch KC vs Denver... and it's
Monday.

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enraged_camel
>>Once the NFL became political

The numbers have been decreasing for the past 6 years. It has nothing to do
with NFL becoming political.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers-
not-r...](http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers-not-ratings-
viewers-2017-9)

~~~
gozur88
You're talking about two different things. He's talking about the NFL and
you're talking about ESPN. Definitely the politics has hurt the NFL, though
there's a lot of disagreement over just how much, but football is only a small
part of ESPN's offerings.

I'd be shocked if politics haven't hurt ESPN, too, but the effect is probably
completely swamped by changes in viewing habits and a reduction in Disney's
clout with cable companies.

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MrFantastic
Monday Night Football matchups are usually unimportant and/or lobsided.

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Feniks
2 Billion? That's a lot of brain injuries.

