
ESPN Can't Afford to Go on Like This - jsm386
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-28/espn-can-t-afford-to-go-on-like-this
======
kbos87
As a millennial consumer (rolling my own eyes but it's true) who cut the cord,
the biggest thing that pushed me toward doing so was seeing all of the sports
channels I was paying for and never had an ounce of desire to watch. The way
my cable company breaks out a mandatory $15 fee for ESPN specifically was the
nail in the coffin. Personally, sports programming was dragging the already
shaky value prop of the cable industry down much further.

~~~
Dan_Nguyen
ESPN is suffering from a two pronged death.

Like you, there's plenty of people who aren't interested in sports and aren't
interested in paying extra for a sports-bundled cable package.

Then there's people like me who like sports and don't like the programming on
ESPN. Two decades ago, ESPN reporting used to be legitimately great. They'd
talk about strategy, roster moves, interviews with players/coaches, etc. These
days it's TMZ with a sports focus. Even something as mundane as Tom Brady's
new haircut became a talking point on ESPN. The most recent example I have of
ESPN's decline was the recent NFL draft. It was nothing but baseless
conjecture on who's getting whom. It's a lot of random guesswork and hot takes
portrayed as journalism. The talking heads would just shout about the most
outrageous conjecture with no rationale.

ESPN has gotten complacent and they're paying for it now. In my opinion they
were relying on cable subscriptions when that's going away, and they haven't
invested in quality programming to keep the sports fans in the longest time.

~~~
BoiledCabbage
I've posted this elsewhere, but it's relevant here too. The problem that's
affecting ESPN is the same problem that's affecting newspapers and the same
root cause that's behind reality TV, and buzzfeed and the like. The issue is
the advertising model and the cost of creating content.

A number of people here complain about ESPN swapping to talking heads and
opinions. The reason for doing this is because it's significantly cheaper to
have people give opinions (everyone has an opinion) than the costs of doing
journalism. ESPN isn't swapping to these shows because they have worse
ratings, comparatively they get higher ratings.

Everyone talking about he glory days of the 90s and ESPN. That time is in the
past. People turn to the internet for sports updates and scores, as well as
highlight reels.

Ultimately, it's a failure in the "advertising model" of paying for content.
As long as content creators are paid a roughly flat fee per viewer, their only
incentives are to get more viewers and cut costs. Previously the market was
inefficient enough to sustain it, but now that there are alternatives the
inevitable is happening in all areas of content creation. Moving to cheap to
produce, easy to digest low substance, high viewership content.

Imaging you were running a restaurant, and you couldn't charge a customer per
meal. You only received a small flat rate for the number of customers who ate
there. You're not going to run a top end steak house where your payment
doesn't even cover the materials. You're gonna run a mcdonalds. Get as many
people in there for as cheap as possible. You have no choice, the money
doesn't support an intimate fine dining experience.

The that the same thing happening in all aspects of content creation. The
market is becoming efficient, and the only way to survive is low cost
production. Fast-food of content.

~~~
valuearb
You really missed the point, the article nailed it and your analogy is
entirely wrong. ESPN got a flat fee per user + the ability to advertise to
them. That gave them a huge financial incentive to overspend on the best
content they could get to build the greatest sports "steakhouse" of all time
and they did it. They spent up the wazoo on content. But the bottom is
dropping out of the model because of cord cutters so now they have change and
adapt to not getting flat fees for much longer.

~~~
white-flame
"Because of cord cutters" seems awfully accusatory here. The real confounding
factor from the article is that ESPN was being subsidized by fees from
customers who don't watch the channel, but still were paying high bundled fees
compared to other channels.

This is shifting to them receiving fees from those interested in their
programming, which seems much more reasonable in concept.

~~~
noxToken
It's not that cord-cutters are a bad thing, but isn't that the crux of ESPN's
financial woes? Nearly everyone and their mama had cable about a decade ago.
No matter if you were a 4 person family, living off campus where utilities
were covered, or in the military - people had cable. If you were fancy, you
had satellite programming. Then cord-cutting happened.

It is the fault of cord-cutters, because they aren't subsidizing the cost of
ESPN for people who want to watch ESPN. Then ESPN could not pivot quickly
enough to stop the bleeding. So yeah, ESPN is getting money from people who
are interested in sports, but it is because cord-cutters had enough.

------
bilbo0s
Many posts here fail to address one very salient point. And I don't think we
can overstate the importance of it.

Most "sports" fans are generally not "sports" fans. They are STANFORD fans. Or
Arkansas fans. Or Michigan fans. Or Packers fans. Or Golden State fans. Or
what have you.

The pure football fan is rare. As is the pure baseball or hockey fan. Most
fans are normally watching because they want to see their team. There
certainly is a sub-demographic that are sports fans. These are people who
watch every game of their chosen sport looking for tactics and strategy. Most,
however, are watching because Manchester United is playing. Or because they
like the Cleveland Cavaliers. Or they're fans of the Boston Red Wings. Or
maybe PSG. You get the idea.

What I'm getting at is that sports coverage would need be more personalized
than ESPN is capable of in its current form if it wants to be of value to
consumers today.

It boils down to this...

Why should one have to pay for ESPN if one doesn't watch it?

Firstly, if you are not a fan of any team or school or city at all, then
nothing in heaven or earth would get you to watch ESPN anyway. So making any
changes to appease non sports fans is a foolish endeavor. Those resources are
best deployed producing content that non sports fans would like to consume. I
don't pretend to know what that looks like, but I'm certain it doesn't look
like ESPN.

Now let's say for the sake of argument that a person is a fan of some team or
school or city. I'll take myself as an example. I might watch my alma mater
play a few football games, and if they go to the basketball tournament then I
watch that. Sometimes I watch the super bowl, maybe, but I have never watched
a Halftime show.

Now... why would a "sports" fan like that, which is the majority of us, pay
$15 to $20 a month (MANDATORY) for an entire year when they only want to watch
MAYBE 6 to 12 games between football and basketball that are usually not on
ESPN anyway??? Answer: They shouldn't pay. And I'd imagine most of them won't
in the future.

ESPN will need to offer more customization. Be it through live streaming or
time shifting or whatever. I'm not an expert, but I think the days of forcing
a $20 fee on people every month for non personalized sports coverage are just
not sustainable long term.

~~~
VLM
"Most "sports" fans are generally ... "

boomers. And they're economically dying out as they retire and the medical
industrial complex wrings out the last of their money. Plenty of things cost a
multiple of ESPN's cost and are doing fine because they sell well to young
people, think of the stereotypical $100+ cell phone service. The vast majority
of ESPNs viewers remember when they heard JFK was shot, their viewers are not
the Challenger explosion or 9/11 generations.

Baseball has died among youth and the average fan age is now going up more
than a year per calendar year. NBA average fan is much younger, like middle
aged gen-x. The majority of PGA viewers are nursing home age, golf is so dead,
so cringy 90s/00s. The youngest sports are major league soccer and hockey
about a third millennial or younger for both, the only pro sports of 2050 are
going to be spanish speaking soccer and the few remaining northern state
whites watching hockey, the other sports are dead when the boomers are gone.

There is also a compression effect not seen in the past such that the NFL
superbowel now gets over 10x the viewers of the world series. The average
baseball game has fewer viewers than my county has residents. The average NBA
game is only slightly better. In the old days there was a "wide world of
sports" concept which is already dead. There isn't a "sports" industry
anymore, there's american pro football, soccer for the spanish speakers,
hockey and nascar for the legacy being eliminated whites, basketball for the
blacks, and the also-ran sports that statistically no one watches.

~~~
bilbo0s
What?

No one in England is going to stop watching Manchester United games to start
watching Chicago Blackhawks games, or even to watch some sucky MLS game.
That's not happening man. Get that out of your head.

No one in China, Europe, the MidEast or Brazil is gonna stop watching
basketball and start watching some sucky hockey game. That ain't happening
either.

Do you have any idea the YoY revenue growth global sports leagues like PL or
the NBA enjoy at the moment?

What you are saying may happen, MIGHT happen in your small neighborhood...
though I doubt even that... but it certainly isn't gonna happen on a scale
large enough to actually make the money that PL makes in a year. In fact, I
doubt that American soccer and American hockey will even make the money
something like the NBA pulls out of just China. Let alone global basketball in
general.

Basically, you need cheap, accessible sports to challenge the global soccer
and basketball behemoths. Something that could be played barefoot in a field.
Or you need to JOIN the global soccer and basketball behemoths.

But yeah... sports leagues like American football, American hockey, or
American soccer stand little to no chance of challenging those more global
leagues growth wise. Best outcome for them would be to somehow link into those
behemoths. And I can only see American soccer being able to do that... MAYBE?

~~~
VLM
Decades of experience in the USA indicate that no matter how popular soccer is
internationally, the locals in the USA don't care. See also to a much lesser
extent, nascar vs F1.

In the short to medium term I don't think the business entity known as ESPN or
MLB can survive USA cutting the cable cord. You're probably correct that
someone is going to buy most of the pieces at the bankruptcy auction and
probably right for example that baseball will be popular in Japan and central
america yet that won't matter for folks in the USA who will not be watching.

------
nnfy
I don't watch sports networks of any kind, but I've seen anecdotes online that
ESPN, especially sportscenter, is losing viewers because of politicization of
content, where people just want sports talk.

~~~
endorphone
_is losing viewers because of politicization of content_

They're losing viewers because we're turning away from television. That much
is obvious to all. There are many ways to view, every event has countless
streams, we get our sports news in granular form on our mobile, etc.

However in the wake of that, some very sad people have decided to get on their
soapbox and claim that they're really declining because they don't parrot
whatever their personal position is. I've seen these people claim that ESPN is
faltering because they have a problem with players who rape or beat women.
Others -- the same ones who say that they don't want it to be "preachy" \--
get up in arms if ESPN isn't preachily attacking the Colin Kaepernick's of the
world. Etc.

So as is often the case, the most partisan of all are the ones claiming that
everything is some crazy partisan slant.

~~~
brewdad
I don't have a problem with Harold Reynolds (technically no longer with ESPN)
because he sexually harasses women (I do, but I'm not changing the channel
solely based on that). I have a problem with him because he's an idiot and I
lose brain cells watching him. The same is true of so many network talking
heads.

~~~
endorphone
I later saw how terribly I worded that, however regarding the sexual assaults
I was mostly talking about how extensively and forcefully ESPN covered
incidents of sexual assault / domestic assault / etc of players in various
sports (particularly football). To a certain contingent, doing so was being a
"SJW", and many of that group decried it as leftist or liberal, absurdly.

------
andr3w321
The problem with sports broadcasting nowadays is twofold

1\. Viewing games costs too much

2\. The commentary for said games sucks

I'd happily watch a random MLB game on a Tuesday, but sorry I am not going to
spend $113/season to watch on MLB TV. The NFL is the worst. If you're out of
the US you can purchase and stream games for $200/season or so, but for in the
US you have to have directTV to get all the games which isn't even offered for
many possible subscribers or spend $30 in beer/food for lunch at a sportsbar
with no audio for your game. If I'm at home I have the choice of the local
game and maybe one other random national game and if both of these games are
blowouts I'm tuning out.

People want to watch their team play. They don't even mind commercials as long
as there's not TOO many of them. The NFL is reaching their limit. NFL
viewership has peaked. 2016 ratings declined 8%. Watching a touchdown followed
by a commercial followed by a kickoff touchback followed by a commercial is
too much. The only way to grow a sport is to grow viewership and fans and the
only way to do that is make content cheap, easy to access and enjoyable to
watch which brings us to the commentary.

The future of sports and money in sports is in the live aspect and in the
commentary. I want to watch a football game commented by Conan O'Brian or
Snoop Dogg or even some entertaining twitch or youtuber not Al Michaels and
Phil Simms. Why not collect royalties on commentary streams? Let 1000s of
people pay for the rights to comment on an NFL game and let the viewers decide
who they want to listen to commentary from. Its absurd that in 2017 people
still resort to reddit.com/NFLstreams or NHLstreams to watch some low res game
with pop up ads everywhere with commentary from two old white guys.

Once viewership increases, ad money will increase which would offset the
streaming fees the leagues would be missing out on by providing their content
for free. If ESPN would simply show sports and provide interesting commentary
from interesting individuals I would watch around the clock.

~~~
tells
> The future of sports and money in sports is in the live aspect and in the
> commentary. I want to watch a football game commented by Conan O'Brian or
> Snoop Dogg or even some entertaining twitch or youtuber not Al Michaels and
> Phil Simms. Why not collect royalties on commentary streams? Let 1000s of
> people pay for the rights to comment on an NFL game and let the viewers
> decide who they want to listen to commentary from. Its absurd that in 2017
> people still resort to reddit.com/NFLstreams or NHLstreams to watch some low
> res game with pop up ads everywhere with commentary from two old white guys.

Over a decade ago, I was channel surfing and stumbled upon an English Premier
League (edit: may have been a lower tier matchup) match cast by 2 shit-talking
fans, one from each team. I thought it was absolutely genius and while having
no interest in either team or even the sport, I was thoroughly entertained.

------
tells
I think the criticisms of ESPN and the advent of cord-cutting is severely
missing a larger issue at hand. Sports are just another form of entertainment
for people. I can probably safely say that the decline of ESPN first started
with the rise of well-produced TV shows on HBO, AMC, Netflix, etc. I believe
it's more than just correlation.

Just like a captivating TV series, sports demands your attention to the
details and personal stories for you to become a fan. However, sporting events
take hours to ingest at a time and the outcome leave many disappointed. People
who have money to spend are typically people with fewer hours to allocate for
entertainment. With the rise of quality TV shows that take one hour to
consume, how do sports like baseball stand a chance at gaining new viewers?

The best thing ESPN has going for it are its 30 for 30 documentaries. A well
produced documentary series. However, documentaries generally don't bring in
huge sums of cash. If they can pivot to a create must-see dramatic show with a
sports theme, they may have a chance.

~~~
crabasa
> I can probably safely say that the decline of ESPN first started with the
> rise of well-produced TV shows on HBO, AMC, Netflix, etc.

You are remarkably wrong here. In fact, live sports has come to completely
dominate TV over the last 20 years. 9 of the top 10 most watched TV shows in
2016 was a sporting event:

[http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2016/tops-
of-2016...](http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2016/tops-
of-2016-tv.html)

I would argue the opposite: that "prestige" TV shows are a response to live
sports by networks that don't have NFL or NBA rights.

~~~
tells
The 10 most watched TV shows doesn't give as much info as the top 10 primetime
tv programs. 7 out of the 10 shows that are aired regularly are NOT sports.
These one off events are big for the networks that have the rights to air them
but they exist for one day and do not obtain ownership of the content
afterwards. On the other hand regular programs last for approximately a dozen
episodes or more and can still maintain viewership with reruns. Other than the
NFL, there is nothing that has a comparable draw.

But that diverges from my main assertion that with less time available to
working people, people prefer to follow a story with familiar characters in a
1-hr window rather than have to watch a 3-hour affair between two random
teams.

------
vr46
I'm seeing strong parallels between bundled channels that people don't
necessarily want and Monty Python's Spam Sketch,

Cable Companies: "Well there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and
spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage
and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg and
spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and
spam; or lobster thermidor aux crevettes, with a mornay sauce garnished with
truffle paté, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam."

Consumers: "Have you got anything without spam in it?"

Cable Companies: "Well, there's spam, egg, sausage and spam. That's not got
MUCH spam in it."

Ad nauseam...

------
tomohawk
Sports is one of the very few things people can totally devote themselves to
without being threatened. You can talk about sports at work without worrying
about getting fired. You can talk about sports at a party and not lose
friends.

At least you used to be able to.

The more sports wanders from just sports into social, political, or even
partisan issues, the less it is actually about sports.

Associating these other things with sports destroys the value. It makes it so
sport is no longer an escape, but instead becomes yet another politicized
venue.

Here's some other interesting theories as to why ESPN is having trouble.

[http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/26/the-real-story-behind-
es...](http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/26/the-real-story-behind-espns-
wednesday-massacre/)

~~~
acchow
People also talk about music without worrying about getting fired. And
traveling. And normal, everyday things in life.

I rarely talk sports with anyone...

~~~
megablast
And movies. And books.

In fact, there are only a few things you can't and shouldn't talk about at
work.

~~~
humanrebar
> there are only a few things you can't and shouldn't talk about at work

Just the most important things in life: family structure, pregnancy, race,
God, health issues, etc. List all the things that are inappropriate to talk
about in an interview. Then realize they come up again when you are a
candidate for a new promotion or transfer.

Plus, increasingly _employers_ are taking positions on things. We don't
exactly call them out on that.

------
douche
It's symptomatic of the general decline in television across the last couple
of decades.

MTV - when was the last time you saw a music video?

History - Apparently "History" now includes bizarre religious crackpottery,
ancient aliens, and idiots buying and selling things in Las Vegas.

A&E - "Arts and Entertainment" is apparently all about terrible people and
Honey Boo-Boo.

Discovery - Remember science and wildlife documentaries? Neither does the
Discovery Channel.

TLC - ugh. Dwarfs and tattoos and people with way too many children.

SyFy - We can't even spell anymore, and SHARKNADO!

~~~
humanrebar
I don't actually watch the "channel", but The Expanse is produced by SyFy and
is excellent.

And, yeah, Duck Dynasty and Cake Boss are nowhere near where A&E and TLC were
when they launched, but they are family-centered sitcoms, more or less, in a
time with a lack of those.

I won't defend Honey Boo Boo or that sort of thing, though.

Anyway, Disney is now the company of Star Wars and Marvel, not just Mickey and
princesses. If companies want to take a risk and change their brand, I guess
it's their right. There's tons of content out there if we don't like it.

~~~
ewheeler
Technically, The Expanse is financed and produced by Alcon Television Group,
which is a division of Alcon Entertainment. Certainly having SyFy on board for
US broadcast distribution is a big boon for the series, but I suspect a lot of
the series' excellence is due to Alcon and not SyFy

------
jjcm
I wonder if the prominence of esports is cutting into ESPN as well. Hell just
yesterday there were over a million viewers on Twitch[1], in large due to a
major esports tournament for dota. League of Legends regularly hits those
numbers and beyond for their tournaments.

In the past esports were kinda sideshow attractions, but now the production
quality and audience numbers are quickly catching up to traditional sports. On
top of that their distribution models are more consumer friendly. I'm sure
there's overlap of people who watch both, but I wonder if the next generation
of kids will defer to esports over traditional ones.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/68heiu/600k_viewers_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/68heiu/600k_viewers_wow/)

~~~
csydas
Probably not like you're thinking. ESPN already has picked up esports and
typically the esports tourneys don't overlap with major sports events. This is
likely a conscious decision on the part of Riot, Valve, and so on, to ensure
they're not competing with audiences.

ESPN has tried to adapt to esports, but it met resistance from its audience
and its own commentators not really accepting it. There was this famous career
ending rants [1] that is just one of many from the ESPN commentators - viewer
comments usually don't stray too far from such thoughts.

esports fans seem pretty distinct from the core fans of ESPN, and ESPN
deciding to cover it on their sub-channels (ESPN2, etc) is their attempt to
reach out to those numbers and to get eyes on the channel. The internal
rejection of esports doesn't help at all for ESPN who I'm sure is dying for
the kinds of numbers that the Twitch and Youtube events get, especially since
there is so much down-time between matches with virtually no advertisements,
which likely makes the business side of ESPN wince quite a bit.

But no, I don't think esports is causing problems for ESPN in the sense that
it's cutting in; ESPN would be HAPPY to get on the esports train if they
could.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzL21gHwt1I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzL21gHwt1I)

------
bitL
I read on some forums that guys were canceling ESPN due to too many female
presenters commenting on sports they weren't passionate/knowledgeable about,
and pushing political agenda. Could that be a compounding factor for a major
loss of subscribers where many viewers decided it's no longer worth watching
and found more active outlets in their spare time?

~~~
soundwave106
Generally speaking, the only forums I'm on that has mentioned the decline of
ESPN have said nothing about politics or talking heads. I'm surprised they are
such a huge talking point in this thread.

Instead, it's the huge decline of coverage and quality. These forums are
devoted to a more niche form of sports (open wheel auto racing). In the 1980s
and 1990s ESPN coverage of these sports was actually very extensive. No
longer.

There was a time when one of ESPN's strengths was a _huge_ coverage of a wide
array of sports, including many niche sports. From my perspective, a lot of
the niche (or even not so niche) sports has effectively moved off of the
network for one reason or another. On the main channels, cheap programming
where talking heads yell at each other have taken its place.

Factor in this, and then factor in the people who got ESPN even though they
weren't sports people to begin with, and now add in the cord-cutting movement.
It's easy to see why ESPN's in trouble.

------
jgalt212
Why is ESPN under such pressure, but sports franchise values seem to be still
increasing? Aren't they competing/sharing the same dollar?

~~~
xienze
Who says this isn't the first sign of the bubble bursting?

~~~
adventurer
Comcast keeps reporting subscriber growth (almost 300k last quarter). People
are definitely watching sports on tv, just not ESPN. You need more than one
large, bloated, continuously failing channel to convince me that we're at the
beginning of giant slide, but it's not like you will ever predict that anyway.

~~~
narrowrail
According to the wikipedia entry on cord cutting:

 _A TDG study showed nearly 101 million U.S. households subscribed to
television at the industry 's peak in 2011, but the number would fall below 95
million in 2017._

------
theprop
It looks like ESPN's "$6.4 billion in 2014" in profit is pre-tax, so it
generated $4+ billion in cash that year leading an analyst to value ESPN at
$50 billion three years ago (
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/04/29/the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2014/04/29/the-
value-of-espn-surpasses-50-billion/#28f7088561f5) )

Probably not anymore... It does point to Netflix eventually making a lot of
money and being worth a lot more than it currently is. Netflix doesn't have ad
revenue (in addition to such huge consumer fees, ESPN had nearly $4 billion a
year in ad revenue in 2014 at least) but its subscription fees are comparable
to ESPN. Better for Netflix is its aggressive move into its own content
generation. If it was "merely" a way to watch other companies content, it
would be at the mercy of those content owners the way ESPN pays a king's
ransom for NFL, NBA, etc. games. ESPN's strategy to focus on opinion (original
content) makes a lot of sense in terms of retaining fans and having a business
that could survive losing broadcasting rights for a lot of sports.

While sports team/network owners could go direct to fans fairly easily these
days with 1000 tv channels and everyone having "Smart" TVs, they're probably
better off under the ESPN umbrella both as a bundle of many sports and through
aggregated ad sales.

------
easilyBored
_It pays too much for content and costs too much for consumers._

It paid too much because it could even more for it on resale. Bigger fool.
They'll realign as contracts start to expire. Meanwhile they had a great run,
until people awoke up to the scam.

------
elmerland
Why would they make less money by moving to a streaming model? I would imagine
more people would go and buy just that instead of getting a cable package.
They can also start charging a reasonable amount based on what it costs to
produce the content.

If right now they rely on people paying for the channel but not watching it.
Wouldn't switching to a streaming model mean that advertisers would be more
interested because more people were actually watching the channel and saw ads?

~~~
bmh_ca
ESPN is paid by cable subscriber, regardless of whether they watch sports.

Most people (>50% iirc) don't watch sports, but because of the arrangement
described above most cable subscribers end up subsidizing it.

As a result: Selling sports directly to people who watch it dramatically
undercuts their business model.

~~~
coldcode
ESPN's contracts forbid it to sell to anyone other than a Cable system.
Otherwise it would be selling direct like Netflix. This is the terrible deal
that major sports networks forced on it (and it took on anyway). Some day all
that massive money will vanish and sports leagues will be gasping for income.

~~~
protomyth
> ESPN's contracts forbid it to sell to anyone other than a Cable system.

In Major League Baseball's case, they reserve that right for themselves. Of
course, every baseball team also has its own local contract or network.

I get the feeling that ESPN is a middleman that is increasingly being seen as
not adding enough value for the price by its subscribers.

------
epynonymous
could not rtfa because of the china gfw, but i'd venture a guess that netflix
and all the other download based services are hurting cable sales. anyone who
cannot move in this direction will face declines in revenue. everything i need
i can stream. i dont want a potpouri of channels, just give me nba, or nat
geo. to be fair, espn does have a streaming service, but i've been out of the
us for too long to understand it. it was probably too late to the game and it
probably has complicated rules if you own cable already where you'd get
charged twice if you wanted it or had to go through some cable company's
crappy app to get the stream.

i guess the other thing is the inflation set by all these pseudo celebreties
or ex-players, they must have demanded a lot. some of these guys are worth it,
but probably not most of them.

for the record, i used to watch sportscenter everyday before work, and i'd
often times watch it twice in row just to see all the highlights and witty
commentary. sure i sometimes had to flips channels through the hockey or golf
highlights, but most if the other content was good. i enjoyed the shows like
pardon the interruption and nfl countdown, so there was quality content. now
when i take business trips back home, i still turn on and enjoy sportscenter,
so i dont think it's the content, probably more so the packaging and over
pricing of the package, look at the nba tv deal.

laying off should help reduce long term costs, but that doesnt solve their
primary issue which is where the industry is going due to new tech innovations
from netflix, hulu, etc. nba league pass is a great example, i just want to
watch nba, i get access to all games, post game interviews, and commentary. i
can imagine this being the future, more customized content, deeper, not a
melting pot of sports news.

------
__Joker
There is also bundling of other sports. As a fan of, say, NBA , I really don't
care about all the NFL broadcast. Still those prices paid by me.

Future to me seems, where there will be option to subscribe or buy ticket to
individual events like, say only this weekend's match between team A and team
B. And it seems it is more and more possible.

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spcelzrd
Kind of buried near the end of the article, but as ESPN moves away from sports
reporting in favor of opinion there might be some great opportunity for
alternative reporting. Deadspin comes to mind.

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grecy
"Watching professional sports is just watching _other people_ have the time of
_their_ lives".

If you have cable, you are paying for that privilege.

~~~
gribbly
Comes close to what my father-in-law says about porn, 'why watch other people
having fun ?'

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user5994461
Damn. I thought this had something to do with the Sony Playstation Network.

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losteverything
People learn to love sports growing up. My millenial children didn't and they
won't/ didn't pick it up as an adult.

Anytime i see a Bloomberg article on hn i read it.

