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ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It (bloomberg.com)
From a report: ESPN has lost more than 12 million subscribers since 2011, according to Nielsen, and the viewership erosion seems to be accelerating. Last fall, ESPN lost 621,000 subscribers in a single month, the most in the company's history. In some respects, the challenges facing ESPN are the same that confront every other media company: Young people simply aren't consuming cable TV, newspapers, or magazines in the numbers they once did, and digital outlets still aren't lucrative enough to make up the deficit. But while most of ESPN's TV peers have courted cord cutters -- CBS and Turner Broadcasting, for instance, are allowing anyone to watch some of their March Madness games online for free -- ESPN's view cuts against the conventional wisdom in new media. Essentially, ESPN was hoping that sports will remain unaffected by the growing trend of "cord-cutting." The article adds: If a combination of hockey, low-wattage college sports, and cricket doesn't quite seem worthy of the Worldwide Leader in Sports, that's by design: ESPN doesn't want its new product to draw viewers away from its very profitable cable channel. And, as John Kosner, the network's head of digital and print media notes, when ESPN began broadcasting in 1979, plenty of people doubted whether anyone would want to watch bowling at two in the morning. "I was in college when ESPN started," he says. "I felt sorry for the people working there."
and I couldn't justify the $80 a month for the basic package plus the $15 for some sports package plus $5 for some other package that gave me access to the games I want. So I just cancelled cable all together. I'd be happy to pay $15 or even $20 a month for just ESPN or some other pared down package that has sports and not the other crap. As it stands now they'd rather have none of my money than less of it.
This has happened in several other industries as well. If a market (in this case TV content and sports broadcasts, in particular) moves in a new technological direction, to stay competitive, you have to adapt. Print media has been learning this for a while and still doesn't have it totally figured out - but they are learning. Take what they have done and improve upon it.
--I like turtles...
I thought ESPN had wormed their way into every deal so that even if you didn't want them, you were getting them.
Wouldn't they then be one of the ones 'most' affected by random people cutting the cord?
They should have seen this coming years ago.
There's no reason that ESPN couldn't be the go-to source of high quality online streams of sporting events, along with very lucrative ways of monetizing them, if they'd actually thought about this a few years ago.
Cord cutting is here to stay. Cord cutters desperately want legal live sports, and are willing to pay for it, but until that happens, they will continue streaming wherever they can find a feed.
I have ESPN as part of my cable package. I don't watch ESPN. I don't care at all about ESPN. Yet somehow because I have a package I'm getting ESPN. And when the future changes such that I can cancel my cable package and get the channels I actually watch a' la cart, ESPN would be the last channel I subscribe to.
And I suspect a lot of people are like me: we have ESPN, we're paying for ESPN, but we don't watch ESPN. And I strongly suspects ESPN knows this. So it makes sense ESPN would be worried; suddenly the unsustainability of their economic position--being subsidized by millions of viewers like myself--will be exposed.
I've read this over a year ago with huge subscriber losses.
ESPN has three major problems;
1) The myoptic focus on only the Biggest of Big-City Sports Teams and the Biggest of Big-NCAA teams.
2) The need to stretch 2 hours of actual "sports" information into 24-hours of Cable Talking-Heads shouting matches (with the fake "outrage" purveyors.)
3) The Internet.
Number 2 is the immediate problem. It is just not interesting to hear the same talking-heads argue about the same tiny nugget of sports trivia 40 times a day.
Number 3 is what will kill them off in the future.
The big players are shooting themselves in the foot via forced bundling and forced big-package deals. There are new and interesting niche sports that the younger generation is learning about, and these sports often offer consumer-friendly viewing options to gain and keep new customers.
The Internet offers too many alternatives to keep doing it the big-bundle way if you want to grow.
Table-ized A.I.
It's been covered at Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kotak...
Do you have ESP?
ESPN decided to be a soap box for SJW bullcrap instead of sticking to sports. Reap what you sow.
I'm in Europe, so it's not ESPOn, but we occasionally watch sports on television. Aside from the fact that young people watch less television, there is also a serious disconnect with what viewers want. I'll be the same applies in the US.
One example: One of the sports that we watch is tennis. I play tennis. We know how the game goes. A couple of years ago, there was a technical problem, and we could hear the game itself, the crowd, the referee, the players - but no announcers. Bliss . It was almost like being there - heck, with the camera placement, it was probably better than being there.
The announcers talk about the obvious (yes, thank you, I know that was a fault). They gossip (yes, isn't his wife wearing a nice dress). They blather (I don't care what the weather at the venue was like yesterday). They might be marginally helpful for someone who doesn't know the sport, but surely most people watching an event do, in fact, know what's going on.
Television here almost always has two audio channels (often used for alternate languages). We wrote to the station, told them of our very happy experience, and suggested that they use one audio channel for the usual experience with announcers, and one channel for just the live "you are there" experience. Surprisingly, we did receive a response: They were insulted. Their announcers provide a valuable service, and they would certainly never broadcast a sports events without that added value.
That's only one anecdote, but I think it's typical: The people in the broadcast world know what we want, and we had damned well better like it. That is at least part of the reason why their viewer numbers are tanking.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
If you aren't working to make your existing product obsolete, someone else is.
ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really In It
Just sayin.
-Styopa
They have the best dodge-ball tournaments, the announcers are hilarious, and the actions is pretty good too.
I think that ESPN's decline in viewership is, at least in part, due to its own success. It is killing off the fan base for sports like college football by dictating fan-unfriendly game times.
I have seen this at my own alma mater. College students don't care about attending college football games, especially when the games start at 11 a.m. or noon, instead of the traditional 1:30 p.m. start time thirty years ago. Older fans hate it too, but we are helpless. The only customer that the major conferences care about any more is ESPN; the paying fans don't come close to matching the TV money that the athletic department receives. Over the years, more and more of my friends have simply given up. They watch the game on TV, because of course every game is now televised. Why go to a stadium and get treated like an annoyance when you can have better seats at home? But if you are sitting at home, it's very easy to flip to another channel if the game gets boring. Fan loyalty fades away.
The fan base is getting older and smaller. There aren't enough young fans coming out of college who give a flip about what ESPN has to offer, and as the existing fan base ages out, viewership declines. For my own part, I would love to see a return to fan-friendly college games, but ESPN will have to let loose of the college sports pursestrings first.
Another reason ESPN has seen a hemorrhage of viewers recently is their dive into politics and the decidedly one-sidedness of it.
Some people have kept their cable subscriptions just for sports. Others that I know have given up sports altogether, including buying tickets for games citing cost of both cable and game tickets as the reason. They go cold turkey and then feel pretty great except for missing out on the office bracket pools etc.
More people watch the fish tank at Leo's pet store.
I had a sucky sig.
I avoid ESPN at all cost. I'm a cable TV subscriber, with multiple TVs, and an avid sports fan. I can't stand ESPN due to its love affair with the NBA and NFL. It's constant football talk in the middle of the baseball season. It's NBA talk when nothing exciting is going on. ESPN is not a sports network. They cover the minimum amount of sports other than football and basketball. I'll watch NFL games every Sunday, but I don't need to hear about the NFL draft for three months before.
Their "personalities" are pretty awful too. Turn on any ESPN sports talk show and you'll find yelling back and forth that I could easily hear at my local sports bar coming from two drunk idiots next to me.
ESPN is just a bad product on a declining platform.
If you like to watch knuckle dragging apes, be my guest, and watch ESPN.
People pay $80 a month?! For TV?!? Do you even watch it?
and I couldn't justify the $80 a month for the basic package plus the $15 for some sports package plus $5 for some other package that gave me access to the games I want. So I just cancelled cable all together. I'd be happy to pay $15 or even $20 a month for just ESPN or some other pared down package that has sports and not the other crap. As it stands now they'd rather have none of my money than less of it.
This already exists. SlingTV offers ESPN/2/3 plus TBS/TNT for $20/month (or $14/month with T-Mobile for the first year), in addition to some other cable channels. This also grants access to live/replayed games on the website and phone app.
and I plan never to break this record. Watching sports on TV just is not something I ever have enjoyed or ever will enjoy. If everyone at ESPN was eaten alive by cannibals tomorrow, I wouldn't even notice.
When I can now watch all the highlights for every single game for any sport I wish to follow online (either youtube or directly from the sport league's web site), why would I ever choose to watch them on ESPN, where I not only am not in control of which highlights I'm watching and when I have to watch them, but also have to pay to watch them and listen to ESPN's shitty "commentary"?
People still pay for cable TV, newspapers and magazines? They've never heard of teh intarweb?
Signed,
young people.
#DeleteFacebook
Now the 20/20 format changes it all. Just one innings per team. Just 120 balls (pitches) per team. Guaranteed result for 99% of the matches. Heart attack inducing last overs. More runs scored in 20 overs than in the entire test match over five days.
Cricket used to be played in the USA. The cricket hall of fame is actually in Hartford, CT. So it would be wise of ESPN to promote cricket in USA too.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
ESPN is also bringing this upon themselves. Sure they have actual games but outside of that, ESPN has become unwatchable. Sportscenter used to be great. You could watch for hours because they just showed highlights. Now, they show the Cavs game, warriors then 15 minutes of talking heads discussing some stupid topic. I timed it one day and 10 minutes into sportscenter, they had shown highlights from a grand total of 3 games.
People pay $80 a month?! For TV?!? Do you even watch it?
I used to pay $59 for ~60 channels -- when they raised it to $69, I decided enough was enough and switched to over-the-air + Netflix.
It turns out that the over-the-air digital channels look far better than the equivalent cable channels, the cable company used so much compression that digital compression artifacts were clearly visible.
..because soon, that's going to be the only place people will watch ESPN.
Mission: To provide products that consume time and energy as entertainingly as permitted by the laws of thermodynamics.
People are starting to feel disgusted by the way the continuously hype up certain players and come up with any obscure facts possible to justify their messages. They just can't stop talking and hyping Lebron James all the time and try to brain wash the audience about his abilities. The audience just choose not to watch.
They also claim their analysis experts who would never get anything right and act like everything they say is fact. They all also have this ego to them that are such turn-offs for viewers. They're extremely uptight and seem to just say things to align with what their bosses tell them to say.
When you've got Rachael Nicols and Brian Windhorst on your team and marketing them as your experts, you're fucked.
ESPN's also owned by Disney. They're not there to give any insightful analysis or anything educational. They're there to sell you fantasies.
Honestly believe that the integrity of the game is being impacted because of how professional sports leagues feel they're compelled to make their TV partners happy....
In Canada they are raising the prices on bars/pubs/taverns/etc to have these sports channels running, and many of them are saying they're going to cut back drop their subscriptions to sports channels as a result.
Personally I could care less if the sports channels disappear. If it is seriously fucking important to watch a sports game in real time, go fly to the sporting event and watch it live and support your team. If not, then quit bellyaching over the cost of Cable because it's cheaper than getting a ticket to everything but the trophy games.
Let me start with a little history which will bore you, then I'll get to the idea.
I'm smack in the middle of Gen X. When I was growing up, we had a remote with volume, power and channel control on it. We had a regular TV, but there was no such thing as a DVR. Video tape recorders were out by the time I was in high school, but there were lots of jokes about how it took an engineer to figure out how to program one. Makes my wonder why I followed the career path I am on.
"Fast Forward to" (Gen X) "Skip to" (Gen Y+) current times.
I now have two daughters. Both have nice smart phones. We also have a 4k Smart TV with an Apple TV and a Cable DVR. I have no problems using any of the devices, but grumble about how the DVR programmers must have never heard about global variables.
Here are some other observations:
The interface on the Cisco DVR is poor. My youngest daughter (8th grade honors math when she should be in 5th grade, but skipped a year) has figured out the interface, but hates using it because it's "stupid." She prefers using the Apple TV and has mastered the art of changing the Input on the Smart TV to it.
My oldest Daughter (all honors courses too) took a while to figure out the way to switch the smart TV input (2 different remotes) to the Apple TV (one mediocre touch pad remote plus a Bluetooth Keyboard.)
My wife... Magna Cum Laude at UofA and now a 2nd grade teacher... lost it when the Tivo came out.
All three of them watch videos a lot. All of them use their smartphones. Seldom do my daughters use the TV.
I wouldn't call it even a Hypothesis, but it seems like the era of the big screen TV at home is waning. Perhaps if TV's and content were tied together as cleanly as shown on the TV show "The Expanse," then things would be different. I understand why content companies want to keep full control over their work, and why electronics companies want exclusivity which makes working with other devices harder, but we have a lot of work to do to keep large TV's and content made for them relevant.
IMHO
Charge $20 a month like HBO. and get their worthless channels off my lineup.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
and I plan never to break this record. Watching sports on TV just is not something I ever have enjoyed or ever will enjoy. If everyone at ESPN was eaten alive by cannibals tomorrow, I wouldn't even notice.
To be fair the popularity of The Walking Dead suggests that if it happened in front of a camera it'd get pretty good ratings.
Probably almost nothing. Give a ball to some kids and you don't even have to pay them to play. Sports was the first reality show, expensive actors replaced with people who work for free.
Whatever it costs, is going to be spent on cameras.
I have heard that ESPN's vendors do charge, and their actors make even more than web designers. But that's only because ESPN is rolling in unlimited money without the slightest hint that their revenue will ever be threatened. If, some distant day, there ever is a money crunch, they can always stop burning money by firing the expensive people and going back to their traditional reality show roots.
It's not "ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It "
It's "ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really In It "
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
It's a combination oversaturation of content, millionaire athletes complaining, cord-cutting and lousy online experience. The ESPN app wasn't good. Even their own ad for their app featured a bearded bald nerd who all the type-As @ ESPN were making fun of.
I was a regular listener to ESPN talk radio. And I've stopped.
Loved the Olympics, but all other sports seem inauthentic now.
NFL has all local games + payoffs on OTA TV
and I couldn't justify the $80 a month for the basic package plus the $15 for some sports package plus $5 for some other package that gave me access to the games I want. So I just cancelled cable all together. I'd be happy to pay $15 or even $20 a month for just ESPN or some other pared down package that has sports and not the other crap. As it stands now they'd rather have none of my money than less of it.
Yeah, in our family I was the only one watching any of the shows that fell into the second tier, and that was mostly my local MLB team. That wasn't worth $65/month, so I got rid of it. We are not "cord cutters" though because it was a wash to get internet + "local" channels (which somehow included HBO) versus just Internet.
Also, who wrote this awful "summary"? E.g.
"ESPN doesn't want its new product to draw viewers away from its very profitable cable channel."
What new product? I'm assuming the actual article is all about some "new product"... but the summary says bupkis about it - not even a name. A summary should, you know, SUMMARIZE - not just be a block of non-representative text that may or may not have been lifted verbatim from a linked article.
#DeleteChrome
I watch one game on espn per year, the CFL's Grey Cup.
ESPN by itself is crap. Way back in the day, it had a lot of actual games - I'm in the U.S., and used to love watching rugby or Australian rules football on ESPN in the middle of the night. But (at least as of three years ago, when I dumped that cable tier) they apparently spend all their budget to pay old retired athletes who sit on panel shows and offer bad "analysis" regarding the sports they used to play.
Most athletes seemingly have very little insight into the sports they excel at.
#DeleteChrome
I would rather spend an entire day watching SpaceX launch and landing reruns than waste two minutes of my life watching anything on ESPN.
These customers were never actually viewers. They were simply former cable subscribers that subsidized ESPN despite having zero interest in watching sports.
When ESPN went full Social Justice Warrior, they started hemorrhaging subscribers. Colin Kapernick and giving an award to "Caitlyn" Jenner helped tell non-liberals that ESPN was more interested in waging social justice than giving sports viewers what they actually want.
I know I don't watch ESPN because I don't like my sports mixed with politics. Most of the guys I work with (hundreds of guys in five states) and all of my family and friends feel the same way. If we want politics, we'd watch a news channel. Sports, pure sports without any bullshit, would be nice.
ESPN has become the most politically correct channel on television and it's sickening. Even "Mike & Mike" is unwatchable now.
I want to defend ESPN in at least one area. I think all of their original documentary programs, most of which are excellent (starting with the "30 for 30" series a few years ago) can be seen for free online. I saw all eight hours or so of the Oscar winning "O.J.: Made In American" that way.
ESPN by itself is crap. Way back in the day, it had a lot of actual games - I'm in the U.S., and used to love watching rugby or Australian rules football on ESPN in the middle of the night. But (at least as of three years ago, when I dumped that cable tier) they apparently spend all their budget to pay old retired athletes who sit on panel shows and offer bad "analysis" regarding the sports they used to play.
Most athletes seemingly have very little insight into the sports they excel at.
Well, it all depends on what you find interesting and of value. I imagine that most Americans don't watch ESPN for rugby or Australian rules football. Rather, they watch football, basketball, baseball, and other sports that are more popular in the US. For watching these sports, there is often no substitute for ESPN.
There are many Americans who don't care for the major American spectator sports. However, there are tens of millions who do and are willing to spend lots of money for TV subscriptions, tickets and travel, memorabilia, clothing, magazines, fantasy sports, etc.
BTW, I enjoyed watching Australian rules football back in the 80's. However, I wouldn't pay to watch it, but I would pay $150 bucks for a Celtics game or $20/month for a Sling TV subscription just to have ESPN. To each their own cup of tea.
You should consider SlingTv.com they have a $20 package that includes ESPN and you can watch it on TV, Tablet, computer, etc... This helped me cut the cord.
I think they may be getting the same lesson the Music industry learned.
The product is expensive, the work to make it more expensive than it has to be, and many consumers would like to pick and choose which teams and sports they watch rather than buy a large mixed bundle of sports.
The music industry (for example) worked to make their product expensive -- you had to buy multiple songs.. not just the one you wanted.
The major ESPN channels are bundled into the almost all cable TV packages -- making them (those packages) very expensive -- for those who don't watch sports; this is also hiding the real cost(s) of sports from those who do enjoy watching them.
As more and more folks cut the cord, ESPN is going to lose out nearly every time.. and I'm sure that is a large % of the reported drop.
Even YouTube which is a "live" TV bundle coming to market, is including ESPN. Often companies that have sports properties like ABC, "require" cable TV companies into include their sports channels in most bundles -- giving them high subscriber numbers and gaining revenue from nearly every cable TV home.
The MSO - Multi System Operators -- have insisted that this bundling makes it cable TV cheaper for everyone -- it can't possibly help folks who don't watch sports.
While I know some sports fans who like and love nearly every type and kind of sport, not every fan loves every sport.
Since today any of the sport leagues can easily offer direct to consumer programming -- networks that offer sports programming, are really only provided 1 limited function -- ad sales. Having multiple companies bid for sports programming has certainly helped drive up the price over the last 30+ years.
I would think however, a direct to consumer model, that perhaps includes little or no advertising as well as other offerings that are contain large amounts of advertising... would in the long run get the most value for the teams and owners.
TV production from remote locations in teh 1950's was fairly hard. It's not super simple today but it is far easier and teams and leagues would be better off producing their own content and then selling the programming direct to consumers.
http://www.hawknest.com/
Most athletes seemingly have very little insight into the sports they excel at.
I would be much more interested in a group interview of the support staff behind a star player, or a team with freakishly good performance. Let that star player tag along, just for laughs.
Just introduce state TV financed by a poll tax like in the UK and Germany. Watched only in retirement homes by those that are too frail to press the off button, but everybody is forced to pay for it by a special tax.
How many cord cutters could a cable co court if a cable co could court cord cutters?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I think it is SJW and high prices. People are willing to put up with some SJW if it's something cheap. But ESPN is not cheap anymore.
ESPN's probably is a failure to innovate. Millions of people would happily pay for an unbundled ESPN available online.
Dear ESPN: I will pay you directly $30 per year to watch college football online. I don't care to see any other sports. I want live or historical access to all football games you film/broadcast//capture.
Today's young people, particularly boys, tend to spend their time playing video games with each other online. They're too busy to watch football, and don't really care about it.
I cannot imagine why anyone, anywhere, would want to pay for Cable TV if they don't watch sports. I wouldn't, I know that. But unfortunately for me, and fortunately for Comcast in the SF Bay Area, I'm a Giants fan, from way back, and I lived in Montréal for 30 years, and am a huge Habs fan. So, they got me. We pay for Cable (subsidized because my GF is an attorney for an association of cable & telecoms) but I pay an additional amount for a number of months to watch all the home & away games of the Canadiens. It's insane, I know this, and on a number of levels...
I do torrents for all my fave (3 or 4, LOL) network series and films, so, basically, we'd be paying $105/month, plus $44 or so for an additional 5 months, just to watch the Habs, Giants, and Law & Order reruns. Why the torrents? Because I like subtitles, which I re-edit and sync, properly, and can't stand the archaic-looking closed captioning here in the US and Europe.
Cable blows, sports fan or not. we pay for the Cable, which covers the cable co's costs and profit margin, then we get commercials, and these in-program adverts across the bottom of the fucking screen. It's demeaning. I encourage everyone to cut the cord, send a message to these artless, greedy creeps.
When I lived in Quebec I had a pirate digital satellite de-scrambler, and could watch local news, coast-to-coast (nice for a guy like me who was a bit of a nomad, at one time for 20 years) and sports and whatever else i felt like. Think: Live Torrenting! The good old days...
But these days? Absolute robbery.
Oh, and #FuckESPN they're east-coast-centric, and, as everybody knows, loaded down with tiddly-winks and has-beens. Their so-called product is some sick shit... and not the "good" sick, nope.
Book sales happen to be flying by the way. Surging is the word.
Reading on a Kindle, like your grandmother? Paper is back!
Of course Silicon Valley does not have a clue. They are drinking their own Koop-aid.
Most athletes seemingly have very little insight into the sports they excel at.
I'm not a sports fan but I distinctly remember hearing something while my dad was watching a game.
Madden: "You see, the problem is he didn't catch the ball. In this sport, it's all about the ball and because he didn't catch it, they don't get to move down the field... [another 5 minutes of "didn't catch" and how important it is]
Thank you for that insightful analysis, Mr. Madden. How many of those blows to the head did you take as a player?
and for an extra 5 a month, they won't force ESPN on you. Awesome deal, which is why I went for it.