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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
To quote Steve Jobs, "If we don't cannibalize ourselves, someone else will."
The reason large companies eventually collapse is almost never because they make stupid mistakes or because they fail to churn out new products, but rather because they start to fear innovation; when part of their product line becomes too lucrative, they begin to fear that their next product will undercut their cash cow, forgetting that the money still goes to the same place, like taking rocks from the underside of a cliff and cementing them to the top side.
To prevent that undercutting, they build up silos that keep anyone from building up the land (money pile) under the cow, preventing the sorts of innovation that would otherwise keep them on the cutting edge. Instead, other companies create products that whittle away at the cliff underneath the cash cow and start making their own cow cliffs thicker, and in the end, all the big company has left is a falling cow.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Another reason ESPN has seen a hemorrhage of viewers recently is their dive into politics and the decidedly one-sidedness of it.
And why does sports programming cost so much? Because they bid up the price to unrealistic levels because cable subscribers have no choice but to pay the sports fee. (* this is one of those "plus additional fees x, y and z" that is part of all cable promotional ads.)
ESPN's cost is one of the big reasons why I cut the cord. Don't watch sports, don't want to pay for sports. Don't want to subsidize the whole sports and sports media industrial complex.
If no one is tuning in though, those big revenue numbers are going to go away as advertisers become less willing to pay a premium to appear on Monday night Football. That means the NFL is going to have to get used to less broadcast licensing revenue or cut out the middle man and start streaming directly.
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.
Tell that to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Crunchyroll, etc. al..
Professional sports leagues will continue to charge what ESPN is willing to pay. What cable co's have been long ignoring is that ESPN is an anchor that's just dragging them down. A very substantial component of the compulsory part of everyone's cable bill is basic access to ESPN. Sports fans might mind less, but everyone else is stuck with an excessively high subscription rate that subsidizes the cost of channels they rarely watch. It's the stuff cable cutters are born from. We're not talking about healthcare here. Many of us don't mind pulling up the disadvantaged when it comes to such matters. But, we surely do not view the consumption of sports entertainment that way. Pay for your own add-ons.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
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.
that is about the most tortured analogy I've ever read. sheesh! You've got cliffs, and cows, and cash.. how about sticking to cars and libraries of congress?
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.
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
These customers were never actually viewers. They were simply former cable subscribers that subsidized ESPN despite having zero interest in watching sports.
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.
That's part of it, yeah. For whatever reason sports writers and media personalities are pretty far to the left of their audience. That doesn't matter when the sports programming is about sports, but once you start slipping your politics into a broadcast to people who came for sports, you're going to lose subscribers.