ESPN Loses 621,000 Subscribers; Worst Month in Company History | Hacker News Reader

ESPN Loses 621,000 Subscribers; Worst Month in Company History

outkickthecoverage.com

330 pointskelukelugames408 comments

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.

I think you nailed it here - cord cutting is part of it (I've done it myself) but ESPN is failing to deliver internet content effectively. The 'watchespn' site/app is clunky, slow, and sometimes takes multiple provider logins to work. When you see how simple it is to watch the NFL on Twitter vs. the 5 step broke process of ESPN online - the choice is clear. It's too bad they won't upgrade basic site functions since they cover the most sports globally, including games with expected low viewership...YouTube has been an easier outlet for some to broadcast live.

Well, at least now they have the perfect marketing spin, "We no longer have the subscriber base to support cost effective investment in this market segment. We'll need to increase our subscriber rates significantly in order to offset any investment in a new streaming platform."

In short, consumers, once again, get screwed for the shoddy investments in technology by the behemoths.

It's still a changing biz model at the core, not shoddy tech.

I'd agree - but right tech will pave way for right biz model in this case

My main point, buried in hyperbole I'll admit, is the quality of our infrastructure or perhaps more accurately the inconsistency of it.

We've been promised high quality bandwidth for years, which would help expand the business opportunities for companies like ESPN, but that hasn't really been delivered and us consumers suffer with higher prices, lower quality services and growing entrenchment of the monopoly model (thinking more of the ISPs at this point, which is slightly off-topic).

only if they can actually keep the broadcast rights. Twitch and netflix could probably swipe a region if they really wanted to. Or maybe just somebody with money who partners with MLBAM.

> The moment Google Fiber or something better comes along in my area

I've got some bad news - Google has "paused" its fiber rollout. With that on life support and Verizon FIOS rollout seemingly dead, I don't see much changing anytime soon.

Because rolling out fiber (alongside competitors) to everyone (including those who won't join your network) is a big investment that may not pay for itself. What needs to happen is cities roll out their own fiber and lease it to the ISPs. Then Google won't have to deal with the problems moving pole wires or digging has.

What Google is doing is ditching fiber for wireless. That way they don't have to bother rolling fiber to people who don't want it. And before someone says wireless is slower than fiber, a directional antenna can get you pretty fast speeds. I don't know the actual numbers, but I think you can still get gigabit over wireless if done right.

I work at a fairly large WISP and we have 10 Gbps wireless point to point backhauls. We also provide customers 1000/1000 Mbps fiber like wireless point to point WAN connections.

Sounds great. I'm trapped in an apt building with Comcast as the only broadband option. As soon as there's a reasonable point-to-point wireless that I can put in my 10th story window, I'm in.

Don't these wireless signals eventually go to cables? Can you imagine if everyone in your building had point-to-point connections? How many dish antennas is that? I hope more municipalities pursue their own fiber in the future.

Webpass (in SF) does a PTP wireless link on the top of each building, then ethernet to each unit from there, ~500+mbps for 30-40/m (paid yearly)

Come to Ellsworth, Maine, and I will give you money. We pay insane money for very little.

I always thought wimax was going to be the Comcas t killer. Don't understand why it never happened.

WiMax is a joke compared the point to multipoint LTE solutions in the 2.5 and 3.65 spectrum.

I have Google wireless ISP service (via Webpass). The speeds are easily running at 500Mbs.

Not only is Fios dead but they're selling it off. I think the whole west coast is now owned by Frontier (somehow a worse company).

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.

The only reason I have a TV package is for ESPN. The problem is live broadcasts are hard to do streaming. Netflix is comparatively easy.

Major League Baseball would like to talk to you about that.

Frankly, the fact that I can almost always find an illegal stream of quality as good as ESPN's streaming, I find it difficult to believe it's that hard to do. And the fact that several major professional sports are doing it, mostly using MLB Advanced Media, tells me that ESPN can do this if it wants.

The problem is the economics of scale and advantages of bundling, not live broadcasts.

EDIT: I should add that not only is MLB's streaming as good as TV, it's better. I can pause, rewind, see multiple angles or even watch more than one game at once. If it weren't for draconian blackouts (see, there's economics getting in the way again) it would be the only way to watch baseball.

How many people are watching those MLB games at one time nationally?

Games like the Super Bowl where you are talking millions of individuals trying to stream the same thing, from the same source at the same time.

Same with college football with Saturdays.

Its difficult, but not impossible by any stretch - the BBC stream the Olympics live, and have done for several iterations now, without seeming to have any major problems.

They've got an even harder problem, in 2012 they were providing simultaneous live streams from 24 separate events at times. Sadly I can't find any statistics on just how many viewers watched something like the 2012 opening ceremony, but I'd be surprised if the numbers weren't comparable to the Super Bowl.

The 2012 Olympics were an absolutely huge undertaking - the BBC went as far as creating a mock Olympics to test traffic and server load and at its peak shifted 2.8 PB of data a day. When Wiggins won gold, they were shifting 700GB/ps. No doubt things have come a long way since then - but I get the impression it really was no mean feat.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/internet/entries/2db7f335-660b-32...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/digital_olymp...

You meant 700 Gbps not 700 gigabytes (5.6 Tbps). Both are impressive, but the latter would have been fasincating.

MLB has a ton of issues in their streaming.

- If you're watching a game on say a 50 minute delay, the live CDN gets shut off about 10 minutes after the broadcast ends and you actually can't finish the stream for 40 minutes while they move it over to the VOD CDN. So if I have a meeting or whatever in the 3rd, it'll shut off in the 7th. I confirmed this bug with a friend I know there.

- Most of the players can't remember where you were in stream across crashes and definitely not across machines.

- Player constantly resets settings and switch to showing you the scores.

- Not technical but the audio recaps ALWAYS use the broadcasters from the winning team. So no need to watch a 7 minute recap of the game, first word uttered by the broadcasters tell you who won.

- Player won't re-upgrade the stream quality after it downgrades it.

- Player can't recover from a stopped stream.

- Player is in flash still on desktop. Which is blocked by my work firewall.

- Only their phone support does anything.

- They don't trim out rain delays, so you can sit there for 5 hours on a VOD during a rain delay. You "could" skip to the next inning but you have to turn on spoilers if it happens mid inning (which happens often).

- You can jump to the top and bottom of most innings. Playstation and desktop apps often lose their minds and restart.

- You can't skip past pitching changes even though they're a standard 2 minutes.

- Watching the tv broadcast but changing to a radio audio crashes the ps4 app.

- Fire TV app, when you select "From Beginning" on a stream you're starting late always jumps live. If you chose live, you can't rewind at all.

- If network is down the app loads that there are no games on the calendar and leaves it cached as empty. You have to restart the app to fix it.

- They show very little of the color commentary from the field, only booth stuff.

- Watching a vod you have to fast forward 12-18 minutes to find the beginning of the game.

- Inning start markers often are often placed as far as 2-3 batters in. I've seen 2 outs in before.

- The web version has tons of issues, I mostly use the ps4 app as it's more stable.

- The mobile apps require you to have full GPS turned on, which is great for battery life when you're already streaming.

- You cannot time shift radio broadcasts of games. You can't pause them either.

- If a radio broadcast buffers to much it just stops playing and you have to use the app to restart it.

- Getting to a broadcast on mobile requires jumping through a bunch of hoops all trying to show you the score.

- You can't time shift on mobile.

- I CANNOT STREAM THE AUDIO OF THE GAME AT THE STADIUM BECAUSE IT'S BLACKED OUT. NOR CAN I WATCH THE GAME I AM SITTING AT FOR THE SAME REASON. I did sit at the 2nd to last mariners game while watching the Cardinals game and separately the Giants game on my laptop and phone. Which was fun.

There are more but I forget.

How is Netflix comparatively easy? The problem isn't the video conversion, that's solved by throwing CPU at it. The problem is distribution... which is the "exact" same problem Netflix solves.

The difference between ESPN and Netflix is that you have (tens of) millions of people watching an event at the exact same time. This is a similar problem in nature, but the simultaneous nature of the problem mean your solution will be different.

Doesn't that make the problem easier? Send one stream to a network node close to the viewer and then "fan out" the stream from there? No need to worry about 50 different users who all started watching Luke Cage at slightly different times.

Multicast has been in the works for decades but it's still not reliable enough. Partly a chicken and egg problem - sysadmins don't bother checking that multicast works on their networks, because no-one uses multicast.

What he's describing doesn't require multicast. It just requires a hub and spoke model with multiple layers.

Yeah, but for non-live broadcasts you can do this too, but do it asynchronously, and indeed, Netflix does. If you're watching reasonably popular content (Luke Cage, say), you're not getting it from Netflix proper, you're getting it from a a Netflix point of presence colocated with your ISP. It's the exact same "fan out" model, but for most of the transit (the whole part that crosses the open Internet) they can take as long as they want, transfer during off-peak periods, are tolerant of congestion, etc.

Because it's a preexisting set of files that can be distributed geographic down to closer and closer endpoints in the network. When you're watching Netflix you can just as easily be watching from a pure-fiber connection point to your local ISP that's not reaching across the internet at all. Viewership spikes will be more predictable based on their own choices, preferences, schedules, geographic region, etc. If an interruption happens, it's also very likely going to be isolated to a small subset of users.

With a live broadcast like the Super Bowl, you're talking about millions of simultaneous individual streams at the exact same time period, globally, from a central point, across the network and if there is a problem it's probably going to happen to everybody. The more people that tune in, the harder it gets.

Comparatively, TV broadcasts are a much better option for this type of event. You've got a single broadcast for every channel that people can tap into if they want to watch. The total bandwidth is 1 stream per channel instead of 1 stream per person.

Tapping into the WatchESPN app or others for sports that aren't being watched heavily is fine. Tapping into it for something with very high viewership is an entirely different ballgame (pun intended). The broadcast model is just much better suited to live events.

> Would you spend $25-35

Yes, I believe people would. I pay for the NFL's GamePass, which is similar (without the live streaming) and costs $100 for about 4 months worth of entertainment.

I pay for single sport subscriptions (UFC and MotoGP). I think they work out to about $10/mo for each. I don't follow the major US ball sports, but it seems like they're a bigger deal with more games than you can watch. Spending $25 doesn't seem outrageous, of you're a fan.

MLB for one team works out to be around $.60/game... I watch everything on delay, which living in a different city than my team means I can pretty much just watch baseball at work for 1/2 the year. I just wish google would let me block sports scores on news. Just like who died on game of thrones, it's not news I care to see fed to me, I'll go find out the score if I need it.

> I just wish google would let me block

Wish, but don't forget you're still the product. They wouldn't let the other cattle opt out of hormone therapy either.

It sounds to me like the story is about how ESPN needs to tighten their belt a bit. Sure, they might have been getting $25-35 a month, but that doesn't mean they deserve it perpetually.

The story is that espn can't tighten their belt because they are locked into long term rights contracts with the sport leagues. Something will have to budge obviously, but the effect is going to fan out across the leagues and down to player salaries.

I would pay $23-35 / month for ESPN, if offered. I mostly have a full cable package for this channel, and it costs a lot more than that.

ESPN has a lot of junk on it these days, but they've used their popularity to secure massive amounts of TV rights across a number of sports, most notably college football this time of the year. As a big fan, it's worth that much to me. I think it would be to others, as well.

sling.com includes espn along with a few other channels for only $20 a month.

This is the chief reason I subscribe to Sling TV. It might not be widely known, but you can activate the WatchESPN app with your Sling credentials. This is great because the quality of experience watching tv on the ESPN app is way better than on the Sling app, which — at least for me, on the Apple TV — sometimes has pretty bad buffering problems.

The buffering problems are universal for me, and limited to Sling. I've seen them on AppleTV, Xbox One, and PS4.

How do you get to the $25-$35 number? The article mentioned $7/month

Not sure why I got a few downvotes, I didn't realize this was inappropriate. I'm genuinely curious about the economics of streaming tv vs bundled cable, I don't know too much about it.

Can't edit my post but it should have been $7.

This is a good blog post [1] to understand the economics of bundling. It's straight out of every 2nd year microeconomics textbook.

[1] http://cdixon.org/2012/07/08/how-bundling-benefits-sellers-a...

The article says ESPN gets $7/subscriber.

And most subscribers don't watch espn. If espn doesn't get to charge every cable subscriber rather than only the people who watch espn, prices probably go up at least 4x. And more than just the ratio of fans/nonfans because some casual sports fans will decide $7 x (4 to 7) x 12 = $336 to $558/year isn't worth it. Or are only fans of certain sports and will terminate subscriptions during offseasons.

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.

> 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.

As part of a class-action settlement, MLB will be required to change their blackout rules. The settlement notification lays out three things.

Right now they have to begin offering a "this is my favorite team but I live in another team's exclusive market" subscription, which lets anyone with an in-market TV subscription watch their preferred team's games even when they play against the in-market team. So, for example, I live near SF but like the Cubs; on this package I could verify that I have a TV subscription which carries Giants games, and then Cubs-Giants would not be blacked out and I could stream the Cubs' version of the broadcast.

Right now they have to handle the "unserved fan" problem, by providing streaming to any in-market fan of a team who's unable to obtain a cable or satellite subscription for the team's games (if I were a Giants fan this would affect me, as my only TV option for the Giants is DirecTV, and DirecTV says my apartment faces the wrong way and has a blocked view for installing a dish; MLB would be required to let me stream Giants games if I wanted them).

For the future, the settlement commits MLB to reaching agreements to lift blackout restrictions imposed by Comcast, Root and Fox, and freezes the subscription price of MLB streaming until those agreements are in place.

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.

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?

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

Pretty much summarizes amaerican business right there.

I wanted to watch the world series, so I'm using MLB.TV via a foreign VPN. Its not something that would work if everyone did it, and its really an inferior experience. Its similar those totally illegal streams in quality, except that I'm paying for it.

I don't understand. The World Series games are all free OTA broadcasts on Fox affiliates in the U.S. Are you outside the U.S.?

Not everyone has good OTA access. I lived in an apartment near Culver City six years ago and could only reliably pick up a handful of channels with an indoor antenna (all I was allowed, since it was an apartment).

What's going to happen here is you won't be paying ESPN for $SPORT_I_CARE_ABOUT you'll be paying $SPORT_I_CARE_ABOUT for $SPORT_I_CARE_ABOUT.

MLB's already built out the technology, and people to make this happen in the form of MLBAdvancedMedia, (some smaller market owners suspect their ownership stake in MLBAM is more valuable than their team). It will be interesting to see if the other sports come to MLBAM (WWE, PGA, and even ESPN have done) or if they will each roll their own platform.

Sports is the one area where it basically costs whatever people decide. IF ESPN goes belly-up, somebody will buy the rights for less money, and the cycle continues until it finds a new balance. There's a lot of flexibility in players' salaries and owners' profits that can only exist because professional sports leagues operate in a somewhat inelastic market (you're not going to switch to watching ping pong just because it's cheaper).

That's ultimately what has to give here. Bundling sports channels into cable packages has allowed a bubble to form in the compensation of players and owners. As the article correctly assesses, it is an enormous tax that is passed on to everyone with a cable or satellite subscription.

It's plainly obvious that the exorbitant salaries that players and owners are paid has to go away for the industry to survive.

>>Sports is the one area where it basically costs whatever people decide

I wish this was true, and with cord killing and Ala carte media becoming more of the standard it will be, but Sports today, especially major sports like NFL, MLB, etc have a hugely over inflated cost because of bundling.

Does "cord cutters" refer to people that go mobile-only? Criminals that steal the metal in the cords? Thanks!

People who ditch cable TV, specifically.

Used to be people who stopped watching TV entirely, now it mostly seems to be people who watch TV online.

Cord cutters is a term of art for folks who forego traditional terrestrial cable or satellite TV instead opting for internet delivered options.

At Apple we demo'ed live streaming MLB over rtsp using Akamai's infrastructure. This was 7 years ago.

The technology is there and it's a turnkey solution. its really just politics at the executive level holding it back at this point.

That's a strange example to use, because MLB has been offering live streaming for almost a decade now.

> Google Fiber

They just announced last week they're not expanding anymore. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/10/26...

Someone in my local government is talking about making the internet a city utility, like the similarly city owned electricity. They got my vote this election cycle.

It seems that's the only way. Either your city competes with ISP's or ISP's have uncontested regional monopolies.

I have hard time my city would be able to compete on either quality, price or customer service. Unless they do a cheap trick of charging me less upfront while subsidizing it on the back from my own property taxes. Maybe your city is different. But I don't see any advantage for them except that they have taxes to fall back on, which private company would have to stand on their own.

$10 a month during college football season of course...

The CEO of Google Fiber just resigned, and they had a layoff. I don't think Google will be saving us from the cable and AT&T monopolies anytime soon.

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.

Yeah. It's only sports. This year the only things I can remember watching at the time it aired were (in order of appearance): Super Bowl NBA Finals Presidential debates World Series

The only other thing I can expect is election returns.

I really like the world of on demand programming. It's much more convenient, and I'd like on demand sports, but only if it's from the same day. I just can't get into watching yesterday's game. Maybe if I could watch today's game time shifted...

The live streaming packages offered by the various sports organizations are generally pretty good if you're out of market, but are still subject to national blackouts. NHL for example plays a LOT of games on NBCSN, which is only available via cable packages. I'm able to follow all the Philadelphia teams I care about in Chicago without many issues, but having blackouts in 2016 is absurd.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Sling tv allows you to stream all of these channels (with the possible exception of E!).

I bet your kitchen is fabulous

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.

> 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.

The amount of ads on television is mind boggling. If I want to watch a 30 minute show, I don't want it to be an hour long event filled with ads for prescription medication when I already pay money to watch the show.

Why don't you get a DVR? I just start watching it a bit later and skip the ads.

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.

Curious about bundles being an example of the free market at work. How are consumers able to vote with their dollars what channels bundles do and do not include?

Well, the answer really is in your question: consumers do vote with their dollars.

Except sport and other tv rights are an oligopolistic market (not a free competitive market): this allows cable companies to select bundles not in a way to minimize the cost to the consumer (which would result in you finding the perfect bundle for what you want to watch at the cheapest price), instead they can create bundles to maximize profit for themselves (which results in you having to pay for several bundles in order to get all the content you want).

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.

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.

Ehh, the idea that Monopolies are not free markets, is a fairly well understood separation.

"A free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and consumers, in which the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government, price-setting monopoly, or other authority." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

The idea is Monopolies can extract "Monopoly Rent/Economic Rent" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent at a higher price than normal because competitors don't enter the market and lower prices.

> 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).

I really don't see how paying $7/month for a channel I don't watch is a "great deal". The argument is that they would rip you off a lot more with alacarte I guess?

Bundles are fine to me. The big thing is that TV contracts just don't fundamentally work for apartment dwellers.

I can't name a single TV provider in my area that doesn't make you sign a contract for several years. So if you need to move apartments you're now paying that hefty cable cancellation fee. It's even worse if they make you sign a 2 year contract since I've yet to find an apartment in Seattle that will even let you sign a 2 year lease.

I just checked Comcast for my ZIP code (98122) and all of their double play TV+Internet pricing is on one-year contracts ("$69.99/mo for the first 12 months with 1-year agreement"). Also, Wave Broadband (both the cable company "Wave" and the fiber optic company "WaveG") has no contracts and is in parts of Seattle. CenturyLink also does one- and two-year contracts, in my experience. I have a two-year contract for their 1Gbps fiber service because I wanted the price lock and I'm never canceling.

The free market? We must live in different markets. Here it's a Yes/No choice, there's only one provider. The bundle economics, designed optimally, reduce consumer choices and drive people to salivate at the possibility of paying for streaming exactly what they want (which is more efficient, if we're obsessed with market jargon).

We're starting to feel the pain a bit with the online unbundled alternatives, sure.

Right now, I have Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime (mostly for the shipping but it also has some shows I like), Crunchyroll. And I'm still missing things I want, which would require: Funimation, HBO Now, CBS. At that point, I'd be close to my old cable bill again, and still wouldn't have new content from AMC or Showtime. Would also love to have TV Japan, but if you think ESPN gouges you ... that requires satellite TV, the more expensive dish/receiver, and costs $25 a month for just that one channel!

I would welcome an ala carte system for shows, but only if they were reasonably priced. Definitely not paying $1 for a completely predictable episode of Modern Family or a "why is this still on the air?" Simpsons episode. But Real Time? Sure. Game of Thrones? I'd happily pay double. I may just start waiting until seasons end, sign up, binge watch a whole season in a month, and cancel.

I don't even think music has become reasonably priced yet. Sure it's $1 a song, but you're still paying $15 if you want the album. Even though they no longer have to make a CD, ship it to stores, and give a large markup to the retailer. And the MP3 is way lower quality than the lossless CD. Yet they still want the same price.

are you trolling ?

> That would be worse for consumers - and creators.

that would be sad if "creators" had to try harder to make better content that made me want to pay for it, you know, like Game of Thrones did.

Here in Denmark most of the companies have finally unbundled their channels, so you don't have to buy a bundle.

When my ISP did it, I called them up and canceled the TV portion entirely: who wants to sit there and watch a particular show at a particular time?

If you only want to pay for what you like you can pretty much already do that on Apple TV or Amazon Video.

A channel is just a curated selection of content no different than a bundle is a curated selection of channels. Just because you like one program on a channel doesn't mean you like any of its others.

I'm considering getting an HDMI capture card, and buying the super-premium package with at least 2 "rooms" (I live alone). Then, connect the capture card to MythTV (or whatever the app is called these days) to rip the shows to a NAS. Put the NAS on a VPN with 3 or more of my friends. Then share the subscription cost. That $140/mo package is now $35/mo, which is actually worth paying for (if you have all the movie channels, etc). Plus if you spend that much on TV they often bundle your internet right in.

Doesn't HDCP close that loophole? HDMI capture cards are for things like recording the HDMI output of your DSLR for livestreaming (or a really high quality webcam, I guess).

Of course, the HDCP master key is leaked, but I'm not sure you can reliably buy something that reliably includes one (random batches of "HDMI repeaters" on Amazon seem to strip HDCP, but it's hit-or-miss because it's like totally omg super illegal; better to get the criminality out of your system with murder or arson.)

I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly there are HDMI splitters that "accidentally" remove HDCP.

http://www.tweaking4all.com/home-theatre/remove-hdcp-hdmi-si...

the main thing keeping me from doing this is that there are just too many moving parts for it to be a stable replacement for a cable box.

It's still copyright infringement so you might as well just torrent the shows.

The product is still being paid for, so I dont agree that its infringing. I'm just "bundling" my subscription with 2 or 3 of my friends. You know, like they "bundle" different tiers of programming.

Torrenting can't really handle sports. This solution might allow me to "rebroadcast" a live game straight out of my apartment.

It'll probably happen by 2020, at the rate they're shedding customers. Their contract with the NFL will be up in 2021; does anyone really think the NFL will ask for less money for Monday Night Football?

To invoke the old truism: something is only worth what somebody's willing to pay for it. Maybe broadcast networks will be able/willing to pony up the dough to get those rights back, but I wouldn't bet on it.

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...

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.

> 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.

Bob Costas works for NBC and is never on ABC or ESPN...

He does NBC for the Olympics (edit: got that wrong he does the other football games on NBC)

oops, I suppose I can just point to some of the other commentators.

You should update his Wikipedia entry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Costas

No, he is a host of NBC's Sunday Night Football. Also on MLB network. He is not on ABC or ESPN.

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.

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

In addition to esports, I think there's just been a growth of more niche non-traditional pastimes due to technology allowing people with those interests to connect.

An example I'm most familiar with is skateboarding. It's something I've followed since about 2000, and it's amazing how much it has grown in popularity over the last 10, much less 20 years. It's going to be in the Olympics in 2020!

I think a large part of this growth is explained by how technology has enabled distribution. In the 90's, if you wanted to watch a skate video or see the state of the art of what pros were doing, you either saw the few photos which made it into a monthly magazine, or hoped the nearest skate shop got the latest videos (and by the way, the nearest skate shop might be hours away if you don't live near a major city, esp. outside the US).

Nowadays, you follow your favorite pros on Instagram or Snapchat and you can literally see what they did that day. "Team" videos are largely a thing of the past, as a single rider can finish filming whenever he feels like it, and distribute his footage via iTunes for $3.99. You can imagine something like this would be economically infeasible in the days of VHS/DVD.

Going back, I suspect my friends and I in the rural midwest would have lost interest if we hadn't been able to download hundreds of videos off Napster/Kazaa in the early 00's :)

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.

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.

Sports participation at the youth levels is not related to what spectator sports people like to watch. ESPN actually covers Lacrosse but no one watches it.

Yep, the one thing everybody hates in baseball is the national broadcast. Interviews during the game, commentators getting lost in the stories they're trying to tell while important things are happening on the field, generally a lower emphasis on the actual sports.

ESPN's in an interesting position right now because of slim cable packages. If I could get the Big Ten Network on Sling, I'd have very little use for "real" cable. And I don't have to pay for Sling year round if I don't want to use it outside football season.

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.

It's always interesting to hear what's going on inside a company like ESPN. Companies seem to spring up organically around their original revenue source, so having to re-purpose your machine to create a new one must be a very interesting challenge.

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

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

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.

Why almost all of my NFL watching is via RedZone. (though I have it as a bolt-on to my corded service)

I find the popularity of RedZone to be bizarre; you're not watching football any more, you're watching a live version of sportscenter. If you don't find the games entertaining enough to watch, why do you want to follow the sport at all?

When my team (Cowboys) plays, I'll generally watch the full game. I also watch some SNF/MNF/TNF games. But yes, it's fair to say I don't find every part of every game interesting (like commercials, cheesy halftime commentary, endless review of plays that will obviously be upheld/overturned in replay, 2 and 17 draw plays, etc) However, filtering out noise doesn't make me less of a sports fan, any more than reading headlines on HN makes me less of an industry enthusiast.

If there's 8 games going on at once, and more than one of them turn out to be good, RedZone is awesome because you essentially get to watch all the good games at once while keeping tabs on everything else.

It's definitely a different experience that immersing yourself in one game and loses some of that richness, but to say RedZone is just like Sportscenter indicates you're not really familiar with either.

I am, my brother-in-law loves RedZone and I've watched it with him several times. To me, it is as I described. I don't know how you can say that you "essentially get to watch all the good games" if you only get to see the scoring opportunities. You can't really get a feel for the game in 30 second clips here and there. Things that happened before the 20 yard line matter too.

Maybe its what Sportcenter used to be. Today its filled with weird entertainment, clips from press conferences, ongoing stories, etc. I'd bet maybe 7 minutes of each 30 minute episode is actual daily sports highlights and scores (not to mention the commercials that aren't present on RedZone) I think that's why the comparison between RedZone and Sportcenter was considered less than apt.

Red Zone is mostly for fantasy football players. It's far too shallow for actual fans.

The deep, tense, complicated, sophisticated overtime tie game the Cardinals and Seahawks played last Sunday was among the very best games of the past year but would have had near zero profile on Red Zone.

That's a good point; fantasy and gambling are two areas where I could see RedZone as being valuable.

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.

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.

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.

Yup, it's great. $100/year. Watch "full" games (minus halftime show and commercials, so it's only like 2h) and "condensed" games where they cut out the timeouts, replays, and time between plays (which can be a bit jarring, but watchable).. and only 35-45min per game.

It's always boggled my mind how popular the NFL is given that you get 5 seconds of action followed by 30 seconds of sitting around waiting for the next 5 seconds. Especially since "slow pace" is used as an argument against baseball.

It's a sport tailor made for TV. Watch the action, then rewatch it from a variety of angles and with analysis. The stopping is actually good for the game, since TV allows you to revisit the play over and over again. If that's not your thing, I get it, but if it is, they keep you plenty engaged.

You're supposed to watch the games with family and friends and share conversation and snacks during the game. The pauses in the action are there to give you time to spend with each other without letting any conversation get deep, meaningful, and awkward.

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.

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.

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?

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.

It doesn't matter what you perceive the tilt as. My point is that the more a sport delves into politics, the more people it pisses off. A big reason people watch sports is escape. If they tune in to ESPN and hear a bunch of political bullshit, they just start tuning out. That's not what they're there for.

> Another aspect of life has been politicized for no good reason.

Life is political. If you have the relative privilege to think that parts of life can remain completely neutral and value-free, it's probably because you are relatively privileged and not directly affected by the issues that people feel compelled to speak about.

In any case, I'm nearly 100% sure that ESPN's drop in viewership doesn't have to do with SJWs peeing in people's Cheerios, but rather the overall trends towards cord-cutting, tv-shedding, etc and ESPN not yet jumping on the train of ala carte tailored sports packages.

Enjoying any aspect of life without being bombarded with messages of social inequality is another privilege that I have to feel guilty about now huh?

Poor you.

No one told you that you have to feel guilty. But if you were on the wrong side of the inequality, I don't think you would simply get to escape it. It's always there, so yes, better to see it. Doesn't mean that you're not allowed to have fun, play games, make love, buy frivolous things or any of that. No one's talking about regulating your pleasure. I'm just saying that, yes, it is in fact a privilege to get to pretend that one lives in a world where sports in a simply a non-political realm divorced from social conditions.

It's easy to nod along and say "come on, stop complaining, you need to be aware of this stuff" when you already agree with the views being peddled. If Colin Kaepernick and friends had been taking a knee to protest against abortion instead of police shootings, I suspect you'd be singing a different tune real quick.

If fullshark were on the side of inequality, she probably wouldn't feel guilty about it. She'd be delighted every time it came to light. "Do you know whose lives really matter?" she'd say to some kneeling footballer with a grin on her face, "millionaires'!"

It's the people that mostly agree that are being annoyed and turned off by antics that make everything political.

And the national anthem and fighter jet fly overs aren't political?

They were also paid for by the military as a form of advertisements.

620k subscribers didn't bail because they disagreed with Colin Kalpernicek (sp?), they bailed because ESPN is still acting as if cable channels still have a future.

> someone could just go all out for and not worry about it.

except if you are black and want to be a coach [0]. Then you should worry, because you're probably not going to be able to!

80 of the NFL's current 85 offensive coordinators, quarterbacks coaches and offensive quality control coaches are white, including all 37 with the word "quarterback" in their titles.

[0] http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/17101097/staggering-numbe...

How is that relevant to the parent comment? The fact that the percentage of black coaches in the NFL is somewhat less than the percentage of blacks in the overall American population could be the worst injustice ever in the history of the world. That doesn't change the fact that people don't turn on a football game to have someone's politics rammed down their throat, and if you keep insisting on doing that, they'll go watch something else and leave you hanging.

I interpreted the parent comment as saying "Football was the last refuge where black/whites/etc can all harmoniously enjoy a common activity." I'm saying you can't call it that when there's racial bias baked into the very sport. You can't pretend its politically neutral.

Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. That still doesn't change the fact that if you keep aggressively lecturing people about it, they'll stop watching your network.

Thanks for making my point for me.

> The NFL has allowed players to hijack the sport platform to make their own political points.

Is this the same NFL that started forcing their players to stand for the Anthem in 2011, and the same NFL that did a deal with the US Department of Defense to allow patriotic displays of support for the troops during games?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2015/11/04...

You've got a lot of nerve saying the NFL "allowed its players" to hijack the game with poliical bullshit. The NFL led the charge, and made money doing it.

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).

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.

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.

>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 think ESPN Films (producer of 30 for 30) as well as properties like the now defunct Grantland or FiveThirtyEight show that ESPN is trying to expand its reach beyond a cable only model. But you can't just dump your big revenue stream overnight. To some extent they are weighed down by their past and can't shed it fast enough.

30 for 30 is by far the best ESPN original content in the past 10 years.

Also, 30 for 30 was another Bill Simmons idea...and he's gone.

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.

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.

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?

I have a streaming device called "uverse", some have fios, some cable, some dish network, etc. Why can't these devices show it?

> The NFL Season Ticket package has been decoupled from DirecTV

If you can prove you can't get DirecTV at your residence. Otherwise you have to get NFL Game Pass and watch the game replay later (usually the next day), not live.

http://www.nfl.com/watch-nfl-live

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.

>"ESPN has been increasingly pushing a progressive narrative on its viewers, ..."

Can you explain what this narrative is?

An example:

http://www.espn.com/espys/2015/story/_/id/13264599/caitlyn-j...

Players refusing to kneel for National Anthem out of protest for police violence and injustice towards minorities.

They refused to stand and cover their heart (traditional respect for the flag and anthem). They chose to kneel instead to show that they are respectfully protesting, as opposed to just remaining seated and just not caring.

Oops I mixed those up

This confuses me a lot. What narrative is ESPN pushing? I'm pretty sure both they and the NFL would prefer players do not protest the national anthem - it's a controversy with little financial up side.

But it's the players that are protesting. Is the suggestion that ESPN should be ignoring it, or refusing to broadcast it? Because that seems counterproductive for everyone involved.

It is understandable how one might be confused when one swims in that narrative, but, as an example, things like this:

http://www.espn.com/espys/2015/story/_/id/13264599/caitlyn-j...

are going to be poorly received by a number of ESPN's (previously) core demographics.

Why would this comment be down-voted?

Putting Jenner on the front page of your anything is going to be wildly controversial and upsetting / offensive to a good chunk of people. This just a fact not a moral statement.

I'd suggest this 'social' issue may possibly be at least one of the factors in the decline, it would be difficult to prove, nevertheless, it's a perfectly reasonable speculation. Americans do protest with their wallets.

It'd be nice to see some time-based data for their decline - overlaid with cable cutting trends.

At the risk of contributing to the madness... It just baffles my mind how the right continues to insist that accepting people is a political issue, and that it is perfectly legitimate to take the for or against side on it. And all in the name of Jesus! (who spent his entire life accepting marginalized people).

You're right, but the point stands that this sort of coverage isn't going to make much money. Normal people are just bored by Jenner at this point. There are several dozen people still fascinated by her, but they're not ESPN's core demographic. And then there are a large number of people who find this sort of coverage so objectionable that they'll cancel service rather than change the channel.

ISTM people who don't watch much sports think that NBC's Olympic coverage is typical sports coverage. Jenner would fit right into that execrable human-interest pablum, but actual sports fans who watch lots of sports can't stand it.

> And all in the name of Jesus! (who spent his entire life accepting marginalized people).

This is an example of telling half-truths. Jesus spoke truth. He condemned sin. He specifically confirmed the Creation order of male and female. If Jesus were here today, he would have compassion for those who do not understand their gender, but he would not endorse enabling their confusion. In fact, his greatest criticism on the issue would be directed at those in power and authority who encourage people to deny the reality of their physical bodies and try to become something they cannot, just as he warned against causing others to stumble.

ESPN recently launched a new site: theundefeated.com

They link out to it aggressively from the homepage of espn.com.

It is a very strong SJW site that I often find cringeworthy.

Here is a story from today: http://theundefeated.com/allday/daily-dose-102816/

"Did you know that not all black people live in the inner city? Did you know that not all inner cities are ghettos? Did you know that conflating all three of these things contributes to a harmful mindset that causes many Americans and others across the globe to believe that people of color aren’t even aware enough of their own condition to be given agency of themselves in larger society? Oh, you didn’t? Well, now you do. On Thursday, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump proved that all of what I just said, is news to him."

I find this type of messaging across all of ESPNs platforms these days, and I can see how it turns off many subscribers.

What's wrong with that? 70% of NFL players are African Americans who by and large, for whatever reason, think Trump is a racist.

'for whatever reason'

I think his numerous, recurring, overtly and thinly veiled racist remarks may play a role.

> 70% of NFL players are African Americans

Showing that Kaepernick is a dumbass and a hypocrite. [1] And that's what parent meant. It's a play to get extra 15 minutes of fame that modern media provides, because it has an extra narrative for this kind of content.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGueTYN-Ve8

That video and your post are so awful. Is this the kind of discourse we want on hacker news?

So black people are not oppressed in America because some are allowed to play football? Not convincing.

So black people are oppressed in America because not all of them play football?

This is the flip-side of your logic coin. See how that works? Is this the kind of discourse we want on hacker news?

Thanks for your arguments, compared to this "awful video" which actually provided some. Your post is a showcase of how easy it's rather to jump on the shaming bandwagon the modern media is enforcing through its echo chamber instead of viewing specific cases separately, with clear head and actual data.

And here's a great example of what I talked about - if black people aren't supporting the right political candidate, the news isn't interesting enough to spread it : https://youtu.be/cJV41gS2c8M

Imagine if that were white Trump supporters, media would be trembling from justice calls.

NFL players aren't the audience. The general public is, and at least 40% of the public doesn't think Trump is a racist.

> at least 40%

40% is a polling number of likely Trump voters which means about 16% of the U.S. population will vote for him and some of them maybe think Trump is a racist.

"What's wrong with that?"

Nothing at all is wrong with that. If ESPN, NFL, et al. feel the need to implode their white guy safe space and destroy their own finances in the process, well, it's a free country. I'm good with it. It will also serve to pull some of these people out of the la-la land they live in and face the reality of the hate filled grievance mongers they're surrounded by and have been studiously ignoring all their lives. I see that as a big win. So yes, please continue; fill every game and all the space in between with lectures and --- most importantly --- continue pretending the collapse of NFL revenue has nothing to do with it.

Some have argued that this is really about cord cutting and nothing to do with the intrusion of political controversy. That is badly naive. Watch a Trump rally some time. Call it cultural interest or whatever. Note the thousands of people yelling "CNN sucks! CNN sucks! CNN sucks!" No, it's not really about the Cable News Network specifically; they have the entire MSM in mind, including Hollywood, all cable news and --- now --- professional sports, the only remaining reason they had to justify their $100+/month cable bill. It's exactly the same demographic; some are just a bit ahead of the curve.

The rest will follow.

What is it you want?

I don't disagree with that particular story's message, but I can see why people would be turned off by them attempting to interject themselves so strongly into politics.

I agree with you. Just want to add some more data points of ESPN's politization of sports.

There was a really interesting dynamic between ESPN's highly rated "barber-shop" sports talkshow, "First Take" between Stephen A. Smith (SAS) and Skip Bayless (Skip aka. Master Troll) where they talk about NFL/NBA/MLB etc and a lot of sports-fandom controversies were made from this (e.g., the chosen one became the frozen one, Tebowmania).

My very blunt take and very racial take is that SAS kind of represented the Black urban side of sports if you will, the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton figure, the black preacher who calls out social injustices as embodied in the sports arena (e.g., Kobe should get his money despite crimping his team as the white owners get their money) or also calls out the hypocrisies in his own community (black athletes getting suspended due to drug testing). SAS usually touts players who are proven super-stars, shoots too much in games, score big or miss big, who are ultra-athletic.

Skip if you will represented the white man from Oklahoma City prefers more team-oriented play (San Antonio Spurs) and players who aren't necessarily the most athletic but have the "it character," modesty, God-fearing and Skip's clutch-gene (Tim Tebow) and revels in the downfall of players who are touted for their athleticism but whom he thinks lacks so-called "character" (LeBron James lacks the clutch gene).

The two battled it out, in my opinion, the identity politics of the Left Coast (SAS) vs. the sensibilities of the Flyover Country/South (Skip) as embodied in the sports arena. It made for a really compelling TV show for entertainment.

Recently however, Skip left the show to join Fox Sports Network. His white replacement, Max Kellerman is no longer an antagonist against the other side but more supports the identity politics of SAS (e.g., basically just nodding along in the whole Kaepernick not standing during anthem). This made the show extremely boring IMO and no longer compelling TV.

My take might sound extremely contrived and racist if you haven't watched the show. But IMHO, the elements are all there and the producers/hosts are very careful to coast up to the edge of right sensibility of PC while still boosting the controversies and ratings. I'd love for other watchers of the old First Take to comment if they disagree or have other takes.

And finally why you'd care about the dynamics of a popular sports talk-show if you're not a sports fan - like art imitating life and life imitating art back, politics as represented in the current US election cycle is IMHO a spectacle imitating popular sports culture, and the opposing party nominee of your party is the rival team of your division, the heel, the against team of your sports bet staked with your political identity. Perhaps for the League, the owners of the teams sitting in the owners box ultimately isn't who wins on the field but the constant tout in the media so that the fans in the stand are fanned to keep buying in.

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.

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).

No Fun League: Why all the celebration bans? Come on. It's ridiculous.

Is it a catch? This seems to change every week.

No more hits: It's good for players' health, but maybe the players should change their style of play and not go up for that super high pass across the middle and show some self-preservation rather than penalizing a defender.

Reviews: this can be reviewed but this cannot. Why? If the ultimate goal is to get it right, everything should be reviewable.

Officiating: Tumbled to terrible quality recently. Even the league, which is loathe to criticize its officials, has admitted that officials have screwed up that changed the outcome of several games. This is historically bad.

Games in far off lands: This needs to end. Now.

Preseason: Stop making ticketholders buy these worthless games. Should be 2 preseason games. NFL doesn't make the networks carry preseason games, why should season ticketholders foot the bill?

Teams moving around for money: Talk about fan alienation.

Teams moving around for money: I couldn't agree more. I was recently living in STL and this left a really bad taste in my mouth, and I'm a Packer fan who will never have to worry about this. It really pulls to the forefront that these teams are purely profit-driven, which in professional sports is a given, but gives the appearance of excessive greed. In some ways it's the antithesis of all of those feel-good sports movies where they play through adversity to overcome.

I'd be interested in knowing how these sorts of stunts play out in a more macro sense. As a whole, it may be a net profit for the NFL, but I wonder if it's more of a medium-term win.

The Rams moving to St. Louis didn't sit too well with this native of Los Angeles. Roman Gabriel! Fearsome Foursome! Come on!!!

I don't watch football, but the rams going to LA and NOT THE RAIDERS. WHAT?!

The Rams have spent half their history in Southern California, them moving back isn't weird.

Also, Thursday night football is trash. The matchups are bad and everyone hates the short week.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Built on the foundations of the enlightenment? Without the historical baggage of Europe? Monarchies, feudalism, etc.

I think it is fascinating that you see such symbolism in standing with hand over heart for the playing of the national anthem and also point to the disgust for players opting to kneel as a reason people are not watching football.

That's the symbolism they are invoking when they kneel! They do not want to show a solidarity that they do not believe exists. That people would give up watching football over it sort of supports their side of the argument.

If you are curious about why it's played, here is a good article: http://mentalfloss.com/article/22150/why-do-we-sing-national...

The short answer for why it is still played is "tradition". There's a lot of things in a lot societies that are "weird" for the same reason.

Thanks for the link. Often missed: the anthem at baseball games was originally sung by the crowd, spontaneously while a brass band played on the field.

This seems a lot more fun to me than the current (awkward) practice of standing there trying to look more serious than the guy next to you, hand over heart, while some ostentatious diva who lost the last Eurovision contest belts out yet another over-dramatized and over-personalized performance.

The current incarnation of this tradition needs to die for aesthetic reasons, if not political ones.

It's simply tradition. I've been to a couple of sports events in the U.S. and it doesn't seem overtly nationalistic or jingoistic.

God Save America in the 7th inning stretch post 9/11 couldn't get more jingoistic.

There are plenty of people here in the US that think it's just as strange. I don't get it either.

Literally no one cares about the anthem protests. They don't even show them during the games.

The big problem is that a lot of star players were injured at the beginning of the season - Brady, Romo, Dez Bryant, JJ Watt, RG III, Adrian Peterson, etc. Just so many injuries this year.

And we have millennials doing a lot more online games, so we have that competition now.

Brady was suspended, not injured. But your point is still valid.

Yes. All the suspensions/injuries/retirement (Peyton) aren't helping ratings.

The audience wants their stars.

I knew I was missing one when I was thinking about this, and that was Peyton. Thanks

That's not what the polls say.

Here's one: https://www.google.com/amp/www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/poll-m...

But yea, I'm sure it's seems like it wouldn't matter.... to people still watching.

You can ignore that poll, since it doesn't account for likely viewers that turned away from watching.

Perhaps. However, there is evidence that the anthem protests are the leading cause of the sharp NFL viewership decline:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikeozanian/2016/10/05/confirmed...

The NFL product hasn't changed that dramatically this season, and last season was an all-time record. That's not to say that the product itself isn't contributing to the decline, or to dismiss demographic shifts mentioned in a sibling comment, but rather to note that dismissing the ongoing culture-war element out of hand is foolish.

That article and the poll it was based on are hardly reliable. The author had previously written this as speculation (he references this in the article) and that poll is viewed with skepticism by the linked article. Rasmussen has a built in sample bias and that's being generous. NFL has contradicted these assertions [1].

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/nfl-executives-blame-confluence-...

the poll that your article cites from another article. and like that article says, (which maybe is why didn't you just link the original article) Rasmussen's polls lean conservative. there is definitely some people not watching because of the protests, but there are people who are just tired of goodell and the dumb crap he pulls.

did you hit your wife? 1 game unless the public starts getting more angry about it.

smoke weed? 6 game suspension. no no, make that 8 games. or drop 20 spots in the draft.

celebrate on a touchdown? flag and a $20k fine later.

deflating some footballs in which your team was already punished for doing so but you destroyed your cell phone and now you're making me look dumb? 4 games.

all of this and the huge cte stuff the nfl wishes would go away has turned me off to watching any kind of football at all.

so... maybe the protests? i bet a large majority of those polled still watch the nfl anyways, even as i sometimes do despite my frustrations. i know a lot of fans who don't give a shit about any of the above. they just want their team to WIN.

but the fact of the matter is, the nfl product is terrible this season. it's just not very interesting at all unless you're one of the 5-1 teams

Id like to hear more about this mismanagement. Football as a product is guided by how exciting it is and how good it is as a group event. The types of mismanagement I could imagine is high costs at events or low energy which is the result of players being disinterested, announcers being unenthusiastic or an overall dread associated to fans.

I can see how mismanagement can influence it but ai wpuld love to hear of occurences

There's league mismanagement, starting with the uneven and arbitrary handling of player discipline, questionable attempts to expand the league's reach which have damaged the product on the field, like the London and Thursday night games. Legislation of any sort of entertainment or fun out of the league, such as celebration penalties, taunting penalties, fines against players for wearing non-sanctioned but legal equipment (i.e. different colored shoes, arm-sleeves, eye-black, etc), Hypocrisy about player safety concerns, concussions, domestic violence, recreational drug usage (you can be shot full of Torodol during a game, but not light a blunt in Denver or Seattle, where it is legal, during your off-time), etc. It goes on...

There is also rampant team mismanagement. The best teams in the NFL are the best teams in the NFL largely because they have competent, stable front offices and coaching staffs. Hitting on a good quarterback also helps, but isn't necessarily the key, as great quarterbacks in shitty systems can't surmount that handicap by themselves. Some teams shuffle their management every other year, routinely overpay for players, leaving gaping holes in their rosters in other areas, constantly trade away valuable draft picks for over-the-hill veterans, cut players on guaranteed contracts that then count as deadwood eating up their salary cap to no benefit, and many other examples of unsound, short-term thinking. This kind of mismanagement is crippling, because a year of two of whiffing in the draft or mismanaging the salary cap can impact a team for years down the road.

I stopped watching a long time ago. I hate that they feel the need to make it like a live action video game with stupid sound effects and graphics that cover most of the screen. Well, that and there's really just not much actual play happening.

The cultural aspect is not political. It's interests. Soccer is growing. Lacrosse is growing. Etc. ESPN appeals to a very traditional sports mind. And those type are less and less, especially among the younger demographics.

Demographic and generational shifts are clearly part of it as well, but the numbers are quite sudden which indicate a more immediate cause, in my opinion.

I think it is foolish to dismiss any one particular contributing factor, particularly for ideological reasons. Reality is more interesting when one is able, as best one can, to set aside ones own ideology when observing.

I'm not sure why you'd expect an organization like ESPN to modulate their content in sync with generational shifts. Most organizations try to put off such shifts until the transformation must obviously occur and then rapidly play 'catch up' while trying to innovate for the audience they're chasing. If ESPN is able slowly and accurately follow along with cultural shifts, then they've got some exceptionally brilliant people driving there.

You'll get plenty of people to disagree with this opinion (even the networks / NFL themselves: see all the different reasons they come with for ratings decline).

But this is exactly why I and many of my family and friends have:

1) stopped watching the NFL this year and

2) stopped watching ESPN years ago

Another contribution to decline of NFL is the scandals involving domestic abuse. All of these factors come together to alienate the audience, who is increasingly at odds culturally with the message being pushed by ESPN and the like.

i quit watching because of the enormous amount of commercials and bullshit.. it shouldn't take 4-5hrs for a football game.. kickoff commercial, flag, commerical, touchdown commercial, kickoff commercial.. blech. and i played all my life into college and love the game, but i refuse to watch.

Football games are universally 3-3.25 hours long (omitting overtime games.) They keep to the same schedule each week. Do you even watch football?

This is the crux of why viewership is declining. Who in their right mind these days has 3+ hours to watch a game that has only an hour of play time. And realistically speaking, the average "actual" play time is sub-15 minutes [1]. Just because this has been the case, doesn't make it the template for the future.

The league knows it has a problem but inertia, greed and a clueless front office are impediments to change. Let's call it like it is: The league has become greedier with every passing year. And please don't believe the hype: They don't care for the players health and safety either, despite the rule changes [2].

Having been in the stands at a number of games, it's obvious that the players want to go and dislike the commercial breaks because it breaks their flow. To summarize, players aren't happy, fans aren't happy; no surprise then that ratings are falling.

The path forward is to rein in game time (2-2.5 hours a game) and make more games available on interactive, online platforms like Twitter. Additionally, it is time that the league revise their monetization strategy for game broadcasts. What works for soccer might not work for the NFL given that a season is 16-weeks, but what's in place today isn't future-friendly. The league needs to evolve with the changing milieu or perish.

Fortunately for a fan of the game like me, the league has shown that it can change its spots.

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=average+actual+play+time+NFL...

2. http://www.theplayerstribune.com/richard-sherman-nfl-player-...

Do you? I assume you only mean professional football because college games average longer than your "universal" time you mentioned. If you only mean the NFL, that's not quite "universal" then, is it? And if you did mean only NFL, it was really unfair for you to question that the GP doesn't watch football when you didn't even qualify your constraints.

College games are slightly longer however both NFL and FBS games are between 3 and 3.5 hours. ~3:07 for NFL [1]. ~3:20 for FBS [2]. "...college games average longer than your "universal" time you mentioned." is not an accurate statement.

[1] http://www.oregonlive.com/nfl/index.ssf/2015/11/nfl_games_ru...

[2] http://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/how-long-is-t...

GP: > Football games are universally 3-3.25 hours long

You: > "...college games average longer than your "universal" time you mentioned." is not an accurate statement

Your second link: > Football Bowl Subdivision games averaged 3 hours, 23 minutes (i.e. 3.38 hours long)

So it is a 100% accurate statement, even if the difference is small. Regardless, the GP asking if GGP watches or saying someone's statement is not accurate (when it clearly is) does not help the discussion. Games are long and not a subject worth being dismissive about.

No, it's not accurate. I am not dismissive of the issue or the facts. Merely dismissive of your erroneous statements. The GPP mentions 4-5 hours. GP's correction is accurate. Your criticism of GP is pedantic considering he's in the ballpark (no pun) and GPP is wildly off.

This argument sounds a lot less sophisticated when the only further elaboration provided is "they gave an award to Caitlyn Jenner at an award show".

I heard on a podcast the other day that English football is also seeing a dip in ratings. I don't know if that is actually true but if so it puts some perspective on the hand wringing about why the NFL and other USA sports are declining in popularity. If it is more of a universal trend to me that implies something beyond issues such as politics, concussions and domestic violence.

It is true, but that both are losing viewers doesn't mean they both are for the same reasons.

True but if there's a general trend towards decline in viewership might sense would be to explore shared reasons prior to trying to think too deeply about other causes.

On /r/soccer there was a post at the top from The Guardian. It seems that it's more based on the ability to stream:

https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/59n8gf/even_my_78ye...

And to add to the general discussion about ESPN, streaming, and the like: I'm internet-only with TWC (now Spectrum, as I'm constantly reminded) but even if I had a tv subscription I still wouldn't have been able to watch the EPL on NBC Sports streaming site since they're Comcast-owned.

They are learning the hard way the drawbacks of being uncompromising in the belief of antiracism.

>ESPN has been increasingly pushing a progressive narrative on its viewers,

This is certainly the narrative I've heard Limbaugh advance of late, but this[0] NPR post has stats that my offer another explanation:

"The Wall Street Journal reports the prime-time audience of adults under 50 for the top four broadcast networks, which schedule dramas, comedies, and so-called reality shows in that slot, is down 9.2 percent from last year's fall TV season."

"But the cable news networks...up 39 percent in a three-week span this fall from the same time period during the last presidential election."

"Movie attendance since Labor Day is down 16 percent"

[0]http://www.npr.org/2016/10/29/499801719/stop-lying-america-y...

I think the election is the most plausible explanation. Modern American politics has turned into it's own sport, with the debates, commentary, polling, and predictive modeling, following a modern election these days feel eerily similar to following your favorite sports team (but with much higher stakes).

There's the progressive narrative but there's also something even more insidious. Sports talk used to be about strategy and talent. Now it's about scandal, drama, and human interest.

Trying to get more viewers they've turned to soap opera and reality TV territory, much like 24 hour news outlets have.

Trying to get more sometimes gets you less.

>Sports talk used to be about strategy and talent. Now it's about scandal, drama, and human interest.

All those degrees in liberal arts colleges that manufacture PC followers did its job. I'd also connect the increasing modern feminisation of the western males to it and removing the competition in schools - participation prizes and such.

What used to be healthy values you stated are now condemned if not demonised for being majorly male.

Top example: Jessica Mendoza is beyond doubt the worst professional baseball announcer I've ever heard. Yet fans are forced to listen to her on every high-profile Sunday night game.

ESPN transparently wants to position themselves as "progressive" and "history-making" by placing a female in a traditionally male role, at the expense of product.

I can go on about why I find her style of commentary so grating, but suffice it to say I've switched to listening to radio for Sunday night games.

Sunday Night Football is broadcast by NBC not ESPN. Just saying.

Baseball.

It's just cord-cutting and the fact that their actual product has been going downhill for the better part of a decade. Try to impose an alt-right perspective on this all you like, it's not going to work.

I believe you are correct here. The same has happened to CNN, MSNBC and other cable channels during the elections while the viewership of FOX is now larger than CNN and MSNBC combined.

What is particularly interesting is that Hannity is now beating everyone else in ratings and he is probably the most unapologetic Trump supporter.

Seems like people punish media that is pushing HRC.

Hannity's an entertainer, not an analyst. The ratings are from the political entertainment industry feeding off of people's darkest fears and pumping them full of imaginary outrage so they can feed off of them some more. It's not pretty, and is actually pretty shameful and embarrassing for our country that this is what we've sunken to as a nation.

Everyone who wants to be on TV has to be an entertainer, otherwise he/she has no business being on television and should instead write papers and books.

The rest is just your opinion, which you are obviously entitled to. I happen to disagree and I think most would too, otherwise he wouldn't have that kind of viewership.

Great observations, and likely true at some deeper level.

But I suspect the gossip headlines of "What color underwear is the QB wearing today?", are mostly to blame for the ESPN attrition.

> progressive

It's not progressive, it's mainstream, the social norm. The racist right is a small segment of the population.

No, it's really not. Especially in big football-watching markets.

The alt-right wants to insist they are the norm, but it's not true. Americans elected a black President, interracial marriage is increasing dramatically as are other black elected officials, and racism by a political candidate is a career-ending mistake.

The big football markets are major cities, such as New York, which are even more liberal and ethnically diverse than the rest of the country.

I dunno, there seems to be a pretty big reaction to the progressive official story going on in this election, and those people are coming from somewhere. Considering the SEC is the biggest football conference in the country, and it's based out of Texas and the deep South, which rather reactionary regions.

There is far more to the USA than the major coastal cities, and if you go out into the hinterlands, you'll quickly find that there's a goodly number of people that aren't as progressive as some would like.

This is good news

Entrenched business need to suffer pain to move.

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

It's gonna hit player salaries pretty hard. ~1/2 of revenue goes to players.

http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/11200179/nfl-teams-divide...

$171 million of player costs against $324 million in revenues.

When you are a football player, and this is what you have been training and dreaming of your entire life, making $15mil instead of $30m, or maybe $1m instead of $2m on the low end, would not make you stop playing football and start selling insurance or whatever.

I was simply commenting about where the money goes. Players capture a lot of the revenue, a decline in revenue will thus likely be reflected in a decline in their compensation. To your point, they can go down quite a lot and still be viable.

Well that's tragic /s

Gotcha, I was just saying how I doubt it will result in worse player quality, at least not immediately.

Not player quality but maybe, just maybe extremely ostentatious lifestyle will be less visible.

It's more about young athletes who have the choice between sports where your brain turns to mush and make half as much as you used to or other sports that are easier on the body. Look whats happened to boxing.

Not as soon as you might think. NBA just signed a broadcast deal with Turner and ESPN big enough to allow every teams salary cap to increase to $94m (from $70m) per year. This is making even mediocre players incredibly wealthy this year.

Take for example this feature on a relatively unknown player named Tyler Johnson[0], who just signed a deal that'll earn him about half of Michael Jordan's entire cumulative career salary in just 4 years -- or $50 million. And that's one of the lowest new deals cited in the article.

I do know that it's a fact broadcast deals affect player salaries, but I expect salaries to continue trending upward even while broadcasters shift focus to web/streaming distribution.

0. http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/17892288/how-mia...

Doesn't seem so bad to me. Chances are they will try just as hard, as the minimum salaries in pro sports are still a fairly long distance from what those guys could otherwise be doing. There's also the prestige of participating in the spectacle. Even when sports people were paid merely above average salaries they'd do it. You can even look at lower league participants; they're happy to work a job as well as practice for the chance to make it.

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/ and https://stratechery.com/2016/tv-advertisings-surprising-stre..., 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.

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?

The second link explains it pretty well.

Definitely painful but the contents of how we measure our economy might need to undergo that anyway. There's always a talk about consumption but maybe we're at a point when we really do have enough and there's only marginal innovation left for some of the basic consumer goods - like the introduction of those curved tvs. Especially with a lot of us younger folks already living in a world of debt, stagnant wages, and unaffordable housing in the major metro areas.

Looking forward to reading those links. Thanks for sharing.

What about those talent shows and celebrity dancing shows? Are they not live events?

I don't watch them, but it seems a lot of people do, and not as highlights.

It's not at all clear to me advertisers need television as much as television needs advertisers. There are all sorts of ways to get your message out to consumers.

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.

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

In the US game pass shows no live games which makes it much less interesting for almost all fans. It's targeted at hard core fans who want to watch replay games or many games each week.

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.

how is MLB.tv different from Extra Innings? EI suffers from blackout bullshit.

>> 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.

An HD antenna will get you a couple games each week. If you live near your team, you'll likely get that game on the local channel unless it's MNF/SNF/TNF.

It's a good idea to glance at TV Fool before messing with an antenna. An indoor antenna is useless here (smaller town, I checked TV Fool and tried a couple antennas anyway, one marginal channel).

This is Hacker News. If you don't live in a major metro area, you don't exist.

I didn't read the comment that way, I just think TV Fool is a great tool for anyone looking at setting up an antenna.

Actually if it is the local team for you, even Thursday and Monday night football are over the air for you. As a Broncos fan in Denver I always have access on a local channel (I do have cable mind you, but it is available).

This is why ESPN (and other networks) paid so much for live sports rights to defend their business model. As the writer said eloquently:

"ESPN made a bet that exclusive live sports rights would be the moat that protected its castle from all attackers. The problem is this, that moat flooded the castle instead."

Playstation Vue is really the best choice. The price is right and there's apps for everything now (except AppleTV but lol that's always been a hobby). Even gets NFL Red Zone, and you can use your Vue login on all the networks' individual sites.

Try watching most of the big 4 sports live outside of your "home". PSVue is just the same ol traditional model, just delivered over the internet. I fail to see how Vue is different than say, Spectrum (formerly TWC which has Roku, mobile, etc apps).

Take a peek at their FAQ regarding "home". They are just more of the same I'm afraid; bowing to networks' requirements about when/where/how you can watch. They might be better than other providers on a few small things, but sports watching is basically the same.

Sling TV? I got it so I could get AMC/lifetime/etc without getting ESPN, but they have a pretty cheap option that gives you ESPN.

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.

Link to some supporting evidence?

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-...

Not quite. Baseball is not 'hot' but that does not mean it doesn't have a solid fanbase.

The median age of 'human beings' in America is climbing :)

Here's one example: home teams getting amazing ratings:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2016/07/19/with-2016-...

You'd be surprised at how some of these sports have huge fab-bases without the Kardashian media noise.

Media is changing just as much as anything, and this is a key factor. NYPost/NYT have to keep up to Buzzfeed. ESPN has to keep up with Netflix/online viewership.

Sports will have a harder time because the contracts are locked up and hard to access - whereas an upstart in Film/TV can come along and disrupt.

We also have the man who could end up being the greatest baseball player of all time (Mike Trout) entering the prime of his career, and I'd bet that most people have never even heard of him.

If the Cubs weren't in this World Series, I can't imagine it would get any buzz at all. Even here in die-hard Red Sox country, baseball doesn't move the needle a whole lot.

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.

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

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").

'Liberal' - in every country in the world except the USA (and Canada) means 'Classical Liberalism' which 'economic liberalism' or 'everything not run by the Monarchy'. This is we call the Judiciary and Legislative 'Liberal institutions'. Economic liberals are kind of the old Bourgeoisie.

The 'Liberal' parties of the world are more like 'Libertarian' parties of the US, but they tend to be more 'business' like, and not so much 'anti government' and the don't have this 'don't tread on me' colloquial/aggressive attitude. They tend to be somewhat left-leaning on social issues.

'Neoliberal' is a term to describe those who are 'super free market' proponents, i.e. Chicago school of economics - free trade everywhere, no government 'interference'. etc..

I think what you mean is 'left-leaning' or 'socially leftist dogmatically'.

Also - European Football is not 'left leaning' - it's also what the rest of the world plays, and so do a lot of Americans.

I've read some polls indicating that the vast majority of Americans are upset with Kapernick, and the corporate tone of ESPN is getting fairly PC these days, which can be a good or bad thing depending on ... personally, I think sports is kind of an arena where people want to escape political issues and just play sports. ESPN has made some PC decisions lately and I wonder if this has been a factor myself.

I would describe the Liberals in Canada as classical Liberals. They are strongly pro free trade for example. This very weekend Trudeau is on his way to Brussels to sign the Canada/EU Free Trade deal that was negotiated by his Conservative predecessor.

You make a good point about that specific issue, and they are similar to Classical Liberals, but really they are not.

They are a centre-left party.

They are pro-union, strong minimum wage supporters, in Ontario they are making massive investments in green energy that are sadly not very effective (I wish they were), they socialized the University system, and fully socialized healthcare to the point wherein it's illegal to pay a doctor to fix you - that's more 'socialist' than any European country on that point.

A 'Liberal' party in Europe would not support any government that barred private citizens from building a hospital or school - that's a pretty fundamental issue.

But I do agree they share some similarities.

But 'free trade' is one of the issues the socialist have pretty much lost/caved on - although we can almost all agree there can be downsides and weird caveats, on the whole most, even leftish economics buy into the idea of free trade.

FYI 'free trade' between two modern states is a very different thing than 'free trade' between a superpower and a small, agrarian, less-developed economy like USA-Chile or something.

If sports channels don't cover sports news like the police brutality protests, then who should?

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.

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.

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

It's people moving away from paying for cable, probably people that don't have much interest in sports but were paying for ESPN as part of the default bundle of channels. I suspect a large portion of them never watched ESPN to begin with.

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

I've read that this is also true in the sense that many young players are opting out of physical sports. Coaches are complaining that the kids don't want to play a game they can't reset when it's not going well for them. The coaches, of course, see this as a bad thing but I don't think it's necessarily good or bad. It's just the reality that there are now more options for people.

> Coaches are complaining that the kids don't want to play a game they can't reset when it's not going well for them.

How is this not a bad thing? I certainly wouldn't want my son or daughter give up as soon as things don't work out. That kind of behavior spills into the rest of life, not just sports.

Seems like a result of the babysitting in modern gaming. Also there's a lack of learning that loss and bad feelings aren't icky and there's nothing wrong with someone who feels that instead prescribing them medication.

The changes in schools and helicopter parenting are these causes.

Anecdotal sure but I'm a millennial who knows a grand total of zero Millennials who even know esports are a thing. Think it's a stretch to say they're displacing traditional sports given that many of my friends are fanatical about football and I myself am a huge NBA fan. I'm not convinced esports are more than a niche thing. Personally I'd be more interested in watching paint dry.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESports

League of Legends, Overwatch, Counter Strike etc etc.

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/

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.

esports always have and always will be a niche.. when I was a kid we competed in dingy hotel conference halls for hundreds of thousands TOPS... Good ol' CPL. probably only half a chance of getting paid too.

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

FIFA is somewhat popular.

Don't worry, it's not really 'what the kids are into these days'.

I think it's the $100+/month cable bills that are displacing millenials. When the alternatives are so much cheaper ($10 Netflix, $13 HULU, etc) paying $130/mo for cable just seems insulting.

esports are only popular on the internet and your colleges' video game club. While they're no doubt getting bigger, they're a tiny niche and most regular people still think they're weird. Also they seem more popular in Europe and Asia.

Sure. But one is growing, one is shrinking.

The number of people who use only cash is shrinking, and the number of people who use only Bitcoin is rising, therefore ...

How many "cash startups" are there? How many bitcoin startups?

I thought we were talking about trends among users. (to draw an analogy between niches) Sounds to me like you're moving the goalposts to win an Internet argument.

While it's true video game streaming is still a tiny niche, what probably is affecting ESPN's bottom line is the number of people who would have watched sports in years past but are now eschewing any sort of passive entertainment in favor of video games.

Pretty sure the number of who are showing no interests in any sports (traditional or e-) is higher than displacing.

Unless your South Korean, not really.

It's likely a combination of a few things including people going directly to NFL (Gamepass), NBA, NHL and MLB for the content as well as people simply dropping cable altogether. Those cable subscribers might not have cared/watched sports anyway, though they /paid/ for it and were counted as "subscribers" on ESPN numbers.

Another way to think about it. ESPN, outside commentary and opinion, is really nothing more than a middleman. The leagues can go direct to the consumer and they likely will do this much more in the future.

ESPN cannot go direct to consumer per the contracts. It is required that to consume much of the ESPN content, you need a cable subscription (even to stream on the internet). That is a broken model and is slowly (or quickly?) dying. That's not great for NFL etc but horrible for ESPN. The sports leagues could recover, ESPN likely couldn't.

Can you get NFL Gamepass directly without a Cable/Satellite service provider? I thought that was a Direct TV exclusive. But maybe that expired?

Yes. Just can't watch games live in the United States.

NFL Sunday Ticket is a DirecTV exclusive unless you can prove you can't get DirecTV at your address then you can stream live games.

And the commentary has become pretty awful. Stephen A Smith is unwatchable[0].

[0] http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563

One of the problems with Game Pass is that you can't actually watch live games.

You can listen to live audio. You can watch replays of games. In fact, you can watch replays from 22 different camera angles. You can watch condensed replays. You can even watch live preseason games. But you can't watch live games that matter.

Do you mean the all-22? I don't think they actually have 22 different camera feeds.

Zoomed-out angles that show all 22 players on the field. The TV broadcast zooms-in on the quarterback so you can't see the receivers, corners, and safeties downfield. All-22 shows everything.

I'm pretty sure I'm their target market. For me, I stared at my dish bill every month, and thought to myself: outside of football and hockey, I watch MAYBE 4 hours of TV a month. Why am I spending $130+/month on dish?

I love football, love hockey. Would be MORE than happy to pay a reasonable fee for it, but not $1600/yr. For me they're additionally hampered by the fact that frontier is the worst ISP on the planet and even if I did want to stream games I probably wouldn't be able to do so in any reasonable quality.

Sports are like any other piece of content jockeying for people's time. The pool of available content is so large now that people are simply consuming other things.

Anecdotally, I think people also care less about sports. It used to be everyone at work would talk about various sports, but now roughly half the people could care less.

Something not mentioned is consumers are now less tolerant of commercials imo.

Pull the age stats over the past decades for major league baseball fans and you'll see sportball has always been a boomer thing... they're "going elsewhere" as a euphemism for the cemetery.

Another thing is all sports over represent whites demographically, so if there's a big government immigration program to reduce the white demographic from 90% in the boom days to 60% now and ideally 0% in the distant future, then sports is just going away as an old white man thing. NBA and soccer are the only sports where the fans basically are not old white men. Another decade or two and it won't be a white country therefore not a sports bubble / sports fan country. Just simple demographics, non-whites don't do sports as much as whites.

Chinese love basketball, black people like sports quite alot.... Im Not sure what Hispanics like other than boxing and soccer but they definitely watch sports.

Woe be upon hockey...

Piracy is definitely a factor. It's very easy to find high quality live streams these days. They're not even something a person needs to seek out anymore because they get posted in various 'live threads' for sporting events.

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..

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.

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.

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...

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> The NFL is the largest professional sports league on the planet.

True, but only just. By media income, the Premier League is projected to surpass the NFL in 2017.

Premier league is not American sports. ESPN caters to an American audience, which is exactly what we're talking about here. How is that relevant? Few people here care about European sports. And why cherry pick media income? Premier league made 4B. The NFL is projected to bring in 13B this year.

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...

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.

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...

What does that matter? You're combining a ton of separate professional leagues. We're talking about the US here, ESPN's primary audience. I know that Soccer is very popular around the world, but that's irrelevant in this context.

That popping sound you hear is the sports bubble bursting.

Is it? 621K subscribers is less than 1% of the total.

If I were losing 1% of my customers every month I'd be pretty worried.

Soccer needs some rule changes to be worth watching.

Number one on my list would be getting rid of the stupid no-substitutions thing. I am not interested in watching people sedately jog around for 90 minutes, because they know they have to play the entire 90 minutes. Unlimited substitutions, and have guys play balls-to-the-wall for five minutes, then line-change them like in hockey. This is how we played in high school, and it made the game infinitely more fun to both play and watch.

Number two, eliminate flopping. It's just awful. Go hard, bounce off each other, get up, and keep going, don't go down like you've been shot if someone breathes on you.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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!

Seems like you're trying to make some point. No idea what it could be though.

So, over the air?

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

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

Hrmm, what shall our company do to all of those people that can't get high quality over the air or just want better quality along with cable/satellite? We should have our channels appear digitally in high quality on the boxes they are already paying for!

Sounds crazy, right?

Oh, and then we can use our leverage (i.e. these viewers) and our congressional lobbyist to allow us to charge them to carry our content when not over the air! We'll call it "retransmission fees". Sure, maybe there's a side effect where our reliance on retransmission fees is higher than advertising, but who cares...we can have both!

You all are pretty smart...these exclusive deals that we make for content that we make hard to obtain not-over-the-air will make big money.

Basically ham radio for video.

Actually this is the norm for alot of local government and sport broadcast. id imagine video transmission is alot more radio bandwidth/power intensive than straight voice and ham radio chats.

Cord-cutting?

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.

That doesn't sound accurate.

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

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.

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

PlayStation vue is my new cable, month to month suckas

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.

Lightning

Death

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