ESPN Can't Afford to Go on Like This
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Like you, there's plenty of people who aren't interested in sports and aren't interested in paying extra for a sports-bundled cable package.
Then there's people like me who like sports and don't like the programming on ESPN. Two decades ago, ESPN reporting used to be legitimately great. They'd talk about strategy, roster moves, interviews with players/coaches, etc. These days it's TMZ with a sports focus. Even something as mundane as Tom Brady's new haircut became a talking point on ESPN. The most recent example I have of ESPN's decline was the recent NFL draft. It was nothing but baseless conjecture on who's getting whom. It's a lot of random guesswork and hot takes portrayed as journalism. The talking heads would just shout about the most outrageous conjecture with no rationale.
ESPN has gotten complacent and they're paying for it now. In my opinion they were relying on cable subscriptions when that's going away, and they haven't invested in quality programming to keep the sports fans in the longest time.
What I was thinking when I saw the lay-offs is that this is exactly the wrong move for them. I understand why ESPN did it, to cut costs, but they're cutting them in the wrong area.
ESPN needs more reporters and more people doing direct content production.
ESPN needs to go back to content producers (sports leagues) and tell them that they're no longer able to force effectively 100% of the population to subsidize subscription costs for the percentage of the population that watches their sport and that their license payments need to be renegotiated to compensate.
For football, this past season they were only showing the MNF games. In the Bay Area, NBC Sports Bay Area has broadcast rights to all the Giants and Warriors games. IIRC, NBC broadcast holds the rights to the Sharks. In San Diego, Fox Sports San Diego has the rights to the Padres. I can't remember the last time I tuned into ESPN to watch a game I wanted to see beyond "Oh that's on, I guess I'll watch."
Even ignoring the broadcasting rights, sports talk on other channels have become vastly superior to ESPN. My two favorite segments on sports this year (ARod + Pete Rose discuss batting, Isiah Thomas discusses dribbling) came out of Fox Sports and TNT. I'd pay good money to hear more detailed analysis from former players, rather than talk endlessly about how Tom Brady looks like he's from NSync with his haircut.
In my opinion ESPN just got too complacent with their status and is digging themselves into the grave. I swear I can go on for hours over all the things ESPN is doing wrong in the sports media today.
[1] http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10984370/portrai... [2] http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12728744/how-gol...
A number of people here complain about ESPN swapping to talking heads and opinions. The reason for doing this is because it's significantly cheaper to have people give opinions (everyone has an opinion) than the costs of doing journalism. ESPN isn't swapping to these shows because they have worse ratings, comparatively they get higher ratings.
Everyone talking about he glory days of the 90s and ESPN. That time is in the past. People turn to the internet for sports updates and scores, as well as highlight reels.
Ultimately, it's a failure in the "advertising model" of paying for content. As long as content creators are paid a roughly flat fee per viewer, their only incentives are to get more viewers and cut costs. Previously the market was inefficient enough to sustain it, but now that there are alternatives the inevitable is happening in all areas of content creation. Moving to cheap to produce, easy to digest low substance, high viewership content.
Imaging you were running a restaurant, and you couldn't charge a customer per meal. You only received a small flat rate for the number of customers who ate there. You're not going to run a top end steak house where your payment doesn't even cover the materials. You're gonna run a mcdonalds. Get as many people in there for as cheap as possible. You have no choice, the money doesn't support an intimate fine dining experience.
The that the same thing happening in all aspects of content creation. The market is becoming efficient, and the only way to survive is low cost production. Fast-food of content.
This is shifting to them receiving fees from those interested in their programming, which seems much more reasonable in concept.
It is the fault of cord-cutters, because they aren't subsidizing the cost of ESPN for people who want to watch ESPN. Then ESPN could not pivot quickly enough to stop the bleeding. So yeah, ESPN is getting money from people who are interested in sports, but it is because cord-cutters had enough.
Another factor is that the Internet is a better source for sports news. Highlights are on YouTube. Twitter feeds post links to analysis from all over the web. Nobody needs to watch sports center for news anymore.
> But the bottom is dropping out of the model because of cord cutters
As I wrote, the market across the board is becoming efficient. This is restating my point. Previously the only option was for cable, now there are other options for consumption. This is increased market efficiency.
> so now they have change and adapt to not getting flat fees for much longer.
Yes they have to change from their previous fee structure, but there are many things they could've changed to that would've supported quality programming. Instead ESPN changed to an advertising model, which doesn't support it. (Ex. Why does HBO get showered with awards year after year? And how do they monetize viewers?).
To understand the difference, imagine a directed graph with a transition between two nodes. You're too focused on the node it's leaving - instead I'd recommend focusing on the node it's arriving at (efficient market advertising model). Regardless of where you come from, if that's where you end up you will quickly produce fast-food content or you'll go under.
ESPNs problem from before is not that they had a subscription model. It's that they had a bundled subscription model. It was bundeled with Cable, and they were making money from people who never watched them. Their revenue was inflated. Rather than trim and find the true medium, they're throwing it all away and going advertising.
Sports can absolutely be supported via expensive subscription (see NFL Game Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, MLB Packages, ...). Up to $400 / year for it. But ESPN is going a different route. One that will unfortunately turn them into the MTV of sports. But they won't be the only one.
Ripple-effect can be a bitch.
Do you watch PTI ?
I think PTI is the best show on TV.
EDIT: PTI = Pardon the Interruption
I'm mostly like you. Sportscenter is largely useless with highlight available on-demand, and the only time I've watched it over the past few years was when major events happened around a team I like. I think that was twice -- Lebron James coming back to the Cavs and the Cavs winning the championship.
There is so much garbage content and I can't imagine spending an entire Sunday morning watching their NFL pregame shows. They are so bad and rehash the same things over and over again. None of their content is any better. PTI set the standard for what a lot of their programming has morphed into, but PTI worked because the guys on it were smart, took interesting angles, and the show was novel. Now that there are 50 other programs just like it, the novelty has worn off and the hosts are largely "hot take" machines.
Really, besides their national NBA game broadcasts or college football, I can't think of any reason why I'd watch ESPN on a routine basis any more. There are sports podcasts that are far better and don't require my full attention than the studio shows ESPN produces.
Slightly off-topic. I didn't watch a lot of ESPN when I had cable. When I did, it was mostly SportsCenter and PTI. Are you saying that PTI marking the beginning of ESPN's programming declination or that other opinion shows failed to capture what made PTI good. It really doesn't matter, but I'm genuinely interested in your opinion here.
Can't believe they are letting Jayson Stark go as well.
ESPN is partially a victim of it's own success as well. They do such a great job with online content that where you used to have to tune into Sportscenter, glued to the TV waiting to catch YOUR teams highlights now you can just hop online and catch all of them...immediately.
I remember in college having a roommate who was such a big UNC fan that he bought a VCR just so that he could tape record Sportscenter and rewatch Vince Young highlights.
Stream one feed to the ISP and then let the ISP split it to all the interested subscribers from there?
So as opposed to ESPN needing an individual stream for every single (for example) Comcast subscriber who was watching, they send one stream to Comcast, who would then replicate it within their network to each subscriber.
I'm not a networking expert though, so maybe it's not that simple.
schnable then suggested that cable companies are switching to IP-based streaming which will have the same issue. I pointed out that it doesn't have the same issue, because multicast can be done internally to the ISP's network - though it can't be done on the wider Internet, so Twitch, Youtube, etc, still can't compete.
It's not exactly "replicating it within their network" - i.e. there's not individual connections to every single endpoint. That would quickly overload the networking equipment for no reason - you'd be sending thousands of duplicate packets, just to different endpoints. This would have no benefit over streaming from Twitch, Youtube, etc.
Instead, you have one source (which might receive its stream over satellite, unicast IP over the internet, whatever else) within the ISP's network which sends a multicast packet to its router, which then automatically duplicates it and send it to all the routers it's connected to, which does the same, and so on and so forth. This is similar behaviour to existing cable infrastructure - each packet only hits each router once.
Some small cable ISPs, and apparently maybe AT&T, do this today quite happily.
Basically, we're agreeing, but you don't seem to think we are because of the details?
I'm not aware of anyone planning a large IPTV rollout; it's been dead for years.
I'd beg to differ. The League of Legends eSports 2016 World Championship had 43 million unique viewers, 14.7 million concurrent. It is possible some viewers were from a cable TV in Korea, but it is unlikely to be a significant chunk of those figures.
The broadcast on Twitch.tv was also of much higher quality (1080p60) than what you receive from any cable company.
There are lots of delays today between different broadcasts. Just try to follow a sporting event on twitter or a forum and you will see.
Depending on the significance of the game in question, a delay of even a few seconds can be noticeable and annoying, because one of my friends on GroupMe is going to make a comment about an important goal the instant it happens.
I don't converse with anyone about the games. It's just me and my cats. I also greatly despise push notifications to my phone, with the exception of email.
But, I have a feeling I'm an edge case scenario.
There's a 65 pixel bar at the top with scores, and a 300 x 260 pixel block with headlines. The entire rest of the page on a 1920x1080 monitor is filled with garbage, auto-playing videos, embedded tweets, or wasted space.
Most "sports" fans are generally not "sports" fans. They are STANFORD fans. Or Arkansas fans. Or Michigan fans. Or Packers fans. Or Golden State fans. Or what have you.
The pure football fan is rare. As is the pure baseball or hockey fan. Most fans are normally watching because they want to see their team. There certainly is a sub-demographic that are sports fans. These are people who watch every game of their chosen sport looking for tactics and strategy. Most, however, are watching because Manchester United is playing. Or because they like the Cleveland Cavaliers. Or they're fans of the Boston Red Wings. Or maybe PSG. You get the idea.
What I'm getting at is that sports coverage would need be more personalized than ESPN is capable of in its current form if it wants to be of value to consumers today.
It boils down to this...
Why should one have to pay for ESPN if one doesn't watch it?
Firstly, if you are not a fan of any team or school or city at all, then nothing in heaven or earth would get you to watch ESPN anyway. So making any changes to appease non sports fans is a foolish endeavor. Those resources are best deployed producing content that non sports fans would like to consume. I don't pretend to know what that looks like, but I'm certain it doesn't look like ESPN.
Now let's say for the sake of argument that a person is a fan of some team or school or city. I'll take myself as an example. I might watch my alma mater play a few football games, and if they go to the basketball tournament then I watch that. Sometimes I watch the super bowl, maybe, but I have never watched a Halftime show.
Now... why would a "sports" fan like that, which is the majority of us, pay $15 to $20 a month (MANDATORY) for an entire year when they only want to watch MAYBE 6 to 12 games between football and basketball that are usually not on ESPN anyway??? Answer: They shouldn't pay. And I'd imagine most of them won't in the future.
ESPN will need to offer more customization. Be it through live streaming or time shifting or whatever. I'm not an expert, but I think the days of forcing a $20 fee on people every month for non personalized sports coverage are just not sustainable long term.
True, the average sportsfan only watches whole games of their favorite teams.
However, people love highlight reels. That's why Sportscenter is so huge.
Unfortunately, ESPN is moving more and more towards "personalities" and gossip and whatever. Just give me the highlights on loop. That way, bars, restaurants, people in their own homes will have it on in the background constantly.
EDIT: Sure, they need to do more content on the web and on-demand or whatever. But their core TV programming should be less TMZ-y. I don't care what athletes did on vacation.
Which is rapidly being replaced (to some degree) with things like twitter, instagram, snapchat, subreddits, streamable, and other social media/video streaming websites.
It takes next to no time or effort for somebody to roughly cut a highlight and post it to social media. Meanwhile ESPN sees diminishing returns polishing various replays and putting it in a half hour program that repeats 6+ times every morning. It's to the point every team/league even has their own social media accounts, and post the best highlights themselves. If I can see the major highlights directly from NFL's instagram account, why bother waiting halfway through sportcenter to (maybe) catch the right segment?
(FD: I do some work for BR, though not on this product.)
But Team Stream sucks. It's all just little tweets of 6 second video or just text. Hardly any of it is highlights from games. And worst of all...
they are all preceded by 30 seconds minimum of auto roll video ads.
Localized networks like the various Regional Sports Networks, Fox Sports (insert City or State Name Here), Big Ten Network and Pac12 Network are stealing the casual fans of specific teams. All of the major sports offer streaming of pretty much every game a fan of a specific sport could want.
It's telling that the first new program ESPN added following the layoffs was a simulcast of MLB's Intentional Talk. Yet another talking heads show with a TMZ bent. I don't see this ending well for them.
Only they don't. If you think about it...
whenever you want to stream from the web... you generally have to enter your TV provider credentials. So if you don't have cable, you can't stream a lot of those games.
MLB.tv is interesting because they generally don't have commercials. Oddly, I wish they did. When the broadcast pauses for commercials, my screen basically goes blank and the TV gets silent. I wish they would just switch to a whole stadium camera with crowd noise.
Now let's say I want to subscribe to only Manchester United content on NBC. Man United and the other top clubs are extremely popular globally. So this means the broadcast contract has to be tailored to each team and the more popular the team is, the higher the contract value for that team. Now this means clubs don't get equal money and if they don't, the smaller clubs will never be able to compete with the top clubs. This is the exact reason why TV money is now divided equally in England. So we're back to square one if we were to implement this.
> Firstly, if you are not a fan of any team or school or city at all, then nothing in heaven or earth would get you to watch ESPN anyway.
You're missing something big here: Gambling.
boomers. And they're economically dying out as they retire and the medical industrial complex wrings out the last of their money. Plenty of things cost a multiple of ESPN's cost and are doing fine because they sell well to young people, think of the stereotypical $100+ cell phone service. The vast majority of ESPNs viewers remember when they heard JFK was shot, their viewers are not the Challenger explosion or 9/11 generations.
Baseball has died among youth and the average fan age is now going up more than a year per calendar year. NBA average fan is much younger, like middle aged gen-x. The majority of PGA viewers are nursing home age, golf is so dead, so cringy 90s/00s. The youngest sports are major league soccer and hockey about a third millennial or younger for both, the only pro sports of 2050 are going to be spanish speaking soccer and the few remaining northern state whites watching hockey, the other sports are dead when the boomers are gone.
There is also a compression effect not seen in the past such that the NFL superbowel now gets over 10x the viewers of the world series. The average baseball game has fewer viewers than my county has residents. The average NBA game is only slightly better. In the old days there was a "wide world of sports" concept which is already dead. There isn't a "sports" industry anymore, there's american pro football, soccer for the spanish speakers, hockey and nascar for the legacy being eliminated whites, basketball for the blacks, and the also-ran sports that statistically no one watches.
No one in England is going to stop watching Manchester United games to start watching Chicago Blackhawks games, or even to watch some sucky MLS game. That's not happening man. Get that out of your head.
No one in China, Europe, the MidEast or Brazil is gonna stop watching basketball and start watching some sucky hockey game. That ain't happening either.
Do you have any idea the YoY revenue growth global sports leagues like PL or the NBA enjoy at the moment?
What you are saying may happen, MIGHT happen in your small neighborhood... though I doubt even that... but it certainly isn't gonna happen on a scale large enough to actually make the money that PL makes in a year. In fact, I doubt that American soccer and American hockey will even make the money something like the NBA pulls out of just China. Let alone global basketball in general.
Basically, you need cheap, accessible sports to challenge the global soccer and basketball behemoths. Something that could be played barefoot in a field. Or you need to JOIN the global soccer and basketball behemoths.
But yeah... sports leagues like American football, American hockey, or American soccer stand little to no chance of challenging those more global leagues growth wise. Best outcome for them would be to somehow link into those behemoths. And I can only see American soccer being able to do that... MAYBE?
In the short to medium term I don't think the business entity known as ESPN or MLB can survive USA cutting the cable cord. You're probably correct that someone is going to buy most of the pieces at the bankruptcy auction and probably right for example that baseball will be popular in Japan and central america yet that won't matter for folks in the USA who will not be watching.
It forces you to care about the performance of players across multiple teams as well as whoever your opponents players are that week.
The football fans I know tend to fall into two demographics: College and Pro. Basically determines which day of your weekend will be committed to watching football all day; Saturday...or Sunday?
Personally, I've been a die hard Clemson fan since before I was born so it's definitely Saturday for me. I haven't watched but maybe 2 NFL games a year for the last 10 years or so but I still play fantasy football.
They show endless hours of Sports Center—how much can you meaningfully talk about sports? Even most of the commentary in the games is stupid.
Granted, I listen to sports podcasts (and I really like ESPNs NBA Lockdown) but they have one hour, once or twice a week, and they stick to a fairly focused script. In an hour podcast they may have 3 minutes of 'commercials' and 5 minutes of filler. On a lot of ESPNs shows they just don't have enough to talk and end up filling the time talking busting each other's balls because I guess that's what a lot of sports guys do when they hang out
MIT Technology Review is not an institution of higher learning. It's a magazine supposedly focused on reporting about science and technology.
> When the president says that climate change is a hoax
The tweet I mentioned had nothing to do with climate change...not sure where you got that from.
"The mission of MIT Technology Review is to equip its audiences with the intelligence to understand a world shaped by technology." I don't think ignoring any story that happens to involve a politician would help serve that mission.
But that's exactly the problem.
Anything can be used politically.
First, it's an investment; it's not taking away money; it's not robbery. It has a return, a benefit that generally exceeds the cost (I'm not sure how much I paid to fly Cassini to Saturn, but wow was it worth it). People make investments all the time and are happy to do it, in everything from houses to the local homeless shelter to a new computer.
Second, people normally and frequently participate in group decisions, even though they rarely get exactly what they want. To suggest that anything besides an individual choosing alone is extraordinary - that isn't how people really operate.
People clearly seem to justify funding to their favorite cause as progress to humanity. However a progressive or otherwise agenda is itself purely politics.
Answering a question is research, deliberately avoiding a question is politics.
I don't know. There's a "sportsmanship" mythos out there, but I'm not sure it's the dominant one.
I see a lot more of the love-my-team-hate-your-team culture in sports that looks a lot like modern "my team" politics. I'm just struggling with the implication of that. Do we encourage rabid sports fandom to give a relatively harmless space for the tribal impulse? Or does it just train people to support their parties and politicians the same way they support their favorite jerseyed heroes?
They're losing viewers because we're turning away from television. That much is obvious to all. There are many ways to view, every event has countless streams, we get our sports news in granular form on our mobile, etc.
However in the wake of that, some very sad people have decided to get on their soapbox and claim that they're really declining because they don't parrot whatever their personal position is. I've seen these people claim that ESPN is faltering because they have a problem with players who rape or beat women. Others -- the same ones who say that they don't want it to be "preachy" -- get up in arms if ESPN isn't preachily attacking the Colin Kaepernick's of the world. Etc.
So as is often the case, the most partisan of all are the ones claiming that everything is some crazy partisan slant.
You might as well say that if a politician commits crimes, political coverage shouldn't mention it -- after all, that's not "actual political content", right?
I doubt the same inferences should be made so strongly regarding sports players.
Which means they do end up being role models, because "work hard and you can succeed" is something we desperately want to teach children, even when it doesn't seem to be true. So athletes' stories get told as a means to inspire people to better themselves, and that makes their character extremely relevant.
the same is true for Fox Sports 1. it's simply not true that consumers are watching sports programming that isn't politicized more than that which is
In otherwords, perhaps their best watched shows are the ones in the worst decline / their best watched (i.e. tent pole shows) are bleeding the most viewers. I can't speak to the cause.
espn's problems are overpaying for content (live sports), paying a huge number of employees who barely move the needle in the twitter age (all of their reporters, basically) and the rise of alternatives to cable like netflix, amazon prime, hulu and bamtech
Add in rumors that the NFL influences its schedule to give ESPN less-desirable games for Monday Night Football, and the NBA strongly favoring TNT/TBS, and what's left? They can't run Sportscenter 24 hours a day.
http://static4.businessinsider.com/image/5627cd349dd7cc10008...
Basically ESPN's executives shit the bed over and over for a number of years and the rank and file workers are the ones that end up paying for their mistakes.
[1] From http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-mistakes-led-to-layoffs-...
I agree that ESPN's decline has more to do with over-extending themselves on rights deals while cord-cutting has become "a thing" than politics. However, I don't think you can discount the politics angle as a reason that a sizable number of people have finally decided "you know, I can do without ESPN." The amount of people who I've seen, online and in person, citing the absolutely insufferable, constant politicization of ESPN (and the media in general), regardless of which side of the aisle these people sit on, leads me to believe that a lot of people are simply exhausted and just want "sports". Barring that, they're quite willing to just drop ESPN. I think it really is a legitimate factor here.
I don't. In fact I agree entirely with the notion that ESPN is shooting itself in the foot by constantly pushing politics that play well in NYC & LA, but actively turn off viewers in the rest of the country. I'm just saying it would still be failing; albeit more slowly if it "just stuck to sports".
How many?
I see ESPN addressing social issues, such as abuse of women, but I don't call that political. Of course, any person can say: X is against my politics; but on that basis everything is politics.
The reality is that there's a segment of the public that's part of an ideological political movement. Consistent with such movements, everything and everyone that doesn't share the political ideology are viewed as political enemies; the goal is to wipe out all apostates and non-believers. If ESPN doesn't share their ideology, they are portrayed as political enemies. In the end, that group is a small minority (per surveys, not per online volume or representation on cable news); we can't be intimidated into silence on important social issues.
> I've seen anecdotes online
As a basis of knowledge, that has been so misleading for so long, especially regarding politicized issues like this one, that IMHO repeating it mostly magnifies misinformation.
It isn't.
A simpler way to explain what you're getting at is: if reporting is about someone the viewer identifies with, or an issue the viewer sees as relevant to/personally affecting them, then they see it as fine. But if it's about someone the viewer doesn't identify with, or an issue the viewer doesn't see as relevant to/personally affecting them, well, that's "politics".
Thus: male viewers see it as "political" to cover women or issues affecting women. White viewers see it as "political" to cover people of color or issues affecting people of color. And there is some research to show that even small amounts of representation get perceived as a much higher percentage, by an audience used to zero as the baseline representation of people unlike themselves.
Oddly, they never seem to realize just how much "politics" had to happen to create and maintain the situation in which those other people and issues weren't considered fit to cover or even mention.
1. Viewing games costs too much
2. The commentary for said games sucks
I'd happily watch a random MLB game on a Tuesday, but sorry I am not going to spend $113/season to watch on MLB TV. The NFL is the worst. If you're out of the US you can purchase and stream games for $200/season or so, but for in the US you have to have directTV to get all the games which isn't even offered for many possible subscribers or spend $30 in beer/food for lunch at a sportsbar with no audio for your game. If I'm at home I have the choice of the local game and maybe one other random national game and if both of these games are blowouts I'm tuning out.
People want to watch their team play. They don't even mind commercials as long as there's not TOO many of them. The NFL is reaching their limit. NFL viewership has peaked. 2016 ratings declined 8%. Watching a touchdown followed by a commercial followed by a kickoff touchback followed by a commercial is too much. The only way to grow a sport is to grow viewership and fans and the only way to do that is make content cheap, easy to access and enjoyable to watch which brings us to the commentary.
The future of sports and money in sports is in the live aspect and in the commentary. I want to watch a football game commented by Conan O'Brian or Snoop Dogg or even some entertaining twitch or youtuber not Al Michaels and Phil Simms. Why not collect royalties on commentary streams? Let 1000s of people pay for the rights to comment on an NFL game and let the viewers decide who they want to listen to commentary from. Its absurd that in 2017 people still resort to reddit.com/NFLstreams or NHLstreams to watch some low res game with pop up ads everywhere with commentary from two old white guys.
Once viewership increases, ad money will increase which would offset the streaming fees the leagues would be missing out on by providing their content for free. If ESPN would simply show sports and provide interesting commentary from interesting individuals I would watch around the clock.
Over a decade ago, I was channel surfing and stumbled upon an English Premier League (edit: may have been a lower tier matchup) match cast by 2 shit-talking fans, one from each team. I thought it was absolutely genius and while having no interest in either team or even the sport, I was thoroughly entertained.
I can't argue with the amount you're willing to pay, but I can offer that I think $113/season (or about $18/month) is an absolute steal.
They aren't squeezing all the pennies from me they could be.
Just like a captivating TV series, sports demands your attention to the details and personal stories for you to become a fan. However, sporting events take hours to ingest at a time and the outcome leave many disappointed. People who have money to spend are typically people with fewer hours to allocate for entertainment. With the rise of quality TV shows that take one hour to consume, how do sports like baseball stand a chance at gaining new viewers?
The best thing ESPN has going for it are its 30 for 30 documentaries. A well produced documentary series. However, documentaries generally don't bring in huge sums of cash. If they can pivot to a create must-see dramatic show with a sports theme, they may have a chance.
You are remarkably wrong here. In fact, live sports has come to completely dominate TV over the last 20 years. 9 of the top 10 most watched TV shows in 2016 was a sporting event:
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2016/tops-of-2016...
I would argue the opposite: that "prestige" TV shows are a response to live sports by networks that don't have NFL or NBA rights.
But that diverges from my main assertion that with less time available to working people, people prefer to follow a story with familiar characters in a 1-hr window rather than have to watch a 3-hour affair between two random teams.
Now they compete with the internet. Highlights? Go to r/nba, r/soccer, r/nfl, r/hockey, boom, done, quick gif, lots of good discussion. Why spend an hour watching sportscenter? Especially now that they talk about music, twitter, and lebron james 24/7, endless commercials, always before what you spent the last 20 minutes waiting for, for something.
Not only that, youtube channels, podcasts, fans making their own content, blogs, and other forums...there's just way more content out there now than in the 90s, where all you had was the newspaper/magazine instead of the TV.
On top of that, all the major leagues have their own networks now-NHL net, NBA net, NFL net. In addition to FS1, and competing with the major networks for top events.
It's not just people watching game of thrones (those shows don't air all year around and only take up an hour a week anyway.) Although I'm sure it reduces those numbers a bit.
Cable Companies: "Well there's egg and bacon; egg, sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg, bacon and spam; egg, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, bacon, sausage and spam; spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam; spam, spam, spam, egg and spam; spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam; or lobster thermidor aux crevettes, with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle paté, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam."
Consumers: "Have you got anything without spam in it?"
Cable Companies: "Well, there's spam, egg, sausage and spam. That's not got MUCH spam in it."
Ad nauseam...
At least you used to be able to.
The more sports wanders from just sports into social, political, or even partisan issues, the less it is actually about sports.
Associating these other things with sports destroys the value. It makes it so sport is no longer an escape, but instead becomes yet another politicized venue.
Here's some other interesting theories as to why ESPN is having trouble.
http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/26/the-real-story-behind-es...
I rarely talk sports with anyone...
In fact, there are only a few things you can't and shouldn't talk about at work.
Just the most important things in life: family structure, pregnancy, race, God, health issues, etc. List all the things that are inappropriate to talk about in an interview. Then realize they come up again when you are a candidate for a new promotion or transfer.
Plus, increasingly employers are taking positions on things. We don't exactly call them out on that.
No Interest in it at all...
I think in terms of pro sports in America everything's a bit artificial (maybe because of being regional entities) and less political, but at the collegiate level the politics fly.
Who you support says a lot about your family and background, especially if you all aren't direct grads. Compare fans of Georgia Tech vs Georgia, or Texas vs Texas A&M. California vs Fresno st, etc.
See also - Celtic vs Rangers, which is for historical reasons a proxy for a variety of political disagreements (Protestant vs Catholic, Loyalist vs Republican, etc) for some fans.
MTV - when was the last time you saw a music video?
History - Apparently "History" now includes bizarre religious crackpottery, ancient aliens, and idiots buying and selling things in Las Vegas.
A&E - "Arts and Entertainment" is apparently all about terrible people and Honey Boo-Boo.
Discovery - Remember science and wildlife documentaries? Neither does the Discovery Channel.
TLC - ugh. Dwarfs and tattoos and people with way too many children.
SyFy - We can't even spell anymore, and SHARKNADO!
And, yeah, Duck Dynasty and Cake Boss are nowhere near where A&E and TLC were when they launched, but they are family-centered sitcoms, more or less, in a time with a lack of those.
I won't defend Honey Boo Boo or that sort of thing, though.
Anyway, Disney is now the company of Star Wars and Marvel, not just Mickey and princesses. If companies want to take a risk and change their brand, I guess it's their right. There's tons of content out there if we don't like it.
History - A&E networks (subsidiary of Hearst and Disney)
A&E - take a guess
Discovery - Discovery Communications
TLC - Discovery Communications
SyFy - NBC
this is called "race to the bottom" and also "media collusion".
In the past esports were kinda sideshow attractions, but now the production quality and audience numbers are quickly catching up to traditional sports. On top of that their distribution models are more consumer friendly. I'm sure there's overlap of people who watch both, but I wonder if the next generation of kids will defer to esports over traditional ones.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/68heiu/600k_viewers_...
ESPN has tried to adapt to esports, but it met resistance from its audience and its own commentators not really accepting it. There was this famous career ending rants [1] that is just one of many from the ESPN commentators - viewer comments usually don't stray too far from such thoughts.
esports fans seem pretty distinct from the core fans of ESPN, and ESPN deciding to cover it on their sub-channels (ESPN2, etc) is their attempt to reach out to those numbers and to get eyes on the channel. The internal rejection of esports doesn't help at all for ESPN who I'm sure is dying for the kinds of numbers that the Twitch and Youtube events get, especially since there is so much down-time between matches with virtually no advertisements, which likely makes the business side of ESPN wince quite a bit.
But no, I don't think esports is causing problems for ESPN in the sense that it's cutting in; ESPN would be HAPPY to get on the esports train if they could.
To be honest, I think that the more big-tent ESPN tries to go, the more likely they are to fail. There are periods of the year when nothing is happening in the big four US sports leagues, and Sportscenter becomes unwatchable - I'm just not going to tune in to watch highlights of the XYZ Open tennis tournament, or some golf tournament, or whatever other extra-niche sporting event is occurring in those months of the year.
At one point, ESPN was farming that kind of stuff out to ESPN2, along with trick billiards competitions, professional bowling, and what have you, but has instead decided to triple-down on hot takes and outrage.
Instead, it's the huge decline of coverage and quality. These forums are devoted to a more niche form of sports (open wheel auto racing). In the 1980s and 1990s ESPN coverage of these sports was actually very extensive. No longer.
There was a time when one of ESPN's strengths was a huge coverage of a wide array of sports, including many niche sports. From my perspective, a lot of the niche (or even not so niche) sports has effectively moved off of the network for one reason or another. On the main channels, cheap programming where talking heads yell at each other have taken its place.
Factor in this, and then factor in the people who got ESPN even though they weren't sports people to begin with, and now add in the cord-cutting movement. It's easy to see why ESPN's in trouble.
You also have to consider that some owners treat their franchises like fancy sports cars, not businesses, and they are extremely rare cars at that!
Every cordcutter is a loss for ESPN. This is affecting not only ESPN, but The Walt Disney Company's profits substantially. ESPN makes up ~30% of their gross revenue. They've seen losses most of the last several quarters, in large part due to bad numbers from ESPN.
For football, the valuations also already take into account that players get about 50% of revenues.
A TDG study showed nearly 101 million U.S. households subscribed to television at the industry's peak in 2011, but the number would fall below 95 million in 2017.
I'd expect a wave of mergers/consolidations and player/staff contract re-negotiations around that time. For teams, though, TV broadcast rights are just one of many revenue streams. Ticket sales, attire and souvenirs, concessions, various online subscriptions, endorsements, etc. are all refenue generators.
While valuation of sports franchises may be only loosely coupled to reason the salary of players is connected to cash flow into the company. That is even more true if the company will have struggle to get more loans (lenders tend also to be more rationale).
Probably not anymore... It does point to Netflix eventually making a lot of money and being worth a lot more than it currently is. Netflix doesn't have ad revenue (in addition to such huge consumer fees, ESPN had nearly $4 billion a year in ad revenue in 2014 at least) but its subscription fees are comparable to ESPN. Better for Netflix is its aggressive move into its own content generation. If it was "merely" a way to watch other companies content, it would be at the mercy of those content owners the way ESPN pays a king's ransom for NFL, NBA, etc. games. ESPN's strategy to focus on opinion (original content) makes a lot of sense in terms of retaining fans and having a business that could survive losing broadcasting rights for a lot of sports.
While sports team/network owners could go direct to fans fairly easily these days with 1000 tv channels and everyone having "Smart" TVs, they're probably better off under the ESPN umbrella both as a bundle of many sports and through aggregated ad sales.
It paid too much because it could even more for it on resale. Bigger fool. They'll realign as contracts start to expire. Meanwhile they had a great run, until people awoke up to the scam.
If right now they rely on people paying for the channel but not watching it. Wouldn't switching to a streaming model mean that advertisers would be more interested because more people were actually watching the channel and saw ads?
That's a lot of streamers to get to commit to 12 months of subscription.
Most people (>50% iirc) don't watch sports, but because of the arrangement described above most cable subscribers end up subsidizing it.
As a result: Selling sports directly to people who watch it dramatically undercuts their business model.
In Major League Baseball's case, they reserve that right for themselves. Of course, every baseball team also has its own local contract or network.
I get the feeling that ESPN is a middleman that is increasingly being seen as not adding enough value for the price by its subscribers.
ESPN probably expected that as well. In the US, you would expect almost any sports channel to have enough fans to make a profit. If people are going to drop channels they don't want, you would expect sports channels to be immune.
Apparently it hasn't turned out that way.
I can say that the last three times I went shopping for cable TV, the sports bundle was extra. Personally, I like hockey, but not much else. I would be happy to pay $7 a month for hockey games, but I wasn't given that option. I needed to pay much more, for a much larger bundle, and I chose to live without it.
Cable/satellite isn't really as big in Australia as it is in the States and Canada, but the last time I looked it was still $30+ a month if you wanted sport in HD (you know, so you can actually see where the ball is)
1: http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-12-06/foxtel-decides-against...
I suspect Foxtel will be in a similar position to ESPN come the next rights deal, where they can't afford to pay as highly due to people cancelling cable. Hopefully though that just results in a better streaming deal.
i guess the other thing is the inflation set by all these pseudo celebreties or ex-players, they must have demanded a lot. some of these guys are worth it, but probably not most of them.
for the record, i used to watch sportscenter everyday before work, and i'd often times watch it twice in row just to see all the highlights and witty commentary. sure i sometimes had to flips channels through the hockey or golf highlights, but most if the other content was good. i enjoyed the shows like pardon the interruption and nfl countdown, so there was quality content. now when i take business trips back home, i still turn on and enjoy sportscenter, so i dont think it's the content, probably more so the packaging and over pricing of the package, look at the nba tv deal.
laying off should help reduce long term costs, but that doesnt solve their primary issue which is where the industry is going due to new tech innovations from netflix, hulu, etc. nba league pass is a great example, i just want to watch nba, i get access to all games, post game interviews, and commentary. i can imagine this being the future, more customized content, deeper, not a melting pot of sports news.
Future to me seems, where there will be option to subscribe or buy ticket to individual events like, say only this weekend's match between team A and team B. And it seems it is more and more possible.
If you have cable, you are paying for that privilege.
Anytime i see a Bloomberg article on hn i read it.