Hacker News Reader

Comment by phil21 | Hacker News Reader

Thing is I would be delighted the the opposite. I'd love to only pay for ESPN and the other sports channels only for $15/mo. Maybe add in CNN/FOX/MSNBC/Etc. for the wife to have on in the background, but plenty of ways to get that otherwise cheaply. OTA works fine for local news, even if the apps are a bit buggy if you want anything DVR or digitally distributed.

As would likely most I believe. Thus sports propping up this ancient model and myself being part of the problem.

I'm surprised Disney/ESPN is only $15/mo of the bill to be honest, I think Youtube is taking a hit there as I'd bet it's more than half the total base subscription fee.

View on HN

ESPN will be the last to offer their own subscription, because then people would know how much they are getting away with in broadcast programming. YouTube is almost certainly paying more. Decades of strongarming TV networks has allowed Disney/ESPN to soak up 40%-60% of traditional cable bills at the expense of all other content owners. YT is taking a gamble that backed by the weight of Alphabet they can end this corruption. Sadly, I'm not sure it's a smart bet.

> ESPN will be the last to offer their own subscription

https://plus.espn.com/

ESPN+ does not stream ESPN or ESPN2 live broadcasts.

I have no evidence to support this, but my assumption would be that if ESPN were offered separately they would need to charge substantially more to break even.

My thesis for this is that most people aren’t sports fans, but they pay for sports whether they want to or not due to all the bundling. In a way, non-fans are subsidizing the content for fans.

My sneaky suspicion is that unbundling sports would be a cataclysmic event for the sports television industry. I would pay $15/month for ESPN but I wouldn’t pay $25.

What do you think?

"I'm surprised Disney/ESPN is only $15/mo of the bill to be honest"

It's probably more. They're just happy to keep your money.

$15 sounds about right. It may even be closer to $20. The reason we won't see a full ESPN only subscription anytime soon is that the current model allows them to collect $15/mo from everyone versus whatever the price would need to be if you are only selling subs to sports fans. It wouldn't surprise me if the subscription cost would be over $100/mo to keep the same revenues.

What happens to big time sports when the fans are priced out of the arena and priced out of watching on TV as well?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com