Sure but the "niche-tier" live sports are very valuable their audience, which cannot be said of the CNN+ content. ESPN+ is very popular in my social circle to watch college baseball, womens' sports, some MLS and European soccer, and more obscure games in the big college leagues.

Not only is there no alternative for this content, it was unavailable entirely before ESPN+ launched. Of course I'm not defending the lack of cable ESPN content on ESPN+; I would love to have that as well.

ESPN+ is so annoying. It used to be that you could watch anything streaming but not broadcast on cable with a cable login, but they moved most of that content to ESPN+. For example in the early Australian Open rounds you could watch matches on smaller courts with a cable login, but now you have to pay for ESPN+ for this even if you have a cable login.