Basically, a lot of non-sports fans have to pay a fortune for sports, whether they watch sports or not. Sports fans have to pay more and more for sports, as local teams (and regional sports networks) demand billions for their broadcasting rights. On the whole, live sports is probably the one category keeping cable in business. But it's getting so expensive as to threaten the whole model.
Shameless plug, but I wrote about this topic recently for Slate. My prediction is that certain providers (cable or otherwise) will try to unbundle sports from non-sports in order to offer extremely low-priced service to non-sports fans. Meanwhile, cable networks and providers will cater more and more of their business to sports fans.
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_bet/2014/03/local...
Some other good write-ups on this topic:
P.S.: The medium article says, "Hockey, NASCAR, and soccer are the only major sports that ESPN doesn’t own". ESPN doesn't "own" the NFL (most of which is on CBS and Fox) or Major League Baseball (most of which is on regional sports channels, the majority of those in turn owned [I think] by Comcast and Fox). A small point maybe, but it hurts overall credibility.
In my article (the Slate one), I state that ESPN was an outlier -- but that everyone else sort of recognized as much, then wanted in on the action. Nowadays, RSNs (regional sports networks) have fees as high as, and in some cases higher than, ESPN and its sister networks.
"I think the cable companies themselves (and specifically their lack of competition) are bigger factors in their prices than channels' subscriber fees."
It's a very significant factor. So is the lack of competition among the networks licensing to the cable companies. So is the lack of competition within the major sports leagues. So is the lack of competition within any given city for any given sports franchise. In general, you've got an agglomeration of oligopolistic markets -- resulting in a sort of "powers-of-ten" [1] increase, at every step of the value chain, in programming costs. The consumer is left footing most of these bills.
[1] I use "powers of ten" here in the metaphorical sense of that old science video, and not in the literal sense.
Beyond that, some people just really don't like bar environments. (Or show me a sports bar where people are hanging out and watching a game + doing hackathons during the intermissions.. that would be unbelievably cool)
I hear this argument frequently. This is not a practical solution for those watching their favorite NHL/NBA teams 82+ games a year or MLB 162+ games a year. IIRC ESPN gets $6+ per subscriber-month and would greatly fear reprisal from cable providers if they offered a way to watch without a subscription.
Due to the leagues' stranglehold over dissemination of their live events and major sports channels large budgets to pay them, there really is no end in sight for wannabe cord-cutters that want to watch their teams. There are three outcomes I foresee: 1. the status quo, 2. a company w/ deep pockets (Apple, Google, Netflix, etc) convinces a major sport to take their money, or 3. piracy of live sports streams becomes more reliable and easier to consume. #2 is possible but would still be a big gamble. I fervently believe the rise of bittorrent escalated alternative viewing options for non-live events, so I secretly am hoping for #3.
All of the live pirated streams I have seen are horribly unreliable and seem to get shutdown with ease. I'm a software engineer, maybe I should make a live P2P streaming protocol! Can't put what I want on it due to living in the US and fear of prosecution, but maybe just the simplicity will help the industry.