5 ms·

Doubtful. ESPN is not synonomous with Sports. People may be becoming aware of the amount of their cable bill being sent to ESPN, but there are two problems bloc

by howeyc 11y ago

Doubtful. ESPN is not synonomous with Sports. People may be becoming aware of the amount of their cable bill being sent to ESPN, but there are two problems blocking change. 1) They (the cable subscriber) can't do shit about it, they either accept the whole packege or not. 2) Why would the cable companies go for it anyway, I'm sure they know they can get more by forcing HGTV lovers to pay for ESPN, and ESPN lovers forced to pay for HGTV. Also, let's say this author is right, ESPN dies a slow death. How does that stop sports? ESPN doesn't have much (of the main sports) on it anyway. Sports games are on other networks. NFL - CBS,FOX. MLB - FOX,TBS. Soccer - NBC. NHL - NBC. I'm sure the sports that are on ESPN can find an home elsewhere. I'm not sure the dog shows are raking in huge TV money from ESPN that some PETS CHANNEL can't cover.

brianlweiner 11y ago
For baseball at least, the same points are valid for each area's RSN (regional sports network). MASN (Maryland / DC / VA area) gets something like $8-12 per subscriber. YES (NY Yankees network) I'm sure is able to charge even more. This has allowed MLB teams to spend a great deal of money in the past 5-10 years as teams have signed ever-more-lucrative television rights deals with FoxSports and others. If non-cable media packages are luring more and more cable subscribers (HBO, Hulu+, SlingTV, Netflix, etc) the pool of non-sports watching people subsidizing these networks shrinks - this will force either prices to rise for actual sports watching customers, or it'll lower revenues for teams. Rumor has it that MLB has been trying to push the RSNs to accept universal MLB.tv access for all regional markets, this at least makes the costs explicit - $100-140/season for each subscriber.
- Nelson69 11y ago
  There is more synergy there though. RSNs show more games with the team you like. It only makes sense to charge more and the fans are more than willing to typically pay it.
michaelbuckbee 11y ago
I think a summary might be that: 1. ESPN historically was making way more money than they should due to bundling. 2. ESPN is passing along a large percentage of this money to the sports teams in the form of media rights (aka they pay the NFL teams to show Monday Night Football). 3. ESPN is now on a downward path due to people opting out of bundles. 4. Sports teams will make less money overall after this shakes out as ESPN artificially bid up the market.
myNXTact 11y ago
It seems to me that the "death of ESPN" is more evidence of the death of the cable TV model than the death of sports.
- ssharp 11y ago
  This is probably true but I think ESPN is leading the pack because of how bloated they are. They run multiple channels 24/7 and a ton of their content is studio analysis-type shows, most of which I find absolutely terrible. I'm sure they have reasons for how they select and utilize the talent they have, but aside from a few writers and commentators, I have a hard time watching or reading anything they produce. I was hoping they'd eventually figure out a way to do more Grantland-produced television, where someone with some journalistic and creative taste, as well as more creative freedom could develop, but that obviously did not happen. Maybe Bill Simmons will be able to do that with HBO and finally create a legit competitor to ESPN's non-live sports programming.
  - jonknee 11y ago
    > I was hoping they'd eventually figure out a way to do more Grantland-produced television, where someone with some journalistic and creative taste, as well as more creative freedom could develop, but that obviously did not happen. Maybe Bill Simmons will be able to do that with HBO and finally create a legit competitor to ESPN's non-live sports programming. Their 30 for 30 films are awesome (thanks to Bill Simmons though, we'll see if it continues).
- VLM 11y ago
  The other death of sports issue was very carefully not mentioned in the article... look at the median age of baseball fans over the past decades. Its literally a dying sport, as in the fans are aging and dying and not being replaced. Obviously not an issue for some of the other sports. However being a sports nerd in the sitcom stereotype sense is definitely a boomer and pre-boomer generational thing, not so much with younger people, and old people have a way of dying off. The biggest mistake the article made was conflating sport related spending with the housing bubble. The housing bubble blew because the last entrants into the ponzi were tapped out. The cost of sports is microscopic in comparison and very few people give up cable because they're completely and utterly tapped out. They just spend the $100 on something else. Probably a smartphone and some subscription services. Certainly the last entrant into the ponzi of paying a billion bucks for a team on the assumption you'll sell to a greater fool at two billion has not been reached, nor has the very last new sports fan been born yet. The biggest oversight in articles of this type is no one wants to discuss bundling. The kind of business that forces all video subscribers to pay $30/mo for sports even if they're not sports fans, could, with just a couple clicks on a keyboard, change the bundle so all the cablemodem subscribers pay the same $30 extra for their cablemodem, but now it comes with free ESPN video or some kind of web access deal. There are, after all, only a handful of monopoly providers. So either pay $30 for ESPN, or disconnect yourself from the internet. Trying to avoid paying for sports is like trying to avoid paying for organized crime. Or disorganized crime, for that matter. Unfortunately you can either pay up, or leave the geography and culture entirely. The government and corporations certainly are not going to help us because they are the organized crime in this analogy.
bluedino 11y ago
I can get quality streams of any NFL game online without much searching. Almost all the sites have donation buttons. Sure, I'd pay the NFL $99 for the Sunday ticket package. Take DirecTV out of the picture. That's only a couple bucks per week.
osi 11y ago
My takeaway point was the nearly $40/mo each cable subscriber pays towards sports programming in aggregate. One of the reasons I cut the cord was the transparent fee Comcast had added (and hiked) related to Chicago-area local sports. As people that don't care about sports on TV ditch cable for streaming, that will just increase the budget pressure on all sports networks.
jonknee 11y ago
ESPN is certainly synonymous with sports. They also show a ton of sports, including the NFL (Monday Night Football) and MLB (multiple nights a week), NBA (multiple nights a week), NCAA basketball (almost every night), NCAA Football (every week and a ton of bowl games).
maxerickson 11y ago
There is presumably a level of demand for smaller bundles that would cause the cable companies to make changes. If there is, the change probably happens incredibly swiftly.
bradleyankrom 11y ago
Plus, most of the major sports leagues have developed their own cable networks (MLB Network, NFL Network, etc.).

by howeyc 11y ago

brianlweiner 11y ago

For baseball at least, the same points are valid for each area's RSN (regional sports network). MASN (Maryland / DC / VA area) gets something like $8-12 per subscriber. YES (NY Yankees network) I'm sure is able to charge even more. This has allowed MLB teams to spend a great deal of money in the past 5-10 years as teams have signed ever-more-lucrative television rights deals with FoxSports and others. If non-cable media packages are luring more and more cable subscribers (HBO, Hulu+, SlingTV, Netflix, etc) the pool of non-sports watching people subsidizing these networks shrinks - this will force either prices to rise for actual sports watching customers, or it'll lower revenues for teams. Rumor has it that MLB has been trying to push the RSNs to accept universal MLB.tv access for all regional markets, this at least makes the costs explicit - $100-140/season for each subscriber.

Nelson69 11y ago
There is more synergy there though. RSNs show more games with the team you like. It only makes sense to charge more and the fans are more than willing to typically pay it.

michaelbuckbee 11y ago

I think a summary might be that: 1. ESPN historically was making way more money than they should due to bundling. 2. ESPN is passing along a large percentage of this money to the sports teams in the form of media rights (aka they pay the NFL teams to show Monday Night Football). 3. ESPN is now on a downward path due to people opting out of bundles. 4. Sports teams will make less money overall after this shakes out as ESPN artificially bid up the market.

myNXTact 11y ago

It seems to me that the "death of ESPN" is more evidence of the death of the cable TV model than the death of sports.

ssharp 11y ago
This is probably true but I think ESPN is leading the pack because of how bloated they are. They run multiple channels 24/7 and a ton of their content is studio analysis-type shows, most of which I find absolutely terrible. I'm sure they have reasons for how they select and utilize the talent they have, but aside from a few writers and commentators, I have a hard time watching or reading anything they produce. I was hoping they'd eventually figure out a way to do more Grantland-produced television, where someone with some journalistic and creative taste, as well as more creative freedom could develop, but that obviously did not happen. Maybe Bill Simmons will be able to do that with HBO and finally create a legit competitor to ESPN's non-live sports programming.
- jonknee 11y ago
  > I was hoping they'd eventually figure out a way to do more Grantland-produced television, where someone with some journalistic and creative taste, as well as more creative freedom could develop, but that obviously did not happen. Maybe Bill Simmons will be able to do that with HBO and finally create a legit competitor to ESPN's non-live sports programming. Their 30 for 30 films are awesome (thanks to Bill Simmons though, we'll see if it continues).
VLM 11y ago
The other death of sports issue was very carefully not mentioned in the article... look at the median age of baseball fans over the past decades. Its literally a dying sport, as in the fans are aging and dying and not being replaced. Obviously not an issue for some of the other sports. However being a sports nerd in the sitcom stereotype sense is definitely a boomer and pre-boomer generational thing, not so much with younger people, and old people have a way of dying off. The biggest mistake the article made was conflating sport related spending with the housing bubble. The housing bubble blew because the last entrants into the ponzi were tapped out. The cost of sports is microscopic in comparison and very few people give up cable because they're completely and utterly tapped out. They just spend the $100 on something else. Probably a smartphone and some subscription services. Certainly the last entrant into the ponzi of paying a billion bucks for a team on the assumption you'll sell to a greater fool at two billion has not been reached, nor has the very last new sports fan been born yet. The biggest oversight in articles of this type is no one wants to discuss bundling. The kind of business that forces all video subscribers to pay $30/mo for sports even if they're not sports fans, could, with just a couple clicks on a keyboard, change the bundle so all the cablemodem subscribers pay the same $30 extra for their cablemodem, but now it comes with free ESPN video or some kind of web access deal. There are, after all, only a handful of monopoly providers. So either pay $30 for ESPN, or disconnect yourself from the internet. Trying to avoid paying for sports is like trying to avoid paying for organized crime. Or disorganized crime, for that matter. Unfortunately you can either pay up, or leave the geography and culture entirely. The government and corporations certainly are not going to help us because they are the organized crime in this analogy.

bluedino 11y ago

I can get quality streams of any NFL game online without much searching. Almost all the sites have donation buttons. Sure, I'd pay the NFL $99 for the Sunday ticket package. Take DirecTV out of the picture. That's only a couple bucks per week.

osi 11y ago

My takeaway point was the nearly $40/mo each cable subscriber pays towards sports programming in aggregate. One of the reasons I cut the cord was the transparent fee Comcast had added (and hiked) related to Chicago-area local sports. As people that don't care about sports on TV ditch cable for streaming, that will just increase the budget pressure on all sports networks.

jonknee 11y ago

ESPN is certainly synonymous with sports. They also show a ton of sports, including the NFL (Monday Night Football) and MLB (multiple nights a week), NBA (multiple nights a week), NCAA basketball (almost every night), NCAA Football (every week and a ton of bowl games).

maxerickson 11y ago

There is presumably a level of demand for smaller bundles that would cause the cable companies to make changes. If there is, the change probably happens incredibly swiftly.

bradleyankrom 11y ago

Plus, most of the major sports leagues have developed their own cable networks (MLB Network, NFL Network, etc.).