4 ms·

So does this reflect a waning interest in sports, or are these subscribers going elsewhere?

maxerickson 10y ago
It's people moving away from paying for cable, probably people that don't have much interest in sports but were paying for ESPN as part of the default bundle of channels. I suspect a large portion of them never watched ESPN to begin with.
adamnemecek 10y ago
Pretty sure it's both. I think that esports are kind of displacing traditional sports for 'millennials'.
- Zelphyr 10y ago
  I've read that this is also true in the sense that many young players are opting out of physical sports. Coaches are complaining that the kids don't want to play a game they can't reset when it's not going well for them. The coaches, of course, see this as a bad thing but I don't think it's necessarily good or bad. It's just the reality that there are now more options for people.
  - Matachines 10y ago
    > Coaches are complaining that the kids don't want to play a game they can't reset when it's not going well for them. How is this not a bad thing? I certainly wouldn't want my son or daughter give up as soon as things don't work out. That kind of behavior spills into the rest of life, not just sports.
  - tdkl 10y ago
    Seems like a result of the babysitting in modern gaming. Also there's a lack of learning that loss and bad feelings aren't icky and there's nothing wrong with someone who feels that instead prescribing them medication. The changes in schools and helicopter parenting are these causes.
- nitsujio 10y ago
  Anecdotal sure but I'm a millennial who knows a grand total of zero Millennials who even know esports are a thing. Think it's a stretch to say they're displacing traditional sports given that many of my friends are fanatical about football and I myself am a huge NBA fan. I'm not convinced esports are more than a niche thing. Personally I'd be more interested in watching paint dry.
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  What the hell is an esport? Sport themed video games? I'm 37 and have never heard of them.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESports League of Legends, Overwatch, Counter Strike etc etc.
  - dangrossman 10y ago
    People competing in multiplayer video games. With professional commentators, multiple camera angles, replays, custom graphics, sponsors, players that earn a living playing on professional teams with coaches, and everything else you'd get on ESPN watching a football game. I don't think any sport-themed games are played professionally though. https://www.twitch.tv/ https://www.twitch.tv/ At the time of my comment, Twitch is live broadcasting the Hearthstone World Championship, Duelyst Pro League, Vainglory Evil Eight, Starcraft II World Championship Series Global Finals, and SMITE Pro League. eSports tournaments have paid out over $100 million in prizes. Some of these tournaments are being carried live on cable channels in other parts of the world where they're more popular.
    - tmat 10y ago
      esports always have and always will be a niche.. when I was a kid we competed in dingy hotel conference halls for hundreds of thousands TOPS... Good ol' CPL. probably only half a chance of getting paid too.
    - xentronium 10y ago
      > I don't think any sport-themed games are played professionally though. FIFA is somewhat popular.
  - WalterSear 10y ago
    Don't worry, it's not really 'what the kids are into these days'.
- yardie 10y ago
  I think it's the $100+/month cable bills that are displacing millenials. When the alternatives are so much cheaper ($10 Netflix, $13 HULU, etc) paying $130/mo for cable just seems insulting.
- Matachines 10y ago
  esports are only popular on the internet and your colleges' video game club. While they're no doubt getting bigger, they're a tiny niche and most regular people still think they're weird. Also they seem more popular in Europe and Asia.
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    Sure. But one is growing, one is shrinking.
    - bdcravens 10y ago
      The number of people who use only cash is shrinking, and the number of people who use only Bitcoin is rising, therefore ...
      - adamnemecek 10y ago
        How many "cash startups" are there? How many bitcoin startups?
        bdcravens 10y ago
        I thought we were talking about trends among users. (to draw an analogy between niches) Sounds to me like you're moving the goalposts to win an Internet argument.
  - gozur88 10y ago
    While it's true video game streaming is still a tiny niche, what probably is affecting ESPN's bottom line is the number of people who would have watched sports in years past but are now eschewing any sort of passive entertainment in favor of video games.
- bdcravens 10y ago
  Pretty sure the number of who are showing no interests in any sports (traditional or e-) is higher than displacing.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  Unless your South Korean, not really.
fingerprinter 10y ago
It's likely a combination of a few things including people going directly to NFL (Gamepass), NBA, NHL and MLB for the content as well as people simply dropping cable altogether. Those cable subscribers might not have cared/watched sports anyway, though they /paid/ for it and were counted as "subscribers" on ESPN numbers. Another way to think about it. ESPN, outside commentary and opinion, is really nothing more than a middleman. The leagues can go direct to the consumer and they likely will do this much more in the future. ESPN cannot go direct to consumer per the contracts. It is required that to consume much of the ESPN content, you need a cable subscription (even to stream on the internet). That is a broken model and is slowly (or quickly?) dying. That's not great for NFL etc but horrible for ESPN. The sports leagues could recover, ESPN likely couldn't.
- bogomipz 10y ago
  Can you get NFL Gamepass directly without a Cable/Satellite service provider? I thought that was a Direct TV exclusive. But maybe that expired?
  - infosample 10y ago
    Yes. Just can't watch games live in the United States. NFL Sunday Ticket is a DirecTV exclusive unless you can prove you can't get DirecTV at your address then you can stream live games.
- seibelj 10y ago
  And the commentary has become pretty awful. Stephen A Smith is unwatchable[0]. [0] http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563 http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563
- jsaxton86 10y ago
  One of the problems with Game Pass is that you can't actually watch live games. You can listen to live audio. You can watch replays of games. In fact, you can watch replays from 22 different camera angles. You can watch condensed replays. You can even watch live preseason games. But you can't watch live games that matter.
tw04 10y ago
I'm pretty sure I'm their target market. For me, I stared at my dish bill every month, and thought to myself: outside of football and hockey, I watch MAYBE 4 hours of TV a month. Why am I spending $130+/month on dish? I love football, love hockey. Would be MORE than happy to pay a reasonable fee for it, but not $1600/yr. For me they're additionally hampered by the fact that frontier is the worst ISP on the planet and even if I did want to stream games I probably wouldn't be able to do so in any reasonable quality.
matwood 10y ago
Sports are like any other piece of content jockeying for people's time. The pool of available content is so large now that people are simply consuming other things. Anecdotally, I think people also care less about sports. It used to be everyone at work would talk about various sports, but now roughly half the people could care less.
fullshark 10y ago
Something not mentioned is consumers are now less tolerant of commercials imo.
VLM 10y ago
Pull the age stats over the past decades for major league baseball fans and you'll see sportball has always been a boomer thing... they're "going elsewhere" as a euphemism for the cemetery. Another thing is all sports over represent whites demographically, so if there's a big government immigration program to reduce the white demographic from 90% in the boom days to 60% now and ideally 0% in the distant future, then sports is just going away as an old white man thing. NBA and soccer are the only sports where the fans basically are not old white men. Another decade or two and it won't be a white country therefore not a sports bubble / sports fan country. Just simple demographics, non-whites don't do sports as much as whites.
- ryuker16 10y ago
  Chinese love basketball, black people like sports quite alot.... Im Not sure what Hispanics like other than boxing and soccer but they definitely watch sports. Woe be upon hockey...
jsz0 10y ago
Piracy is definitely a factor. It's very easy to find high quality live streams these days. They're not even something a person needs to seek out anymore because they get posted in various 'live threads' for sporting events.

It's people moving away from paying for cable, probably people that don't have much interest in sports but were paying for ESPN as part of the default bundle of channels. I suspect a large portion of them never watched ESPN to begin with.

adamnemecek 10y ago

Pretty sure it's both. I think that esports are kind of displacing traditional sports for 'millennials'.

Zelphyr 10y ago
I've read that this is also true in the sense that many young players are opting out of physical sports. Coaches are complaining that the kids don't want to play a game they can't reset when it's not going well for them. The coaches, of course, see this as a bad thing but I don't think it's necessarily good or bad. It's just the reality that there are now more options for people.
- Matachines 10y ago
  > Coaches are complaining that the kids don't want to play a game they can't reset when it's not going well for them. How is this not a bad thing? I certainly wouldn't want my son or daughter give up as soon as things don't work out. That kind of behavior spills into the rest of life, not just sports.
- tdkl 10y ago
  Seems like a result of the babysitting in modern gaming. Also there's a lack of learning that loss and bad feelings aren't icky and there's nothing wrong with someone who feels that instead prescribing them medication. The changes in schools and helicopter parenting are these causes.
nitsujio 10y ago
Anecdotal sure but I'm a millennial who knows a grand total of zero Millennials who even know esports are a thing. Think it's a stretch to say they're displacing traditional sports given that many of my friends are fanatical about football and I myself am a huge NBA fan. I'm not convinced esports are more than a niche thing. Personally I'd be more interested in watching paint dry.
ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
What the hell is an esport? Sport themed video games? I'm 37 and have never heard of them.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESports League of Legends, Overwatch, Counter Strike etc etc.
- dangrossman 10y ago
  People competing in multiplayer video games. With professional commentators, multiple camera angles, replays, custom graphics, sponsors, players that earn a living playing on professional teams with coaches, and everything else you'd get on ESPN watching a football game. I don't think any sport-themed games are played professionally though. https://www.twitch.tv/ https://www.twitch.tv/ At the time of my comment, Twitch is live broadcasting the Hearthstone World Championship, Duelyst Pro League, Vainglory Evil Eight, Starcraft II World Championship Series Global Finals, and SMITE Pro League. eSports tournaments have paid out over $100 million in prizes. Some of these tournaments are being carried live on cable channels in other parts of the world where they're more popular.
  - tmat 10y ago
    esports always have and always will be a niche.. when I was a kid we competed in dingy hotel conference halls for hundreds of thousands TOPS... Good ol' CPL. probably only half a chance of getting paid too.
  - xentronium 10y ago
    > I don't think any sport-themed games are played professionally though. FIFA is somewhat popular.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  Don't worry, it's not really 'what the kids are into these days'.
yardie 10y ago
I think it's the $100+/month cable bills that are displacing millenials. When the alternatives are so much cheaper ($10 Netflix, $13 HULU, etc) paying $130/mo for cable just seems insulting.
Matachines 10y ago
esports are only popular on the internet and your colleges' video game club. While they're no doubt getting bigger, they're a tiny niche and most regular people still think they're weird. Also they seem more popular in Europe and Asia.
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  Sure. But one is growing, one is shrinking.
  - bdcravens 10y ago
    The number of people who use only cash is shrinking, and the number of people who use only Bitcoin is rising, therefore ...
    - adamnemecek 10y ago
      How many "cash startups" are there? How many bitcoin startups?
      - bdcravens 10y ago
        I thought we were talking about trends among users. (to draw an analogy between niches) Sounds to me like you're moving the goalposts to win an Internet argument.
- gozur88 10y ago
  While it's true video game streaming is still a tiny niche, what probably is affecting ESPN's bottom line is the number of people who would have watched sports in years past but are now eschewing any sort of passive entertainment in favor of video games.
bdcravens 10y ago
Pretty sure the number of who are showing no interests in any sports (traditional or e-) is higher than displacing.
ryuker16 10y ago
Unless your South Korean, not really.

fingerprinter 10y ago

It's likely a combination of a few things including people going directly to NFL (Gamepass), NBA, NHL and MLB for the content as well as people simply dropping cable altogether. Those cable subscribers might not have cared/watched sports anyway, though they /paid/ for it and were counted as "subscribers" on ESPN numbers. Another way to think about it. ESPN, outside commentary and opinion, is really nothing more than a middleman. The leagues can go direct to the consumer and they likely will do this much more in the future. ESPN cannot go direct to consumer per the contracts. It is required that to consume much of the ESPN content, you need a cable subscription (even to stream on the internet). That is a broken model and is slowly (or quickly?) dying. That's not great for NFL etc but horrible for ESPN. The sports leagues could recover, ESPN likely couldn't.

bogomipz 10y ago
Can you get NFL Gamepass directly without a Cable/Satellite service provider? I thought that was a Direct TV exclusive. But maybe that expired?
- infosample 10y ago
  Yes. Just can't watch games live in the United States. NFL Sunday Ticket is a DirecTV exclusive unless you can prove you can't get DirecTV at your address then you can stream live games.
seibelj 10y ago
And the commentary has become pretty awful. Stephen A Smith is unwatchable[0]. [0] http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563 http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563
jsaxton86 10y ago
One of the problems with Game Pass is that you can't actually watch live games. You can listen to live audio. You can watch replays of games. In fact, you can watch replays from 22 different camera angles. You can watch condensed replays. You can even watch live preseason games. But you can't watch live games that matter.

tw04 10y ago

I'm pretty sure I'm their target market. For me, I stared at my dish bill every month, and thought to myself: outside of football and hockey, I watch MAYBE 4 hours of TV a month. Why am I spending $130+/month on dish? I love football, love hockey. Would be MORE than happy to pay a reasonable fee for it, but not $1600/yr. For me they're additionally hampered by the fact that frontier is the worst ISP on the planet and even if I did want to stream games I probably wouldn't be able to do so in any reasonable quality.

matwood 10y ago

Sports are like any other piece of content jockeying for people's time. The pool of available content is so large now that people are simply consuming other things. Anecdotally, I think people also care less about sports. It used to be everyone at work would talk about various sports, but now roughly half the people could care less.

fullshark 10y ago

Something not mentioned is consumers are now less tolerant of commercials imo.

VLM 10y ago

Pull the age stats over the past decades for major league baseball fans and you'll see sportball has always been a boomer thing... they're "going elsewhere" as a euphemism for the cemetery. Another thing is all sports over represent whites demographically, so if there's a big government immigration program to reduce the white demographic from 90% in the boom days to 60% now and ideally 0% in the distant future, then sports is just going away as an old white man thing. NBA and soccer are the only sports where the fans basically are not old white men. Another decade or two and it won't be a white country therefore not a sports bubble / sports fan country. Just simple demographics, non-whites don't do sports as much as whites.

ryuker16 10y ago
Chinese love basketball, black people like sports quite alot.... Im Not sure what Hispanics like other than boxing and soccer but they definitely watch sports. Woe be upon hockey...

jsz0 10y ago

Piracy is definitely a factor. It's very easy to find high quality live streams these days. They're not even something a person needs to seek out anymore because they get posted in various 'live threads' for sporting events.