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Nielsen estimates ESPN lost 555,000 subscribers during the last month
- slantaclaus 10y agoLuckily for us Disney shareholders we've been getting raked over the coals for a year now. Hopefully this has already been priced in. Plus, the ad revs for a captive (read: live) audience are pretty rich.
- debt 10y agogonna be a ton of bummed out dads and uncles if espn goes belly up.
- intrasight 10y agoBut happy wives (I know I'm generalizing here)
- honkhonkpants 10y agoYou think spending time together makes married people happier?
- enraged_camel 10y agoWhat a bizarre comment. You think spending time apart makes them happier? If so, why are they married?
- JauntyHatAngle 10y agoBecause they had kids 20 years ago back when they were young and attractive. *note that this is a joke, just like (I assume) the post you were replying to.
- flukus 10y agoBecause they like spending time together but get tired of it when it's 24/7 for years on end maybe?
- paulddraper 10y agoWouldn't be much of a marriage if it didn't.
- pbae 10y agoThis is a good thing. The sports themselves don't go away. This just means that the cable sports business model is less viable. Maybe now MNF, the hallowed American institution, will go back to network and be viewable by the rest of us.
- charlieflowers 10y agoAgreed. I see this as the death of the "forced bundle." People who don't care about football are now finding that they don't have to pay for it. They're cutting the cable. Others can still watch it, mostly OTA, but through some paid options as well. So only the artificial inflation of revenue due to the forced bundle is going away.
- kyriakos 10y agoNetflix for international live sports is the next big thing. It's extremely hard to get around the licensing though.
- joering2 10y agoTheoretically speaking... couldn't a startup mimic Uber? An app that I can find someone who has their cellphone pointing at their screen LIVE with a game on... and I pay that person pennies to watch it. AFAIK there is some sort of a loophole that re-brodcasting even live show by recording it off of your screen (showing TV frame etc) is not illegal. Am I wrong?
- kabes 10y agoLoophole's gonna get closed as soon as such service would gain traction. You don't want to rely your business on that
- joering2 10y agoyou right! I mean better not to learn Uber lesson :)
- pixelp3 10y agoyou are basically talking about all the streams you can find on the internet. And yes they are illegal - they are often taken down
- ascagnel_ 10y agoTickets to professional sporting events have provisions stating you can be ejected for recording the event. While these are basically never enforced, I could see trying to stream the entire game be a good reason for the venue to start enforcing it. Similarly, the broadcasts of sporting events have a disclaimer saying you can't rebroadcast or retransmit it in any way, but I have no idea if that is legally binding.
- kriro 10y agoThe NFL is ahead of the curve here. Their streaming option for me as a non-US person is amazing. It's not cheap (250 Euro iirc) but it's also a ton better than normal games. Since I have no spoilers here as NFL results aren't even reported my usual NFL watching is: RedZone (simulcast) for the batch of early games on Sunday which is roughly 19h-22h over here. Then watch the remaining Sunday games, including SNF on Monday in their cut down all snaps only version (about 45 minutes each compared to the normal 3.5h) and the MNF game on Tuesday (TNF on Friday or Saturday usually). If need be that can be shifted back a day (Sunday Redzone on Monday etc.) All games archived and reviewable, All22 perspective is also nice to do some analyzing every now and then. The bundle includes Playoffs and the SB and some other stuff. I usually also watch Hard Knocks before the season for example.
- Animats 10y agoThe major sports industry may have a problem. Especially Major League Baseball™, with an average viewer age of 53.[1] [1] http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/12/baseballs-advertising-worries-linger.html http://www.cnbc.com/2015/07/12/baseballs-advertising-worries...
- Zaheer 10y agoCorrelation doesn't imply causation may be the wrong phrase here but as people get older they have more free time to watch these sort of things. Therefore it's possible the older folks passing are simply going to be replaced by younger folks aging. I have 0 evidence, just proposing a thought.
- raverbashing 10y ago"traditional" sports are also struggling to engage a newer audience
- X86BSD 10y agoThen they should stop refusing to allow cord cutters to stream live games. They either need to renegotiate or break their current contracts that lock them into their affiliates having the only broadcast rights to games. Seriously it's obscene I can't stream live in market Chiefs games in KC via my Apple TV. Cable is dead, in so many ways. Adapt or die.
- raverbashing 10y ago> Adapt or die. Yes, and you see how entrenched companies with old management deals with new stuff
- chongli 10y agoTheir current contracts are worth billions of dollars. Breaking them would be a total disaster. This situation is absolutely a catch 22 for the sports leagues.
- seibelj 10y agoI would be happy to pay for ESPN on my Roku exactly as I do HBO Now. $10/month max, cancel anytime. I would subscribe for NFL season only and quit right after. Otherwise, I use HD antenna for local games and the occasional streaming website for a game I really want to see. I really don't care for their commentary.[0] [0] http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563 http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago>http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563 http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563 There is no reason for anyone to get this fired up over sports.
- ascagnel_ 10y agoSports, as a business, markets entirely on emotion. They want people to get this fired up.
- sbov 10y agoESPN pays out an insane amount of cash for their deals with various sports leagues. Their business model completely relies on people who don't watch the channel to still pay them, and seem to be locked into that business model. If people who only watched ESPN paid ESPN, some estimates put the required monthly fee to be around $40/month. It's insane. They rode the gravy train for a long time, but don't seem to have an escape hatch.
- AnAfrican 10y agoIt's actually the sport teams/leagues that rode the gravy train. ESPN paid huge amounts because they had to outbid the competition. If sportsbroadcasting gets less profitable, sports will get less profitable.
- hyperbovine 10y agoThat's an interesting question: would anything change if the average NFL salary was $500k instead of the almost $2m that it is now? My guess is no.
- cmurf 10y agoGood? The games take entirely too long, not least of which is all the advertising that disrupts the natural flow of the game.
- raverbashing 10y agoThe main sport being played is how many ads they can have in the least amount of time and space It's incredibly alienating Yes, major leagues are to blame, what comes around goes around
- dnackoul 10y agoI used to watch Sports Center for highlights (now the internet makes sure I don't miss anything noteworthy) and occasionally the talk shows (which now rarely cover inside the lines topics). I think without reliable non-event programming it's hard to justify an entire channel.
- jmnicolas 10y agoDoes someone know why this is happening? This is not explained in the article. I'm not American, don't have a TV and don't like sports but I'd like to know why they're loosing so much subscribers now. Is it the economic situation or people found a better alternative to watch sports?
- cgvgffyv 10y ago> I'm not American I can tell. Don't put a space after a question mark! See? It gives you away as a Frenchman.
- ssalazar 10y agoESPNs bread and butter is not so much live sports but highlights, commentary, and analysis. These are replaceable with online sources like Bleacher Report, SB Nation, and even social media. In the US, watching live sports on TV generally still requires some kind of traditional television access, but over-the-air broadcasters + a regional cable sports network will cover most needs in that regard.
- douche 10y agoThey also do a really terrible job at actually showing highlights and meaningful analysis these days. It's sort of like when MTV stopped showing music videos.
- legodt 10y agoWhat is only touched upon in the comments but not often discussed in depth in these articles- is ESPN losing subscribers who had eyeballs on their content or is the majority of this continued slide the effect of general cord cutting rather than conscious unsubscribing? I would love to see some more detailed analysis on this breakdown.
- jordanbaucke 10y agoStarted seeing them doing 'eSports' drops occasionally now... gasp! (I thought their long-form "OJ" documentary was excellent!)
- heisenbit 10y agoThe cable network channels ESPN and Discovery are between a rock and a hard place. Bidding for content from entitled sports is more expensive but their customers are running. Individual customers are cutting cord. Resell customers are barking at the price of the packages. German public television decided NOT TO COVER THE OLYMPICS due to the high price Discovery was charging. Emerging new channels (Twitter, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix) are getting their own original content.
- golemotron 10y agoIt's ESPNexit.
- gcb0 10y agoBS detector is high on this article > But those sports rights costs are going up and those subscriber revenue numbers are going down. i doubt sports rights are going anywhere if even espn can't pay them.
- moonshinefe 10y agoExcessive advertising. In the NHL, they used to have nice white boards around the rinks, now they're all plastered with ads. More and more commercial breaks during games. Heck, now there are even 'mini-ads' that aren't full commercial breaks but just show up for 30 seconds then it returns to the action. Let's not get started with picture-in-picture ads like F1 has. They've even started digitally projecting ads behind the goalie nets on the glass. It's just becoming ridiculous. Are they not making enough money already? If it weren't for old people set in their ways and sports, I think cable would basically die. It looks like that may be happening soon anyway, as younger generations would rather just watch shows commercial free and find alternative sports to watch (such as esports). I'm not old enough to have seen it, but I've heard some people say half the point of paying for cable way back in the day was so you _didn't_ get ads. That seems to be the case for newer, streaming services.
- Shivetya 10y agoBroadcasters have been overwriting stadium ads for awhile now. Digital insertion was fine when it was used to enhance games, showing down lines in American football, following a puck in Hockey, and more. However the ethics around insertion of ads apparently escaped the industry, it would have been fine but I am awaiting the day where you don't know where the scene is real or not. They probably could put everyone in a Coca-Cola shirt in the stands with the tech available. More fun, they could digitally ad fans to stadiums.
- criddell 10y agoI never liked when they "enhanced" the puck in hockey, but I think drawing the 10 yard mark on the football field is fantastic. It's remarkable to me how well that works. In baseball, the ad behind home plate is often a digital one and when they show a replay, you can usually see the green rectangle. I'm also a fan of the pitch trackers in baseball (the box that shows where a pitch was relative to the strike zone rectangle). I've always wondered if the size of the pitch tracker box is different for each player? The on-screen ads are annoying, but all the ads delivered by the announcers is getting a little much too. Every replay, highlight, and inning/period/quarter seems to be sponsored.
- lordnacho 10y agoPerhaps someone could give us non-Americans some insight into how TV works over there. Whenever I'm visiting relatives, it's just this huge mess on TV. They have the same shows like Big Bang Theory, but it's not clear to me how it's distributed. Some channels seem to be local, while others seem to be planet-wide like CNN. The amount of advertising is insane, I can't watch it. Also there's these low quality local business ads that you never see in Europe. What's a network, what's cable, what's a blackout, and what does it matter? Also, what is the impact of free internet video? I can pretty much watch any soccer match I want by googling it during the match, including some quite obscure ones. Could it be that US sports viewers have discovered this as well? In fact the US sports lend themselves to highlights, because they're so incredibly long and full of ads.
- CaptainZapp 10y agoI really don't get why you're downvoted. It seems like an honest question, which, unfortunately, I can't really answer for you.
- figgis 10y agoYou order a subscription to various channels via cable, satellite, etc. Shows are run on a schedule, television sets usually include the ability to set recordings for showings. Most people just set it to record the newest episode of every show they want to watch and catch up their shows that way, deleting watched shows as needed. Unless it's a show they are really interested in and obviously you can tune in to the scheduled showing if you remember the time. The subscriptions you purchase usually include a set amount of local or regional channels (depending on where you live). You can also pick up local channels via an antenna or similar methods. It's hard to be a sports fan without cable. They have blackouts on games where channels can't display games based on your region.[0] Or not being able to stream certain games online for a multitude of reasons. [0]https://support.espn.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/What-is-a-Blackout-How-is-my-location-determined-if-the-event-is-blacked-out?section=WatchESPN https://support.espn.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/What-is-a-Blacko...
- johnny22 10y agothe local channels tend to be affiliates of the biggies like NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox. We tend to refer to that as "Network TV". Bigger cities likely have more variance, but I"m not too familiar. The local channels sell advertising to local businesses, while also showing ads from the national network. Blackouts are (i think) specific to sports, and I'm not too familiar with them.
- Shivetya 10y agoOne thing to also take into understanding, for the heavily negotiated games like American football, baseball, and basketball, less revenue from TV contracts will certainly affect future negotiations with their respective player unions. It will be curious when that profitability number is crossed and how the leagues adopt to it. They can only squeeze broadcasters and fans so much.
- f1nch3r 10y agoDoesn't this also mean that cable companies lost 555,000 subscribers last month? The only way for me to get ESPN is with a basic cable subscription.
- bachmeier 10y agoMy son will soon be a teenager. He has little interest in watching TV. His default is to go to YouTube and check what's new. Cable TV was an improvement on over-the-air broadcast networks. It's had a good run, but serves little purpose today, being inferior in all ways to the internet. It's just not worth $70, $100, or $140 a month. Our bills rose and rose until we shut it off completely and permanently - there are limits, and TV executives don't seem to understand that.
- dhogan 10y agoEven my mom is done with cable and she is far from a techie. It's getting easier for the masses to not have cable.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wslh 10y agoYes, and I don't know in US but Cable TV started with a lot of channels without advertisements. Now, you are paying Cable TV and the channels are full of advertisements, so it is not clear why you are paying.
- noxToken 10y agoThe advertisements are subsidizing a portion of the bill. What portion, I'm not exactly sure. Even if it was a patently false statement and cable companies started showing TV with no commercials (or maybe 10 minutes per hour at the worst), $60 is too steep of a price. There is too much shovelware (or whatever the TV term is) for that price. I understand that live TV has blocked times for simplicity. That's fine. There is going to be filler to stretch the episode. However, don't stretch the show out for 25 episodes! If you cut the filler, you can have 13 episodes of quality with more shows per year.
- abritinthebay 10y ago> If you cut the filler, you can have 13 episodes of quality with more shows per year. The BBC model
- Hondor 10y agoIt seems they've got about 90,000,000 subscribers, so 500,000 is only half a percent drop. As the article projects, it'll still be many years before they're disrupted out of business.
- pwg 10y agoThe premise of the article is not that a 500,000 drop is significant by itself. It is that ESPN has huge contractual costs to teams/leagues to carry sports over the next several years that cost enough that they need (for example) 85,000,000 subscribers minimum in order to pay their overhead costs. So it is not a 500,000 loss against 90,000,000 total, it is a 500,000 loss against a buffer of 5,000,000 [1] extra beyond the minimum subscriber point they require to bring in enough money to pay their obligations. 500k against 5M is a 10% reduction in their buffer zone in one month.
- pryelluw 10y agoTV is now to the smartphone what radio was to the TV. It still a viable marketing tool in some instances but has lost most of its power. Facebook is the new NBC. Twitch is the new ESPN (e sports are growinf like crazy). There is an amazing opportunity for those who recognize this and evolve their approach to fit the different mediums.
- coldcode 10y agoYeah fighting ads on mobile is the same problem, just on a smaller screen.
- pryelluw 10y agoIts a different problem because mobile is about walled gardens (I am against walled gardens). Fighting ads that appear on an app will become harder and downright impossible without rooting your device.
- leepowers 10y agoThere's only two good things that ESPN broadcasts: * Live Sports * "30 for 30" documentaries Aside from these it's mostly noise - sports commentary and sports news. Which, not incidentally, are the cheapest forms of programming on the channel. Quality programming will almost always find an audience in the Internet era. ESPN has a lot of low-quality filler that viewers simply don't want to pay for.