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Business publications and their core audience only understand business culture and jargon. So business articles about ESPN focus on historical revenue numbers,
by StevePerkins 10y ago
Business publications and their core audience only understand business culture and jargon. So business articles about ESPN focus on historical revenue numbers, and talk about corporate spin-off as a means of "unlocking value", etc.
Technical publications and forums like this are largely populated by young people and early adopters (i.e. the groups most likely to be cord-cutting anyway), and tend not to be sports fans. So these discussions marvel at the fact that there are still dinosaurs who haven't cord-cut yet, and suggest that the remedy is ESPN accelerating migration to a new technical platform.
As someone who actually is an avid sports fan, and socializes with other sports fans, I'm going to throw out a third factor for your consideration. The... product... SUCKS... now! It never gets mentioned, because the "business" audience and the "technical" audience doesn't directly experience it so much. However, applying Occam's Razor, I think changes to product quality are usually the largest factor in changes to product fortunes.
ESPN has been on a long, slow shift from "hard" sports coverage to "soft" entertainment filler for years. However, over the past two years this trend has jolted toward accelerating at a breathtaking pace. For the core audience of sports fans, ESPN is basically little more than TMZ now. It's more discussion of off-field "drama" than actual sport.
Sports fans get tired of fake "QB controversies", manufactured by ESPN talking heads. They get tired of endless analysis of whether African-American franchise athletes like RGIII and Russell Wilson are "black enough". Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem was a legit story for the first week or two, but after 14 straight weeks of talk (none of which touched the underlying substance that Kaepernick is trying to call attention to)... I think sports fans of all political persuasion are long past done hearing about it.
TL;DR - ESPN is a sports network. It has dramatically shifted away from serious sports coverage over the past two years. Their core audience is growing sour on them, and subscriptions are dropping. I believe that everything beyond this is just ancillary factors.
- dtzur 10y ago@StevePerkins 2020
- ydt 10y agoYou're spot on. I'm old enough to remember Sports Center when it was Patrick and Olberman. It was smart and witty and done with subtlety and clever cultural references. Now ESPN is 90℅ loudmouth morons yelling at each other about the manufactured controversy of the week. Anything other than the live events is unwatchable.
- sharer 10y agoIt's just following what traditional news, CNN and the like are doing...
- manyxcxi 10y agoI second this wholeheartedly. I used to watch SportsCenter at night before going to bed and in the morning when I was getting ready all the way back in high school (97-01). I don't even watch it for more than 10 minutes a week now. I've gotten the EXACT highlight I wanted without waiting on a bunch of crap already online, and the rest of it is just the sports equivalent of political punditry. Just throwing around 'hot takes' for the sake of having something to say. For every highlight package there's like 3 sob story human interest pieces that are so contrived (the swim team was only LOWER MIDDLE CLASS and they sold hay bales to make it to the state tournament!) that I just get pissed and turn it off. Let's not even talk about how many commercials are in the middle of their sports broadcasts. ESPN and SC in particular were where you went for the best of the day in a tight, smart package. You had just enough 'funnies' that something as inane as a Scott Stuart 'Booya!' stood out, and the human interest pieces were actually interesting tales of genuine grit and empathy. I was barely a watcher anymore by the time all the Tim Tebow is Jesus stuff came out, but that probably pretty much soured me forever. I don't read the articles, I don't watch the shows, but I do feel that (generally) their prime sports broadcasts are top notch and everything they do has a better quality level than FS1. EDIT: A question, since I'd imagine the VAST MAJORITY of ESPN's subscribers come from cable package bundling, doesn't it stand to reason that as long as ESPNs decline isn't in stark contrasts to cable/satellite subscriptions that it's more of a condemnation of the entire ecosystem? I, BTW, would absolutely cut the cord except for I love sports, pretty much all the major US sports. I have kids so going to the bar or a friend's place to watch the game doesn't always pan out, and sometimes if it's a game I'm hugely interested in I would rather be at MY house, on MY couch, watching MY TV and not being interrupted (any more than what 3 kids under 4 can do). Other times I want the game on in the background while I'm getting stuff done around the house.
- kinofcain 10y agoLikely because buying the rights to broadcast sports is expensive, free-associating talking heads are cheap, and subscriber revenue is down. It's a vicious cycle. I'm sure they are well aware that they're behind on the transition to streaming but are stuck with long term existing contracts that don't give them the rights they need. The leagues want to go direct when they go streaming. Why would they need ESPN as an aggregator? It's not like Netflix or HBO where you turn it on to browse, you're there to watch a specific game. They're really screwed.
- vermontdevil 10y agoEntertainment Sports Programming Network.