14 ms·

ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV

35 points by virtualwhys 10y ago

KZeillmann 10y ago
Is it just me, or are the images on the page incredibly broken?
- ctvo 10y ago
  That's sort of what they're going for. It's streaming and the distortion that happens sometimes.
mark_l_watson 10y ago
My wife and I just cut the cable, and it feels great. Even adding HBO Now and Turner/Criterion to Netflix and Hulu Prime, we save a ton of money, and no commercials. Not being subjected to network news like MSNBC, Fox, and CNN is another fine bonus. Paying for ESPN on cable, and never watching it was a nudge to cut the cable.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  It's been about a year for me, and it's blissful. I tried to watch some Channel 4 UK on demand, and even that small amount of advertising had my teeth on edge. It's amazing how quickly you stop calmly glazing over for the high octane mindlessness you find in advertising; the tolerance just vanishes. The music grates, the acting is more obviously terrible, and messages more obviously manipulative... when you're not constantly immersed in them. I also find that I watch less, because I'm actively finding anything I want to watch, rather than passively channel surfing or just "seeing what's on".
  - ctdonath 10y ago
    Indeed. Having "cut the cord" for 10 years now, I find commercials extremely grating: loud, frantic, and stupid. My watching has plummeted to almost nothing, precisely because when I _do_ watch it's very deliberate, knowing what I'll see and how long it will take - contrasted with a flippant/reflexive "see what's on" and settling for whatever drivel vaguely catches attention. I honestly don't see how anyone can spend the average 40 hours a week "watching TV" now. My time is so crammed full of things having priority over "sit and watch" - because I'm evaluating the content & time before I watch, and comparing it to the value of what else needs doing. I'll get in a few hours a month of video, usually movies because I perceive a need to "be done with it" rather than having more to see and little time to see it.
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    We cut the cord late last year and I can say we feel the same way about commercials. They seem so forced. From the acting to the music to the stale jokes. I must say though, sometime I miss being able to just turn the TV on without actively searching for something.
  - johneth 10y ago
    It'd be great if Channel 4 let you pay a subscription to go ad-free. I think ITV does, but I have no interest in their programming (unlike Channel 4, which would be worth it in my opinion).
    - M_Grey 10y ago
      I agree completely, and anecdotally it's the ad-free option that finally got me on Hulu.
- douche 10y ago
  SlingTV with the TCM package has been really nice. Espn is a whole different package, with all the Disney shit
- mstade 10y ago
  Between Netflix, HBO, YouTube, and iTunes rentals I feel my Apple TV solves all my entertainment needs. Sports however, and in particular live sports, is a different matter altogether. I'd love to have easy pay-per-view access, as easy as iTunes rentals, to various sports events (think the Olympics, world cup of X, that sort of thing) and for some select sports a season pass (huge NHL fan here – go Rangers!) Alas, there's nothing like that. :o( I have to either get some weird NHL package, which only gets me out-of-market games since those other games are exclusive to whatever local channel may have bought the rights, and since you have different broadcasters to things like the Olympics depending on where you live, and which year it is, you don't know where to go for those either. Surprisingly, smaller sports franchises that haven't sold off all their media rights typically do this much better. Handball for instance is pretty easy to get a live stream of, because they're so starved for attention that they put it out there just to get people to watch the thing in the first place. In short, I would love a Netflix for sports that would also do live streams. Viasat in Europe comes close, but their subscriber deals are expensive, they don't have all the rights, and their apps are terrible.
  - ascagnel_ 10y ago
    > I'd love to have easy pay-per-view access, as easy as iTunes rentals, to various sports events (think the Olympics, world cup of X, that sort of thing) and for some select sports a season pass (huge NHL fan here – go Rangers!) There's no legal way to get live access to sporting events, since those are held by TV channels that have a vested interest in you buying back into a bundle (especially for the Rangers -- their ownership structure includes the TV channel that airs their games). However, you can get delayed games. The out-of-market package puts up replays 48h after the game broadcast finishes, and various online shops have a curated selection of games each year[0]. Basically, the whole situation is a toxic mess that's built on a crumbling foundation. Teams are owned by cable operators that retain the exclusive live broadcasts for their sports networks (or sell the rights at a premium to national channels), and have no incentive to step outside the bundle. It's a bubble, through-and-through. [0] e.g.: https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/nhl-games-of-the-year-2016-2017/id1168639083 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/nhl-games-of-the-year-...
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  Getting cable news out of my life was one of the primary reasons I cut the cord. I get my political news almost exclusively form digital print. It's to the point where actually seeing video of Trump is jarring because I'm just so used to reading and seeing stills. I pretty much forget how stupid the man sounds when he talks until I catch a clip on Last Week Tonight.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - baldfat 10y ago
    I find digital print to be worse then Cable news Politics. I don't know where the idea that news is suppose to be a robot and just the facts with no worldview comes from. I prefer to watch the middle of the road news but I also watch FoxNews and MSNBC to keep a perspective on different views. Seems to me that most people are just interested in an ideology and you only consume that ideology and we now have 2016.
    - alistproducer2 10y ago
      I, personally, found that my views were being influenced by the uniformity of opinions on my network of choice (MSNBC). For example, after watching the first debate I felt that Hillary was getting smashed after watching the post show, I had changed my opinion.
douche 10y ago
Espn fucking blows in the past few years. Part of it is the pandering. They have apparently decided the race card trunps all. But they have gone so far downhill from reporting on sports itself that it has become a travesty. EDIT: wow, apparently there are some Bristolites around here.
bubbabojangles 10y ago
Black background with white text makes me semi blind for about 5 minutes.
meri_dian 10y ago
I may be in the minority here, but one aspect of TV that I'd miss if did end up 'cutting the cable' would be the communal sense I get from watching TV. It's a bit hard to articulate, but when I watch TV I know that other people are watching exactly what I'm watching on that channel at that time. It's sort of like the feeling you get when you look at the Sun or Moon and know that people hundreds or thousands of miles from you are looking at the exact same thing. Or perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be watching a movie in a theater. Being there in the theater with other people is part of the experience and adds to it. Netflix and streaming services don't really offer this because while other people may have watched what you're currently watching, your viewing experiences aren't synced up. You can watch whatever you want when you want and so the chances that you're watching the same thing at the same time, synced with others, is very small. Though freedom of choice is the major strength of streaming services and I love them for it, you lose that vague connection of sharing a singlular experience - watching that show, at that time - with thousands of others. Maybe if Netflix were to implement a feature that indicated how many people were watching a show or movie at any given time it'd restore the communal aspect.
- imglorp 10y ago
  This is a good point. I could almost imagine a live social site where you could "watch X with friends" like a meetup and chat on a side channel. Of course you could do this wholly out of band but NF could certainly be involved.
  - fenwick67 10y ago
    I have seen this with... erm... less-than-legal streaming setups, it would be great of somebody figured out how to do it legitimately. With Youtube it would actually be pretty simple because you can embed an iFrame for the video and manipulate the timestamp, but with other streaming sites I imagine it would be harder.
  - Tyr42 10y ago
    I do watch stuff on Twitch with friends, for example the League of Legends LCS games.
fredleblanc 10y ago
This article has an interesting point buried deep down in the middle of it (that really isn't the point of the article), in that all of the new-ish things, like Sling or Vue or YouTube TV or otherwise look suspiciously like cable packages on the Internet. And that's something I can't quite get over. I've used Sling in the past, it can be a good bridge if you've cut the cable and want to hop back in because you miss it, but besides the delivery mechanism — I can bring my own device and it streams over the Internet — I don't see that much of a differentiator from cable. With either package of Sling, I'm still getting a bunch of channels I have no interest in, and while the price may be less per month than cable, it still _feels_ like 70% of the money I'm paying is going towards channels I have absolutely no interest in. Not to mention all the commercials I have to watch with it, not just in live viewings (because that's part of the stream, I get that), but even in on-demand things. I ask this honestly: is there something I'm missing here? People that I know that haven't cut cable because they would miss this or that laud these products as "the thing that may finally get them to cut cable," but this feels like cable just over streaming.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  I have Vue and I really like it. It's nice to use on the PS4 and even the Windows browser client is good. But I pay just about the same for it as I paid for a cable package...so at the end of the day I'm not sure what the victory is other than not having to use a set top box designed in the aughts.
  - brightball 10y ago
    Tivo Bolt people. It's awesome.
- oddevan 10y ago
  The selling point of Vue for me is the constant $35/month price. I can get a better deal from the cable company, but I'd have to renegotiate every year. The reduction of cognitive load here is freeing. I don't think of it as "I'm paying for x channels I don't watch," I think of it as "I'm paying $35 for these channels that I do watch, and I'm happy to pay that."
drewg123 10y ago
It sounds like they are still intent on riding cable into the ground, as they are "planning to roll out a Netflix-like interface for a section of the ESPN app that’s limited to cable customers." Seriously? Wouldn't it make sense to just offer an OTT service at a pricepoint slightly higher than what cable providers give them per sub? If they cannot get enough subscribers at that pricepoint, then why not offer pricing per event? I'm a cord cutter. I follow a single NFL team. They are on MNF maybe once a year. I'd pay $25 or so to watch that game (legally) at home rather than go to a bar or deal with a flaky illegal stream. They're leaving my money on the table.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- eduren 10y ago
  They most likely have a contractual obligation with cable companies to only serve their content to subscribers. Probably a catch 22 of "We can't afford to renegotiate with cable companies right now, but we can't innovate on our current model without marketing to cord cutters". ESPN (and many other media companies) are stuck and most likely in revenue-maintenance mode.
  - coldcode 10y ago
    This exactly. ESPN was forced to sign such exclusive contracts in order to get the content. They are not permitted to sell the content any other way (like to individuals). It's a terrible contract they cannot get out of. If Disney pushed ESPN out on its own, that entity might be might be able to renegotiate. Of course the NFL for example could always sell the content to some other sucker then. Sports content is a nasty business.
brightball 10y ago
ESPN is honestly the single biggest selling point FOR cable. If not for ESPN I'd have cut the cord long ago. Live broadcasts to millions of people at the same time make tremendously more sense in a broadcast model than a TCP connection per viewer model. It works fine for sporting events that are expected to have fairly low viewership or for content like Netflix which gets preprocessed and pre delivered to closer-to-viewer nodes. If I'm trying to watch Clemson vs Alabama in the national title game and the feed goes out because so many people are trying to watch it at the same time I'm not going to be a happy camper.
- mrSugar 10y ago
  That is what multicast was meant to address. Sadly, it did not catch on.
- baldfat 10y ago
  Just get Direct TV or Slingbox you get all that for $30 to $35
  - brightball 10y ago
    Used to have Direct and got tired of the annual price increase drill. Step 1) Get pestering phone calls to change your package for 3-5 months for FREE to include all of the movie channels Step 2) Promotion runs out and you want to go back to your old package, but it's now $5 / month more expensive than it used to be Step 3) Start refusing the free package change calls and watch the calls just keep...on...coming. Plus, with Direct I can't use my Tivo Bolt...which is giving up a lot because it's so much better than any of their DVR tech.
ctdonath 10y ago
ESPN is at the dangerous point that Kodak was at some time back - and made the wrong decision about. When the mass popular switch to digital photography was imminent, Kodak still had enormous sales from film - mostly sold & processed thru retail stores, which relied on the product/service to generate foot traffic (one visit to buy film, one to drop it off for processing, one to pick up prints - with likely tangential purchases while the customer was there). Retailers saw Kodak starting to make noise about switching to digital, which would have (and eventually did) destroyed that very lucrative sales model - so the retailers threatened Kodak with "if you push digital, we'll drop your products" ... so rather than sacrificing the cash cow, Kodak slowed the digital roadmap to >5 years to keep retailers happy, failing to notice that retailers weren't the actual end customer making the actual decision to buy film. Competition emerged from bizarrely non-sequitur competitors, like printer & computer manufacturers Epson & Hewlett-Packard - leaders in markets that had nothing to do with photography. Bottom-end digital camera prices fell to around $100, UI/UX improved, picture-takers discovered that "digital film is free", and the whole market switched from photochemical consumables to digital capital equipment practically overnight. ESPN and other major specialty content producers are facing the same problem. The bulk of their customers still watch via "cable TV", and cable TV providers are likely threatening to drop the ESPN-type packages entirely if they start providing serious streaming/app alternatives. That's a LOT of revenue to lose fast, so they're avoiding the big push to new media. Unfortunately for them, some other content delivery companies (like Netflix and Amazon) are seeing the potential, and putting big money into producing or negotiating highly desirable alternative content. Remember, there is a new generation coming of age who were raised playing soccer or other engaging sports instead of American football; they're looking for content that's not necessarily NFL etc, they're not so mentally tied to "TV", they want mobile content, and other non-sequitur competitors are making serious progress toward capturing their dollars where ESPN et al are reluctant to go under threat of old-model revenue being abruptly cut off. If ESPN et al really want to survive the pivot that killed Kodak, they need to call Comcast et al's bluff, pivot into on-demand streaming, and partner with Apple, Amazon, Netflix, etc for future survival, and make an ESPN-branded push for viewers to spend the one-time $50-150 already for a superior & enduring viewing experience. Otherwise, NFL on iTunes and World Soccer on Netflix etc will become not just a thing, but the thing. Kodak doubled down on retail, instead of leaping to the seemingly non-sequitur future, and died. ESPN is doubling down on cable, with no reason to expect a different result.
woliveirajr 10y ago
Few weeks ago a very fantastic thing happened in my city, about live sports and so on. Context: soccer is the main sport, TVs buy the rights to transmit, and pays a big money for the whole season. But the two biggest teams didn't sold their rights, so TV can transmit the whole championship except for those two teams. When the confront of those two teams was about to happen, commercial controversy arose: the teams didn't accept a one-time-contract to that match because they estimated to receive 3x more from youtube live stream. The league had a say, the tv, the teams... bureaucratic problems prevented the have from happening at the expected day, but it happened a week later. Live at youtube, enough quality, free, ad sponsored. League wasn't happy (the championship worths a lot less without those teams, so smaller teams received a smaller share this year). Tv was more or less, as it profits selling pay-per-view or live transmission. Public was happy. Those who wanted to go to the stadium, went and were happy too. Teams got bigger money and were happier than never. --------- I cutted cable because I was paying >$100 to watch just 4 or 5 channels. Would they have some kind of subscription, I would surely go for them. I'm still waiting when cables (or channels companies) will allow me to subscribe for just specific channels.
kin 10y ago
I've cut the cord and subscribe to ESPN through Sling. I'm very happy that ESPN has readily made themselves available on all the different streaming services (PS Vue, Youtube TV, Sling, etc). However, I also pay for Hulu and Netflix. In the end it still comes out to be the same price as cable, but with a more friendly subscription model. Time Warner tried giving me a free year of basic cable and each month all of the random fees and surcharges were placed on me. Bills weren't predictable. All of a sudden the price would change 1 month and they have every right to do so. So yeah, I'm never trying that experiment again. In the end, as long as ESPN has games to broadcast, they will no doubt have viewers and subscribers. Aside from that? People unsubscribe to ESPN either because they never wanted it to begin with OR because they honestly lack programming. Football has Sunday Ticket and Basketball has NBA GameTime. Outside of live sports, IMO Scott Van Pelt is the last great sports commentator on ESPN and everyone else on the show (Stephen A Smith, Skip Bayless) and other people I don't care to remember the name of, sucks. The commentating and the topics they discuss are now more reality TV than it is about sports. Why did Kaepernick kneeling get so much airtime? Are they same demographic of people who watch sports on ESPN the same who would care? I felt like any coverage of that should have been on Bravo or E. Also Bill Walton's coverage of NCAA Basketball seriously makes me want to shut the damn game off.
patwolf 10y ago
The article makes a point that if ESPN charged $15 a month for a standalone streaming channel, they'd need 43 million subscriptions to make up for revenue it gets from cable packages. In the same paragraph it mentions that ESPN pays more than $100 million for the rights to a single Monday Night Football game. What I don't see mentioned is that the price of content should be a function of how many people watch that broadcast. And disregarding the fact that some of these prices are locked in from long-term contracts, if ESPN loses subscribers, fewer people will watch the content and the price broadcasters will bid in the future for that content will go down. Cord cutters aren't all switching to OTA antennas either, so the usual broadcast networks should be bidding less on the content as well. It seems like an equilibrium will eventually be reached letting ESPN survive with fewer subscribers, which makes the $15 a month standalone streaming channel more feasible. The real loser in all this would be the sports leagues that can no longer command the same price for broadcast rights.
gregmac 10y ago
The root of ESPN's problem seems to be that what they call 'ESPN subscribers' are actually just 'cable subscribers', because ESPN is bundled with so many cable subscriptions. The actual number of people that want ESPN is some subset of all cable subscribers. Since the only way to get ESPN right now is to be a cable subscriber, it means two things: everyone that still wants ESPN still has ESPN (because they still have cable), and all of the people unsubscribing no longer want ESPN. Note: To keep this away from pricing issues, I am excluding "cannot afford or do not want to pay the price of cable but still want ESPN" from people that truly "want ESPN". The true number of ESPN subscribers as a percentage of cable subscribers is likely going up. The cable companies probably know what this number is (feedback from set top boxes), but as far as I know don't share this data. I would assume their cost to get rights to events seems would be somewhat based on their published subscriber numbers. Since those are the wrong numbers, they are getting hit in two ways: the subsidy from non-ESPN viewers that no longer subscribe to cable is going away, and the cost-per-subscriber of broadcast rights is going up because number of subscribers (according to their broken metric) is going down. Had they just always charged for ESPN separately (meaning 100% of people who paid for ESPN wanted to pay for ESPN) it seems like neither of these things would be a problem, though, they'd have lower revenue. The market will correct itself eventually, and ESPN will either adapt by cutting their costs or they'll eventually go bankrupt.
carsongross 10y ago
I wonder if any other recent changes by ESPN are compounding their viewship decline.

35 points by virtualwhys 10y ago

KZeillmann 10y ago

Is it just me, or are the images on the page incredibly broken?

ctvo 10y ago
That's sort of what they're going for. It's streaming and the distortion that happens sometimes.

mark_l_watson 10y ago

My wife and I just cut the cable, and it feels great. Even adding HBO Now and Turner/Criterion to Netflix and Hulu Prime, we save a ton of money, and no commercials. Not being subjected to network news like MSNBC, Fox, and CNN is another fine bonus. Paying for ESPN on cable, and never watching it was a nudge to cut the cable.

M_Grey 10y ago
It's been about a year for me, and it's blissful. I tried to watch some Channel 4 UK on demand, and even that small amount of advertising had my teeth on edge. It's amazing how quickly you stop calmly glazing over for the high octane mindlessness you find in advertising; the tolerance just vanishes. The music grates, the acting is more obviously terrible, and messages more obviously manipulative... when you're not constantly immersed in them. I also find that I watch less, because I'm actively finding anything I want to watch, rather than passively channel surfing or just "seeing what's on".
- ctdonath 10y ago
  Indeed. Having "cut the cord" for 10 years now, I find commercials extremely grating: loud, frantic, and stupid. My watching has plummeted to almost nothing, precisely because when I _do_ watch it's very deliberate, knowing what I'll see and how long it will take - contrasted with a flippant/reflexive "see what's on" and settling for whatever drivel vaguely catches attention. I honestly don't see how anyone can spend the average 40 hours a week "watching TV" now. My time is so crammed full of things having priority over "sit and watch" - because I'm evaluating the content & time before I watch, and comparing it to the value of what else needs doing. I'll get in a few hours a month of video, usually movies because I perceive a need to "be done with it" rather than having more to see and little time to see it.
- alistproducer2 10y ago
  We cut the cord late last year and I can say we feel the same way about commercials. They seem so forced. From the acting to the music to the stale jokes. I must say though, sometime I miss being able to just turn the TV on without actively searching for something.
- johneth 10y ago
  It'd be great if Channel 4 let you pay a subscription to go ad-free. I think ITV does, but I have no interest in their programming (unlike Channel 4, which would be worth it in my opinion).
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    I agree completely, and anecdotally it's the ad-free option that finally got me on Hulu.
douche 10y ago
SlingTV with the TCM package has been really nice. Espn is a whole different package, with all the Disney shit
mstade 10y ago
Between Netflix, HBO, YouTube, and iTunes rentals I feel my Apple TV solves all my entertainment needs. Sports however, and in particular live sports, is a different matter altogether. I'd love to have easy pay-per-view access, as easy as iTunes rentals, to various sports events (think the Olympics, world cup of X, that sort of thing) and for some select sports a season pass (huge NHL fan here – go Rangers!) Alas, there's nothing like that. :o( I have to either get some weird NHL package, which only gets me out-of-market games since those other games are exclusive to whatever local channel may have bought the rights, and since you have different broadcasters to things like the Olympics depending on where you live, and which year it is, you don't know where to go for those either. Surprisingly, smaller sports franchises that haven't sold off all their media rights typically do this much better. Handball for instance is pretty easy to get a live stream of, because they're so starved for attention that they put it out there just to get people to watch the thing in the first place. In short, I would love a Netflix for sports that would also do live streams. Viasat in Europe comes close, but their subscriber deals are expensive, they don't have all the rights, and their apps are terrible.
- ascagnel_ 10y ago
  > I'd love to have easy pay-per-view access, as easy as iTunes rentals, to various sports events (think the Olympics, world cup of X, that sort of thing) and for some select sports a season pass (huge NHL fan here – go Rangers!) There's no legal way to get live access to sporting events, since those are held by TV channels that have a vested interest in you buying back into a bundle (especially for the Rangers -- their ownership structure includes the TV channel that airs their games). However, you can get delayed games. The out-of-market package puts up replays 48h after the game broadcast finishes, and various online shops have a curated selection of games each year[0]. Basically, the whole situation is a toxic mess that's built on a crumbling foundation. Teams are owned by cable operators that retain the exclusive live broadcasts for their sports networks (or sell the rights at a premium to national channels), and have no incentive to step outside the bundle. It's a bubble, through-and-through. [0] e.g.: https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/nhl-games-of-the-year-2016-2017/id1168639083 https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/nhl-games-of-the-year-...
alistproducer2 10y ago
Getting cable news out of my life was one of the primary reasons I cut the cord. I get my political news almost exclusively form digital print. It's to the point where actually seeing video of Trump is jarring because I'm just so used to reading and seeing stills. I pretty much forget how stupid the man sounds when he talks until I catch a clip on Last Week Tonight.
- deleted 10y ago
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- baldfat 10y ago
  I find digital print to be worse then Cable news Politics. I don't know where the idea that news is suppose to be a robot and just the facts with no worldview comes from. I prefer to watch the middle of the road news but I also watch FoxNews and MSNBC to keep a perspective on different views. Seems to me that most people are just interested in an ideology and you only consume that ideology and we now have 2016.
  - alistproducer2 10y ago
    I, personally, found that my views were being influenced by the uniformity of opinions on my network of choice (MSNBC). For example, after watching the first debate I felt that Hillary was getting smashed after watching the post show, I had changed my opinion.

douche 10y ago

Espn fucking blows in the past few years. Part of it is the pandering. They have apparently decided the race card trunps all. But they have gone so far downhill from reporting on sports itself that it has become a travesty. EDIT: wow, apparently there are some Bristolites around here.

bubbabojangles 10y ago

Black background with white text makes me semi blind for about 5 minutes.

meri_dian 10y ago

I may be in the minority here, but one aspect of TV that I'd miss if did end up 'cutting the cable' would be the communal sense I get from watching TV. It's a bit hard to articulate, but when I watch TV I know that other people are watching exactly what I'm watching on that channel at that time. It's sort of like the feeling you get when you look at the Sun or Moon and know that people hundreds or thousands of miles from you are looking at the exact same thing. Or perhaps a more appropriate analogy would be watching a movie in a theater. Being there in the theater with other people is part of the experience and adds to it. Netflix and streaming services don't really offer this because while other people may have watched what you're currently watching, your viewing experiences aren't synced up. You can watch whatever you want when you want and so the chances that you're watching the same thing at the same time, synced with others, is very small. Though freedom of choice is the major strength of streaming services and I love them for it, you lose that vague connection of sharing a singlular experience - watching that show, at that time - with thousands of others. Maybe if Netflix were to implement a feature that indicated how many people were watching a show or movie at any given time it'd restore the communal aspect.

imglorp 10y ago
This is a good point. I could almost imagine a live social site where you could "watch X with friends" like a meetup and chat on a side channel. Of course you could do this wholly out of band but NF could certainly be involved.
- fenwick67 10y ago
  I have seen this with... erm... less-than-legal streaming setups, it would be great of somebody figured out how to do it legitimately. With Youtube it would actually be pretty simple because you can embed an iFrame for the video and manipulate the timestamp, but with other streaming sites I imagine it would be harder.
- Tyr42 10y ago
  I do watch stuff on Twitch with friends, for example the League of Legends LCS games.

fredleblanc 10y ago

This article has an interesting point buried deep down in the middle of it (that really isn't the point of the article), in that all of the new-ish things, like Sling or Vue or YouTube TV or otherwise look suspiciously like cable packages on the Internet. And that's something I can't quite get over. I've used Sling in the past, it can be a good bridge if you've cut the cable and want to hop back in because you miss it, but besides the delivery mechanism — I can bring my own device and it streams over the Internet — I don't see that much of a differentiator from cable. With either package of Sling, I'm still getting a bunch of channels I have no interest in, and while the price may be less per month than cable, it still _feels_ like 70% of the money I'm paying is going towards channels I have absolutely no interest in. Not to mention all the commercials I have to watch with it, not just in live viewings (because that's part of the stream, I get that), but even in on-demand things. I ask this honestly: is there something I'm missing here? People that I know that haven't cut cable because they would miss this or that laud these products as "the thing that may finally get them to cut cable," but this feels like cable just over streaming.

aaron-lebo 10y ago
I have Vue and I really like it. It's nice to use on the PS4 and even the Windows browser client is good. But I pay just about the same for it as I paid for a cable package...so at the end of the day I'm not sure what the victory is other than not having to use a set top box designed in the aughts.
- brightball 10y ago
  Tivo Bolt people. It's awesome.
oddevan 10y ago
The selling point of Vue for me is the constant $35/month price. I can get a better deal from the cable company, but I'd have to renegotiate every year. The reduction of cognitive load here is freeing. I don't think of it as "I'm paying for x channels I don't watch," I think of it as "I'm paying $35 for these channels that I do watch, and I'm happy to pay that."

drewg123 10y ago

It sounds like they are still intent on riding cable into the ground, as they are "planning to roll out a Netflix-like interface for a section of the ESPN app that’s limited to cable customers." Seriously? Wouldn't it make sense to just offer an OTT service at a pricepoint slightly higher than what cable providers give them per sub? If they cannot get enough subscribers at that pricepoint, then why not offer pricing per event? I'm a cord cutter. I follow a single NFL team. They are on MNF maybe once a year. I'd pay $25 or so to watch that game (legally) at home rather than go to a bar or deal with a flaky illegal stream. They're leaving my money on the table.

deleted 10y ago
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eduren 10y ago
They most likely have a contractual obligation with cable companies to only serve their content to subscribers. Probably a catch 22 of "We can't afford to renegotiate with cable companies right now, but we can't innovate on our current model without marketing to cord cutters". ESPN (and many other media companies) are stuck and most likely in revenue-maintenance mode.
- coldcode 10y ago
  This exactly. ESPN was forced to sign such exclusive contracts in order to get the content. They are not permitted to sell the content any other way (like to individuals). It's a terrible contract they cannot get out of. If Disney pushed ESPN out on its own, that entity might be might be able to renegotiate. Of course the NFL for example could always sell the content to some other sucker then. Sports content is a nasty business.

brightball 10y ago

ESPN is honestly the single biggest selling point FOR cable. If not for ESPN I'd have cut the cord long ago. Live broadcasts to millions of people at the same time make tremendously more sense in a broadcast model than a TCP connection per viewer model. It works fine for sporting events that are expected to have fairly low viewership or for content like Netflix which gets preprocessed and pre delivered to closer-to-viewer nodes. If I'm trying to watch Clemson vs Alabama in the national title game and the feed goes out because so many people are trying to watch it at the same time I'm not going to be a happy camper.

mrSugar 10y ago
That is what multicast was meant to address. Sadly, it did not catch on.
baldfat 10y ago
Just get Direct TV or Slingbox you get all that for $30 to $35
- brightball 10y ago
  Used to have Direct and got tired of the annual price increase drill. Step 1) Get pestering phone calls to change your package for 3-5 months for FREE to include all of the movie channels Step 2) Promotion runs out and you want to go back to your old package, but it's now $5 / month more expensive than it used to be Step 3) Start refusing the free package change calls and watch the calls just keep...on...coming. Plus, with Direct I can't use my Tivo Bolt...which is giving up a lot because it's so much better than any of their DVR tech.

ctdonath 10y ago

ESPN is at the dangerous point that Kodak was at some time back - and made the wrong decision about. When the mass popular switch to digital photography was imminent, Kodak still had enormous sales from film - mostly sold & processed thru retail stores, which relied on the product/service to generate foot traffic (one visit to buy film, one to drop it off for processing, one to pick up prints - with likely tangential purchases while the customer was there). Retailers saw Kodak starting to make noise about switching to digital, which would have (and eventually did) destroyed that very lucrative sales model - so the retailers threatened Kodak with "if you push digital, we'll drop your products" ... so rather than sacrificing the cash cow, Kodak slowed the digital roadmap to >5 years to keep retailers happy, failing to notice that retailers weren't the actual end customer making the actual decision to buy film. Competition emerged from bizarrely non-sequitur competitors, like printer & computer manufacturers Epson & Hewlett-Packard - leaders in markets that had nothing to do with photography. Bottom-end digital camera prices fell to around $100, UI/UX improved, picture-takers discovered that "digital film is free", and the whole market switched from photochemical consumables to digital capital equipment practically overnight. ESPN and other major specialty content producers are facing the same problem. The bulk of their customers still watch via "cable TV", and cable TV providers are likely threatening to drop the ESPN-type packages entirely if they start providing serious streaming/app alternatives. That's a LOT of revenue to lose fast, so they're avoiding the big push to new media. Unfortunately for them, some other content delivery companies (like Netflix and Amazon) are seeing the potential, and putting big money into producing or negotiating highly desirable alternative content. Remember, there is a new generation coming of age who were raised playing soccer or other engaging sports instead of American football; they're looking for content that's not necessarily NFL etc, they're not so mentally tied to "TV", they want mobile content, and other non-sequitur competitors are making serious progress toward capturing their dollars where ESPN et al are reluctant to go under threat of old-model revenue being abruptly cut off. If ESPN et al really want to survive the pivot that killed Kodak, they need to call Comcast et al's bluff, pivot into on-demand streaming, and partner with Apple, Amazon, Netflix, etc for future survival, and make an ESPN-branded push for viewers to spend the one-time $50-150 already for a superior & enduring viewing experience. Otherwise, NFL on iTunes and World Soccer on Netflix etc will become not just a thing, but the thing. Kodak doubled down on retail, instead of leaping to the seemingly non-sequitur future, and died. ESPN is doubling down on cable, with no reason to expect a different result.

woliveirajr 10y ago

Few weeks ago a very fantastic thing happened in my city, about live sports and so on. Context: soccer is the main sport, TVs buy the rights to transmit, and pays a big money for the whole season. But the two biggest teams didn't sold their rights, so TV can transmit the whole championship except for those two teams. When the confront of those two teams was about to happen, commercial controversy arose: the teams didn't accept a one-time-contract to that match because they estimated to receive 3x more from youtube live stream. The league had a say, the tv, the teams... bureaucratic problems prevented the have from happening at the expected day, but it happened a week later. Live at youtube, enough quality, free, ad sponsored. League wasn't happy (the championship worths a lot less without those teams, so smaller teams received a smaller share this year). Tv was more or less, as it profits selling pay-per-view or live transmission. Public was happy. Those who wanted to go to the stadium, went and were happy too. Teams got bigger money and were happier than never. --------- I cutted cable because I was paying >$100 to watch just 4 or 5 channels. Would they have some kind of subscription, I would surely go for them. I'm still waiting when cables (or channels companies) will allow me to subscribe for just specific channels.

kin 10y ago

I've cut the cord and subscribe to ESPN through Sling. I'm very happy that ESPN has readily made themselves available on all the different streaming services (PS Vue, Youtube TV, Sling, etc). However, I also pay for Hulu and Netflix. In the end it still comes out to be the same price as cable, but with a more friendly subscription model. Time Warner tried giving me a free year of basic cable and each month all of the random fees and surcharges were placed on me. Bills weren't predictable. All of a sudden the price would change 1 month and they have every right to do so. So yeah, I'm never trying that experiment again. In the end, as long as ESPN has games to broadcast, they will no doubt have viewers and subscribers. Aside from that? People unsubscribe to ESPN either because they never wanted it to begin with OR because they honestly lack programming. Football has Sunday Ticket and Basketball has NBA GameTime. Outside of live sports, IMO Scott Van Pelt is the last great sports commentator on ESPN and everyone else on the show (Stephen A Smith, Skip Bayless) and other people I don't care to remember the name of, sucks. The commentating and the topics they discuss are now more reality TV than it is about sports. Why did Kaepernick kneeling get so much airtime? Are they same demographic of people who watch sports on ESPN the same who would care? I felt like any coverage of that should have been on Bravo or E. Also Bill Walton's coverage of NCAA Basketball seriously makes me want to shut the damn game off.

patwolf 10y ago

The article makes a point that if ESPN charged $15 a month for a standalone streaming channel, they'd need 43 million subscriptions to make up for revenue it gets from cable packages. In the same paragraph it mentions that ESPN pays more than $100 million for the rights to a single Monday Night Football game. What I don't see mentioned is that the price of content should be a function of how many people watch that broadcast. And disregarding the fact that some of these prices are locked in from long-term contracts, if ESPN loses subscribers, fewer people will watch the content and the price broadcasters will bid in the future for that content will go down. Cord cutters aren't all switching to OTA antennas either, so the usual broadcast networks should be bidding less on the content as well. It seems like an equilibrium will eventually be reached letting ESPN survive with fewer subscribers, which makes the $15 a month standalone streaming channel more feasible. The real loser in all this would be the sports leagues that can no longer command the same price for broadcast rights.

gregmac 10y ago

The root of ESPN's problem seems to be that what they call 'ESPN subscribers' are actually just 'cable subscribers', because ESPN is bundled with so many cable subscriptions. The actual number of people that want ESPN is some subset of all cable subscribers. Since the only way to get ESPN right now is to be a cable subscriber, it means two things: everyone that still wants ESPN still has ESPN (because they still have cable), and all of the people unsubscribing no longer want ESPN. Note: To keep this away from pricing issues, I am excluding "cannot afford or do not want to pay the price of cable but still want ESPN" from people that truly "want ESPN". The true number of ESPN subscribers as a percentage of cable subscribers is likely going up. The cable companies probably know what this number is (feedback from set top boxes), but as far as I know don't share this data. I would assume their cost to get rights to events seems would be somewhat based on their published subscriber numbers. Since those are the wrong numbers, they are getting hit in two ways: the subsidy from non-ESPN viewers that no longer subscribe to cable is going away, and the cost-per-subscriber of broadcast rights is going up because number of subscribers (according to their broken metric) is going down. Had they just always charged for ESPN separately (meaning 100% of people who paid for ESPN wanted to pay for ESPN) it seems like neither of these things would be a problem, though, they'd have lower revenue. The market will correct itself eventually, and ESPN will either adapt by cutting their costs or they'll eventually go bankrupt.

carsongross 10y ago

I wonder if any other recent changes by ESPN are compounding their viewship decline.