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ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More
- saluki 9y agoI would like to see MNF go back to an over-the-air network. MNF has a long tradition before moving to ESPN. There are lots of fans who don't have a pay tv package that have been missing out on MNF.
- SpikeDad 9y agoThat's an assumption that the NFL (or any sports league for that matter) do things that are beneficial to fans as opposed to beneficial to the bottom line of owners. I can name a hundred things leagues have done to dilute and harm their respective games in order to increase profits.
- rhino369 9y agoI think it's a bad assumption to think the NFL will demand more money when ratings and subscriptions are down. ESPN just has to be the highest bidder. Someone has got to air the games.
- legitster 9y agoThe NFL has struggled finding a good home for Thursday Night Football. MNF could easily turn into another network wandering nomad.
- hkmurakami 9y agoAh so that's why Amazon Prime was able to land TNF.
- Brendinooo 9y agoIs that true? My impression was always that it was a valuable enough property that lots of companies wanted in on the action, but I admit that's not grounded in sources.
- sandworm101 9y ago>> Someone has got to air the games. Really? Football has been played without network coverage. I could see a future whereby teams handled their own streaming, or where the NFL did it all through NFL.com. The days of "air" are quickly coming to an end. I'm a little surprised that Netflix, Google or even FB aren't bidding. And if NFL owners want more people into the stadiums, curtailing broadcast coverage has been the traditional means. Ticket prices are already so high that it isn't inconceivable that they take it to the next level and market a game like a rock concert: be in the room or miss out.
- ghrifter 9y agoAmazon currently streams Thursday Night Football
- ProAm 9y agoSo does Twitter I believe....
- DrScump 9y agoI could see a future whereby teams handled their own streaming NFL's financial viability depends on the combined, pooled TV revenues. If each team is reduced to parceling out its own TV rights, smaller-market teams simply won't survive. You would see revenue disparities worse than in baseball right now (compare the Dodgers' TV contract with that of the A's or Brewers or DBacks... or, before this season, Houston).
- endtime 9y agoWhat happens if the highest bidder can't pay the NFL enough to make it worthwhile? I keep seeing pictures of half-empty stands behind kneeling football players, and ultimately if the NFL destroys its value by alienating too many fans with politics, there's no reason the entire business won't or shouldn't collapse.
- Feniks 9y agoActually if they are smart the NFL capitalises on the current political climate. Think about it: an NFL team sponsored by the alt right vs. one funded by Ben&Jerry's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots
- rhino369 9y agoThere would have to be a pretty massive drop off for that to be a problem. The biggest costs are player/staff salaries and stadiums. They can just keep the salary cap low and stop paying for new stadiums.
- ZoeZoeBee 9y agoUmm no. NFL took in 15 Billion in 2015, 2/3 of the revenue came from TV, new stadiums over the last 20 years have totaled only $15 Billion of which almost half was financed by tax payers[0]. NFL will not weather well a continued hit to ratings, which were down 8% last year and dropping again this year [0]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19smEPxvpHQE3pByhDDPbyyA-SMdMjF5Y2uk-g_LkMZs/edit#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19smEPxvpHQE3pByhDDPb...
- sunsetMurk 9y agocurious - are there any reports/#'s out there that indicate attendance is lower than normal? +correlation w/ kneeling players?
- brttstl 9y agoNope.
- zeveb 9y ago> Someone has got to air the games. Does someone? Sure, professional football has been very popular for many decades, but there's nothing about the order of the universe which states that it will remain so forever. We don't have chariot races, or gladiators, or bear-baiting — maybe someday we won't have professional football either.
- vestermark 9y agoThe NFL's life expectancy is now less than 20 years. Young people aren't playing the game, because their parents don't want their brains to get all smashed up. Active participation in tackle football among teenagers fell from 9% to 7% in just 5 years from 2011-2016. The talent pool will dry up. The game will be less interesting. The fan base will die off.
- protomyth 9y agoI don't think playing the game is very important in the US. If playing the game as a youth affected your viewing habits as an adult then soccer should be the most popular sport in the US. Basketball should far eclipse football. As long as they have enough younger players to sustain they should be fine. Its more about the availability of gladiators than the sports history of people in the stands.
- Feniks 9y ago2 Billion? That's a lot of brain injuries.
- daviddumenil 9y agoOne option that other TV rights offerings have taken up is to split the package into tiered offerings. That would allow the NFL to maintain ESPN as potentially the top tier while introducing new suitors with lower tiers and maintaining their revenue in aggregate. The losers in this scenario are the fans: forced to purchase several subscriptions if they want to watch every game.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- kodablah 9y agoThis is going to be one of many reasons there might be a lockout in 2020 when it's CBA renewal time. This is going to trickle down to the players. NFL can't continue charging exorbitant access fees which means they will have to request a serious reduction in the salary cap (the owners aren't going to be willing to eat these losses). I think this is great thing as the economics of large sports salaries have been artificially inflated by surreptitiously charging end users for things they might not want. As the internet continues to alter the landscape around content choice, traditional providers are going to have no choice but to push back on the networks which will, in turn, push back on the leagues which will, in turn, push back on high sports salaries. I wouldn't expect any of the limited sets of providers to accept any more price hikes from the sports networks. Sports costs have to come back down to earth as consumption specializes. It already has or will happen with other forms of content too.
- brian-armstrong 9y agoGiven how traumatic the sport and related CTEs are, I wonder if falling salaries will spell the end of football
- kodablah 9y agoI do not believe so as I believe the issues are orthogonal. The livelihood of the sport is primarily driven by consumption not production IMO. You lose eyeballs, you lose everything. You lose players, more will fill their place and while the quality may decline, it will not be noticeable since it applies evenly. Everyone knows the NFL could reduce injuries even more, but not at the cost of eyeballs. In a purely capitalistic view, players are much more expendable/replaceable than viewers. As a side effect, players will have to accept the risk of being injured for less money than they are now. While a couple of high profile NFL players have retired due to CTE concerns, in general there are many humans willing to make that sacrifice for even a fraction of what players are paid today.
- exelius 9y agoLet's say you take the NFL's revenue and it drops by 90% (as I think it will relatively quickly once "TV" ad rates start to come in line with online video -- oh yes, all these issues are related). So the salary range would have to shift to say, $2-3M a year for the top stars and about $200,000 for vets; with rookies making $50k-ish. Sure there would be endorsements, but it wouldn't be the ubiquitous stardom. You're just another Instagram influencer. You do that, and you take the wind out of the sails of a sport quickly. You probably have a better chance of success playing fantasy football (you know, gambling) than you would getting rich as a football player. The adpocalypse is happening right now. We've been warning of it for years. Brands are figuring out their campaigns on "traditional TV" don't return nearly as much as targeted campaigns on online video on a per-dollar basis. The bloodbath is just beginning.
- poulsbohemian 9y agoLong time NFL GamePass subscriber here... no commercials, watch any game I want when I want - it's a completely superior experience to cable / OTA. I get that the NFL wants to maximize its revenue by selling rights, but they could likely provide their own real-time streaming service and every football fan on the planet would be happy to pay for it.
- kodablah 9y ago> it's a completely superior experience to cable / OTA Can't watch ALL games live right? That's hardly completely superior. IMO, NFL would make less money on direct sales than they do when they charge networks which charge all cable subscribers (even via retransmission fees for those of us who can't get OTA) AND charge advertisers. That double dip is going to net more money than a specialized service for NFL fans.
- jsmthrowaway 9y ago> Can't watch ALL games live right? That's hardly completely superior. You can't on television, either.
- kodablah 9y agoTrue. You also can't even watch your local game live either IIRC. I should have made that clear...it is NOT completely superior.
- apendleton 9y agoYes, but nobody else would. Lots of the people paying for ESPN don't do so by choice, they do so because it comes as part of their cable package whether they watch it or not (this was me pre-cord-cutting).
- Digory 9y agoGamepass is $75 right now. Back of the envelope, every viewer of MNF would need to pay $200 just to keep MNF and one wildcard game. More to get Sunday, Thursday, the playoffs and the Superbowl. Easily $300 - $400 per viewer a year. That's a hard sell.
- bearcobra 9y agoI think it's worth noting that this site is run by Clay Travis, who generally seems to be an outspoken ESPN critic on political grounds. It's also worth noting that ESPN currently down to 87 million subscribers from a peak of about 100 million in 2011, so they haven't lost 30% of their subscriber base since adding MNF in 2006.
- MrFantastic 9y agoMonday Night Football matchups are usually unimportant and/or lobsided.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- exabrial 9y agoOnce the NFL became political, a lot of hardcore fans stopped using it as an escape from the madness ever present in the news and social media. Seeing falling revenues doesn't surprise me. The irony of my comment is I'm making plans to watch KC vs Denver... and it's Monday.
- enraged_camel 9y ago>>Once the NFL became political The numbers have been decreasing for the past 6 years. It has nothing to do with NFL becoming political. http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers-not-ratings-viewers-2017-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers-not-r...
- gozur88 9y agoYou're talking about two different things. He's talking about the NFL and you're talking about ESPN. Definitely the politics has hurt the NFL, though there's a lot of disagreement over just how much, but football is only a small part of ESPN's offerings. I'd be shocked if politics haven't hurt ESPN, too, but the effect is probably completely swamped by changes in viewing habits and a reduction in Disney's clout with cable companies.
- jly 9y ago> But can ESPN exist as a network without NFL games? Yes. It broadcasts < 20 NFL games per year. This is not a lot of airtime for a 24h sports network. It does spend a considerable amount of time talking about NFL, but that can continue whether it broadcasts their games or not. It has a 3-hour lead-in show on Sunday morning that gets sizable ratings while broadcasting zero games that day. Nobody subscribes to ESPN/cable just for MNF. In contrast, ESPN broadcasts dozens of college football games per year and spends probably an equal amount of time - or more - discussing those. It spends about $1.4b per year in total on those TV rights which have lucrative advertising and cable subscriber value. That's in addition to all of the other sports ESPN broadcasts. ESPN will bid less for MNF because they can't afford it any more but mostly because the ratings don't fully justify the current cost. The overall success of ESPN doesn't hinge solely on whether or not they broadcast any NFL games, it's based on how sensible the price is for the rights they own. They have plenty of other content to fill airtime that people watch and will pay a reasonable subscriber price for, even if that's not quite as much as they extract now from cable providers.
- acjohnson55 9y agoMy thoughts exactly. Their problem is that cable TV as a whole has increasingly viable substitute goods. But there's no reason ESPN can't play that same game. I imagine it's only a matter of time before they put together streaming packages they sell direct to consumer. But they'll ride the value revenue till the wheels fall off first.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThe problem is ESPN was able to capture an outsized amount of revenue due to cable TV providers bundling it with other channels, so you had large amounts of people paying for it but not consuming it. Cord cutters are upending the model, requiring ESPN to swim on its own without subsidies; my personal opinion is that there aren’t enough sports fans to support it except as an over the top app similar to what HBO GO is trying to do.
- acjohnson55 9y ago
- PatientTrades 9y agoESPN's downward spiral perpetuated when their talk show hosts started pushing their politic agenda and a liberal bias (Not saying a liberal bias is wrong, but many people get turned off by it). Sports should be an escape from the daily political circus and a time to relax and enjoy entertainment. FS1 is quickly becoming the destination for many sports fans and ESPN will continue to lose viewers if they don't change.
- RickJWag 9y agoIt's no mystery why ESPN is going down. They placed their emphasis on things other than sports. Sports fans will pay for sports, not politics.