The Medium article is fairly accurate on the whole, with maybe a few minor inaccuracies here and there. Its word choice in "own" is unfortunate in that circumst

The Medium article is fairly accurate on the whole, with maybe a few minor inaccuracies here and there. Its word choice in "own" is unfortunate in that circumstance, but I don't believe the author actually intended to suggest that ESPN "owns" the NFL, the MLB, etc. Reading the rest of the article, I get the general impression that he knows what he's talking about. At least on a high level, if not necessarily 100% of the minutiae. In my article (the Slate one), I state that ESPN was an outlier -- but that everyone else sort of recognized as much, then wanted in on the action. Nowadays, RSNs (regional sports networks) have fees as high as, and in some cases higher than, ESPN and its sister networks. "I think the cable companies themselves (and specifically their lack of competition) are bigger factors in their prices than channels' subscriber fees." It's a very significant factor. So is the lack of competition among the networks licensing to the cable companies. So is the lack of competition within the major sports leagues. So is the lack of competition within any given city for any given sports franchise. In general, you've got an agglomeration of oligopolistic markets -- resulting in a sort of "powers-of-ten" [1] increase, at every step of the value chain, in programming costs. The consumer is left footing most of these bills. [1] I use "powers of ten" here in the metaphorical sense of that old science video, and not in the literal sense.