ESPN pays $2 billion a year to the NFL for Monday Night Football and one NFL wild card playoff game. I've written for the past couple of years that as ESPN's business collapses that ESPN's decision on whether or not to bid to keep Monday Night Football would be the first big test of how rapidly that business is deteriorating.
What's a deteriorating business look like? In the month of October ESPN lost over 15,000 subscribers a day in October per the latest Nielson estimates.
15,000 a day!
Losing 15,000 subscribers per day is a lot, but is that because of the NFL anthem protests or because cord-cutting has finally reached a tipping point?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:22PM (11 children)
Even if people are turning off the NFL due to the anthem protests (on every channel, not just ESPN) they do that with their remotes and not by cancelling ESPN. ESPN is part of a standard cable package or a sports package. It is not an "a la cartel" channel.
The cable industry should report how many subscribers they are losing per day and how many of those subscribers had ESPN. That would give us a true picture of the number of subscribers abandoning ESPN.
Disclaimer: I think ESPN is shit. They are less about real sports and more about opinions, non-sports competitions (poker, video games), fantasy sports, etc every day. They also have very little integrity and will report anything they feel gives them a "scoop" with little regard for its accuracy.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:42PM (3 children)
That may have been true several decades ago but nowadays cable channels get a significant portion of their income from advertising, so it very much matters if they're watched or not.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:51PM (1 child)
I'm not disputing the importance of viewership and advertising dollars. I was just pointing out that ESPN does no "lose subscribers" on their own. They can only lose subscribers by cable customers discontinuing an entire sports package or disconnecting their service. If I could disconnect only ESPN I would have done so years ago.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday November 01 2017, @01:06PM
Fair nuff.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @12:58PM
According to this article from two years ago, ESPN got 60% of its revenue from subscriber fees. They got $6.04 per subscriber and the next highest fee charged by a network was TNT at $1.48, with total subscriber fee revenues of $6.9 billion and $1.48 billion, respectively.
http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-revenue-subscriber-fees-2015-11 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:01PM
Since Disney Co. (the owners of ESPN) all but require every cable package to carry ESPN if the cable companies want to carry any other Disney channel (and they have so damn many of them, they get to be this 800lb gorilla), then 15,000 ESPN subscribers lost per day says that almost 15,000 cable subscribers cut the cord per day
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:33PM (1 child)
I assure you that it not universally true. More Cable companies are starting to allow a la cart selection, as are satellite providers.
And even if it is, I refer you to the cord cutting topic in this discussion. When you cut the cord you can still get ESPN, via a variety of means, for a variety of prices ranging from free to just under 8 bucks. In 2011 ESPN was paid less than $5 per subscriber per month. This year it is being paid $7.86. And even if you pay, you probably still get the ads.
ESPN is, true to it's name, Focused on Eastern teams, both in its selection of coverage and in the bias of its comentary, and this does no play well west of the Mississippi.
ESPN is facing competition from several large sports networks, such as Fox, Root, and a MLB Net, etc, and probably a few I'm unaware of.
Both these two issues can figure into dropping revenue.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:43PM
But not with ESPN. ESPN is not an a la carte option on any cable or satellite provider. Sure other channels are starting to become available a la carte, but not ESPN.
WTF? the "E" in ESPN is "Entertainment" not "Eastern".
(Score: 5, Informative) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:14PM (2 children)
You think ESPN is shit, look at what happened to the History Channel, et al. The entire nature of TV production on every channel has has adopted this horrible screaming sensational format that's impossible to bear, all designed to raise your blood pressure. It's unwatchable. AXN is all there is now.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 01 2017, @04:45PM (1 child)
Amen. Many channels aren't even worthy of the "entertainment" label. This is at least partly due to the 500+ channels running 24/7 vying for viewers and advertising dollars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:27PM
Every channel having to be a 'hit' channel, rather than setting their production values/syndication fee costs according to their viewership. If they did, then many more channels could cater to a niche of a few hundred thousand to million people, and they could all stay in business and profitable, while not being the sort of runaway successes everybody expects today.
For an example of this (that is quickly being corrupted by western influence), look at Japan, and the number of channels, networks, and smaller production studios producing content for their domestic market. Smaller than America and the amount of shows produced there are far higher than the amount produced in America, and certainly more than those watched outside of regional television.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday November 01 2017, @10:31PM
My gym has ESPN playing on the giant TV in the mens locker room. For a very long time I've been subjected to 5-10 minutes of ESPN at a time. My observations are 40% commercials for old men products, 40% old male sportscaters and occasionally guests yelling nonsense about nothing at each other, and maybe 10% highlight reel commentary the kind of stuff you'd watch a youtube clip for if you weren't watching TV. The other 10% is weird banter, flirting with the elderly yet still hot MILF (GILF?) female hosts who appear to know nothing about sports and their only hiring criteria was affirmative action/hotness.
The commercials are moderately interesting because some day I want to age into being a cranky old man. Assuming I'm not already. So I know all the pills I should be taking in 30 years from watching ESPN ads, all of which have minor side effects like death or my dick falling off. For 5 minutes a day its kind of novel, the commercials I mean, not having my dick fall off. This is not a special sauce, AFAIK you can see the same stupid commercials on CNBC for example.
The sportscasters yelling is simply obnoxious. Drama, but not even good drama. Second guessing and monday morning quarterbacking and shit talking about stuff that doesn't matter. They're definitely not in a hobby selected for high IQs and it shows in their sophistry or lack thereof. This is annoying. Unfortunately it seems ESPN mgmt thinks this is their ideal content?
The clips are sometimes interesting but lets be realistic the UI experience is better online perhaps on youtube. When your coolest feature can be better replaced by youtube clips, you know you're in big trouble.
The 10% banter is bizarre, especially the female commentary. Imagine if SN or /. ran like ESPN and in every story about functional programming or physics experiments we had 5% of the posts be women saying they donno nothing about any of the discussion topic but take a look at my great rack. The best analogy would be something like 4chans /DIY/ having 5% of the posts being leakage (kinda gross sounding...) from /hc/ or /s/ (or /b/ ?). Come on ESPN guys, its embarrassing its 2017 if guys merely want to see tits they go online not watch ESPN.
My analysis is based on airtime its 20% better replaced by online services, 40% obnoxious and annoying, 40% kinda neutral but not a special sauce.