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: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Wednesday November 01 2017, @03:34PM
From what I can tell, none of those games use helmets, and presumable discourage head impacts as a result. Thus much less brain trauma.
The problem with American football is that the players armor their heads against surface injuries, and routinely absorb quite large head impacts without obvious damage - but the human brain isn't designed to withstand those sorts of accelerations, and gets damaged every time it's subjected to them.