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ESPN, which laid off 100 people this week, has a multitude of problems, but the basic one is this: It pays too much for content and costs too much for consumers.
That didn't used to matter because, thanks to the way the cable industry "bundled" channels, cable customers were forced to pay for it even if they never watched it. Now, however, as the cable bundle slowly disintegrates, it matters a lot.
[...] But it's a pipe dream to think that ESPN will ever make the kind of profits ($6.4 billion in 2014) that it once did, for two reasons. First, as is the case with so many other industries, the internet has both shined a light on the flaws of the cable model and exploited them. What was the main flaw of the cable model? It was that consumers had to pay for channels they never watched.
And now they don't.
It turns out that there were lots of people, including sports fans, who resented having to pay for the most expensive channel in the bundle. The popularity of streaming led to "cord cutting," but it also caused cable companies to begin offering less expensive "skinny bundles," some of which don't include ESPN.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday May 02 2017, @04:22PM
Boomers were incredibly heavily into pro sports, didn't matter how much money or time it cost (and boomers have plenty of money). Younger generations are not as interested, so insert giant flushing sound as that industry goes away.
Hmm... "not as interested" might be true, but there still seems to be substantial interest. Top search hit leads to this article [theatlantic.com] which is about 3 years old, but the demographic breakdown is interesting.
The age 55+ bracket basically corresponds to boomers in the graphs at the bottom. Given how much less TV younger people watch compared to older folks, they're still apparently tuning in in big numbers for a lot of sports. NBA's audience is only 25% boomers, NHL 29%, MLS 27%. Pro basketball and soccer in particular seem really popular among younger demographics.
Though you may be right about baseball's decline -- a full half of the viewing audience is over 55 (bested only in the Boomer viewing category by golf, which I think was a sport mostly only ever watched by older people).
Anyhow, I don't think professional sports in general are going anywhere soon. We may see more basketball and soccer with less baseball, but it looks like a lot of younger folks still are watching some pro sports. As the opening of the article notes, NFL games accounted for 34 of out 35 most-watched TV shows that year. And pro sports continued to dominate the top 100 TV shows [zap2it.com] of 2016. Yes, the viewing audiences for TV are much more fractured now than they used to be, but there's still clearly a LOT of interest in pro sports.
[BTW - just to be clear, I am ALL for unbundling ESPN. Let the sports fans pay its high prices if they want to.]