Is ESPN Doomed?

[Jockey]

1.  Pull something out your ass.
2.  When called out, claim sarcasm.
3.  Profit

You are one of the ones I was thinking about when I said some scoopers can't recognize sarcasm.

[Not A Serious Person]

If Williams is the next big QB, he'll get $70+ million on his second deal in the NFL. 

You're correct, each year in college exposes him to injury and/or delays that deal

Agree on injury.

But his father has a point that some organizations are so bad at developing QBs that going there will prevent you from getting that second contract at all.

Think the Bears, Lions Jets, Broncos, Raiders, and Cardinals.

[Uncle Rico]

Agree on injury.

But his father has a point that some organizations are so bad at developing QBs that going there will prevent you from getting that second contract at all.

Think the Bears, Lions Jets, Broncos, Raiders, and Cardinals.

That part is correct, to an extent.  Being drafted by some of those teams listed has been a career killer.

We could have said that about the Bengals pre-Joe Burrow and the Lions did fine developing Stafford, they just failed him roster building.

Before 2000, one could argue the Patriots were not a good organization.  They weren't!  Things can change and the QB often has a lot to do with that

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

https://sports.yahoo.com/were-at-a-tipping-point-disney-vs-charter-standoff-could-have-seismic-implications-for-entire-cable-tv-model-193455175.html

Correctly points out that Monday, with MNF's debut on ESPN, is a big deal. If there is no deal by Monday, there may be no deal for awhile and 20% of the country won't get to see the product that ESPN pays the most for.

[Not A Serious Person]

September 8, 2013
Disney Fight Marks Cable TV's Last Stand
Dispute with Charter has left millions without access to football and the U.S. Open—and could mean a permanent change to the business as customers flee to streaming at an accelerated pace
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/disney-spectrum-espn-charter-dispute-9147744b


The endgame for cable TV has arrived.

The decadeslong alliance between programmers and distributors that has been the foundation of the roughly $200 billion TV industry is starting to crumble as each side looks to protect its interests in a media landscape centered on streaming.

Those tensions have burst into the open with a fight between Disney and the nation's No. 2 pay-TV provider, Charter Communications. The feud has left some 15 million customers of Charter's Spectrum cable service without access to Disney's ESPN and other channels, with Charter hinting it may exit the pay-TV business altogether.

The entertainment companies say they are trying to find ways to include their longtime pay-TV partners in the shift to streaming. In the Charter fight, a central issue is Charter's demand that Disney's streaming apps—including Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+—be made available at no extra cost to its pay-TV customers. Disney wants to be paid more for those services, while Charter believes the fees it pays to carry Disney's channels in its lineup should cover streaming apps as well.

"We had to say, enough is enough," Charter Chief Executive Chris Winfrey said Thursday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Winfrey said Disney's negotiating stance amounts to letting its "linear programming house burn to the ground."

"It's unfortunate that Charter decided to abandon their consumers by denying them access to our great programming," Disney said in a statement Thursday.

Charter, which has almost as many pay-TV subscribers as No. 1 Comcast, faces the risk that its customers around the country—with a big portion in New York and Los Angeles—will walk away during the Disney standoff and not come back. ESPN is currently carrying tennis's U.S. Open and its season of "Monday Night Football" starts Sept. 11, with a highly anticipated game featuring quarterback Aaron Rodgers's debut for the New York Jets.

----

The cable-TV bundle has been bleeding subscribers for the better part of a decade. Customers were turned off by the ever-growing cost of traditional television and were drawn to cheaper streaming options.

The number of U.S. pay-TV subscribers is shrinking at an annual pace of nearly 7%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of MoffettNathanson data, a significant acceleration from a few years ago, when the rate of decline was under 2%.

"The video ecosystem is broken," Charter's Winfrey told investors last week. "We're either moving forward with a new collaborative video model, or we're moving on."

Over the past decade, about 42 million U.S. households have abandoned their traditional pay-TV plan—and most of them didn't replace it with a web-based alternative such as Fubo TV, Sling TV or others, which have about 17 million subscribers combined. Instead, most of these households gave up on live television altogether.


-----

Live sports have long remained the main selling point for the traditional cable-TV package. But even sports is beginning to move out of the cable bundle and into streaming apps. Both ESPN+ and Peacock will have exclusive NFL games on their platforms this season, something that DirecTV's Thun said is particularly infuriating.

"You have this wonderful business, known as pay-TV bundling, where everyone won," said Michael Nathanson, an analyst with MoffettNathanson. "And it's being unintelligently competed away by leaking more and more sports content" to streaming. 

ESPN is also exploring plans to offer a separate direct-to-consumer app with all of its TV content. And many regional sports networks—which carry the majority of professional basketball, baseball and hockey games—have launched stand-alone streaming options.

[Uncle Rico]

September 8, 2013
Disney Fight Marks Cable TV's Last Stand
Dispute with Charter has left millions without access to football and the U.S. Open—and could mean a permanent change to the business as customers flee to streaming at an accelerated pace
https://www.wsj.com/business/media/disney-spectrum-espn-charter-dispute-9147744b


The endgame for cable TV has arrived.

The decadeslong alliance between programmers and distributors that has been the foundation of the roughly $200 billion TV industry is starting to crumble as each side looks to protect its interests in a media landscape centered on streaming.

Those tensions have burst into the open with a fight between Disney and the nation's No. 2 pay-TV provider, Charter Communications. The feud has left some 15 million customers of Charter's Spectrum cable service without access to Disney's ESPN and other channels, with Charter hinting it may exit the pay-TV business altogether.

The entertainment companies say they are trying to find ways to include their longtime pay-TV partners in the shift to streaming. In the Charter fight, a central issue is Charter's demand that Disney's streaming apps—including Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+—be made available at no extra cost to its pay-TV customers. Disney wants to be paid more for those services, while Charter believes the fees it pays to carry Disney's channels in its lineup should cover streaming apps as well.

"We had to say, enough is enough," Charter Chief Executive Chris Winfrey said Thursday at a Goldman Sachs investor conference. Winfrey said Disney's negotiating stance amounts to letting its "linear programming house burn to the ground."

"It's unfortunate that Charter decided to abandon their consumers by denying them access to our great programming," Disney said in a statement Thursday.

Charter, which has almost as many pay-TV subscribers as No. 1 Comcast, faces the risk that its customers around the country—with a big portion in New York and Los Angeles—will walk away during the Disney standoff and not come back. ESPN is currently carrying tennis's U.S. Open and its season of "Monday Night Football" starts Sept. 11, with a highly anticipated game featuring quarterback Aaron Rodgers's debut for the New York Jets.

----

The cable-TV bundle has been bleeding subscribers for the better part of a decade. Customers were turned off by the ever-growing cost of traditional television and were drawn to cheaper streaming options.

The number of U.S. pay-TV subscribers is shrinking at an annual pace of nearly 7%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of MoffettNathanson data, a significant acceleration from a few years ago, when the rate of decline was under 2%.

"The video ecosystem is broken," Charter's Winfrey told investors last week. "We're either moving forward with a new collaborative video model, or we're moving on."

Over the past decade, about 42 million U.S. households have abandoned their traditional pay-TV plan—and most of them didn't replace it with a web-based alternative such as Fubo TV, Sling TV or others, which have about 17 million subscribers combined. Instead, most of these households gave up on live television altogether.


-----

Live sports have long remained the main selling point for the traditional cable-TV package. But even sports is beginning to move out of the cable bundle and into streaming apps. Both ESPN+ and Peacock will have exclusive NFL games on their platforms this season, something that DirecTV's Thun said is particularly infuriating.

"You have this wonderful business, known as pay-TV bundling, where everyone won," said Michael Nathanson, an analyst with MoffettNathanson. "And it's being unintelligently competed away by leaking more and more sports content" to streaming. 

ESPN is also exploring plans to offer a separate direct-to-consumer app with all of its TV content. And many regional sports networks—which carry the majority of professional basketball, baseball and hockey games—have launched stand-alone streaming options.

Yup.  ESPN will stay alive in a new world.  Not doomed at all

[Not A Serious Person]

September 8, 2023
Media analysts explains how the NBA could be a major loser of the Disney, Charter dispute
ESPN has been blacked out across 14.7 million Spectrum subscribers for over a week.
By TheStreet Staff

Disney and Charter aren't the only ones suffering from their now weeklong holdout.

The changing tide in the sports broadcasting industry signified by Charter Communications standing its ground against Disney and ESPN has analyst Ben Thompson concerned about what it could mean for the NBA.
Thompson spoke on "The Bill Simmons Podcast" and explained that the NBA will likely not get the raise it's targeting for its next rights deal. The league's current deal — which is with ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery — expires after the 2024-25 season, and reports are the league is expecting to triple its yearly fee.

"The NBA is in a bad spot that it did not get this deal done before this happened," Thompson told Bill Simmons.

Thompson explained that Charter's hardball negotiation with ESPN signifies a changing tide in the industry. Cable operators used to value sports, and particularly The Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN because of the value of sports to the cable bundle. But with the shift to streaming, and how many cable providers are now shifting their revenue focus to internet service, they are now able to squeeze ESPN instead of the other way around.

Because of ESPN's ability to utilize its service on companies like Charter, sports leagues like the NBA were able to strongarm ESPN into paying more for rights deals. But that may no longer be the case.

[The NBA's] whole bit about being able to triple the rights deal and extract all this money from ESPN, it's dependent on ESPN being able to extract money from the cable carriers. And if the cable carriers say no, where's the money gonna come from?" Thompson said.

Thompson said he still expects to see the NBA's next rights deal to be higher than the $2.7 billion annually it was receiving from ESPN and Turner, but he just doesn't project it to be as much as the $7 or $8 billion that past reports have suggested.

[forgetful]

Charter is making the mistake that people actually want their service. To an increasing extent, they don't, and this is most true amongst younger individuals.

Younger generations would rather scroll through endless TikTok videos than watch cable television. The only exception, and it too is suffering in terms of the numbers of eyes wanting it, is live sports.

To an ever increasing extent, individuals are accepting cable, only because they want their sports and do not want to have to figure out the details to make it work.

If Charter keeps playing their hands, these people will likely figure it out and jettison cable for good.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

Charter is making the mistake that people actually want their service. To an increasing extent, they don't, and this is most true amongst younger individuals.

Younger generations would rather scroll through endless TikTok videos than watch cable television. The only exception, and it too is suffering in terms of the numbers of eyes wanting it, is live sports.

To an ever increasing extent, individuals are accepting cable, only because they want their sports and do not want to have to figure out the details to make it work.

If Charter keeps playing their hands, these people will likely figure it out and jettison cable for good.

But cable television isn't their main product from a profit margin perspective. Mobile and broadband services are. The way I have heard it described is that cable is to Charter as gas is to convenience stores. But in this case, their wires are already in your house.

This is why I think Charter is so willing to play hardball here. They know that many of their customers will flock to other services - most of which will be delivered over their broadband.

[MU82]

So the NBA is still gonna land the largest TV rights fees in league history, but it now appears unlikely to triple that.

I'm other words ...

Doomed.

[Not A Serious Person]

A sign of desperation, ESPN/Disney seems to be abandoning their woke/virtue-signaling ways by hiring Pat McAfee, who debuted yesterday.

https://awfulannouncing.com/espn/pat-mcafee-show-different-from-anything.html

I say desperate as their primary audience, white male sports consumers, are abandoning their non-live sports shows in droves because they are all unwatchable woke crap. So they have to shift and try and appeal to this demographic, in yet another attempt to stop the Disney empire from imploding (stock at a nine-year low, lower than the 2020 panic low).

Enter Pat McAfee

But the ESPN brass are so frightened of him that they are delaying his show so they can bleep out things he says that are probably true, but they don't like (otherwise known as "misinformation") under the guise of stopping f-bombs.

From the link above:
There were plenty of curses as McAfee and Aaron Rodgers teamed up to test ESPN's censorship rules by saying "sh*t." And after months of anticipation, McAfee even dropped his first f-bomb on ESPN. Thankfully, virgin ears were spared by ESPN airing its simulcast of The Pat McAfee Show on delay for the sole purpose of being able to mute f-bombs. That should be good news for Chris "Mad Dog" Russo, who begins his second tenure as McAfee's colleague.

His show opened with this disclaimer.



In 2003, ESPN hired Rush Limbaugh for the same reason, to appeal to middle-aged white guys. That experiment lasted seven weeks on ESPN before he was fired for saying something true, but the ESPN brass did not want it said out loud.

Over/under on McAfee's show on ESPN? Longer than Limbaugh?

[Not A Serious Person]

So the NBA is still gonna land the largest TV rights fees in league history, but it now appears unlikely to triple that.

I'm other words ...

Doomed.

NBA team owners are paying out on long-term contracts with the expectation of more money from broadcast rights.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

A sign of desperation, ESPN/Disney seems to be abandoning their woke/virtue-signaling ways by hiring Pat McAfee, who debuted yesterday.

https://awfulannouncing.com/espn/pat-mcafee-show-different-from-anything.html

I say desperate as their primary audience, white male sports consumers, are abandoning their non-live sports shows in droves because they are all unwatchable woke crap.

WTF are you talking about?

[Not A Serious Person]

WTF are you talking about?

The only non-live sports shows getting traction are shows like McAfee and Portnoy/Barstool.  And they get that traction precisely by saying things you are not allowed to say on ESPN.  But ESPN is now so desperate to stop the bleeding they are going to try something that they have not done in many years ... giving the primary audience what they want.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

The only non-live sports shows getting traction are shows like McAfee and Portnoy/Barstool.  And they get that traction precisely by saying things you are not allowed to say on ESPN.  But ESPN is now so desperate to stop the bleeding they are going to try something that they have not done in many years ... giving the primary audience what they want.

So Stephen A. Smith, PTI, etc. is "unwatchable woke crap?"

You often make good points. You often post nonsense. This is the latter.

[Hards Alumni]

The only non-live sports shows getting traction are shows like McAfee and Portnoy/Barstool.  And they get that traction precisely by saying things you are not allowed to say on ESPN.  But ESPN is now so desperate to stop the bleeding they are going to try something that they have not done in many years ... giving the primary audience what they want.

You're watching too much cable news and not enough ESPN/Disney if you think this is what is happening.

[Not A Serious Person]

So Stephen A. Smith, PTI, etc. is "unwatchable woke crap?"

You often make good points. You often post nonsense. This is the latter.

Yes, Stephen A is garbage

[Uncle Rico]

"Woke"

😂😂😂😂😂😂

[Uncle Rico]

https://nypost.com/2023/09/06/mina-kimes-signs-massive-new-espn-deal-to-end-free-agency/amp/

[Uncle Rico]

NFL media rights deals definitely going to be an issue for the league

https://nbcsportsgrouppressbox.com/2023/09/08/lions-chiefs-in-nfl-kickoff-game-on-nbc-and-peacock-is-medias-most-watched-show-since-super-bowl-lvii-averaging-nearly-27-million-viewers/P

[Shaka Shart]

[Not A Serious Person]

NFL media rights deals definitely going to be an issue for the league

https://nbcsportsgrouppressbox.com/2023/09/08/lions-chiefs-in-nfl-kickoff-game-on-nbc-and-peacock-is-medias-most-watched-show-since-super-bowl-lvii-averaging-nearly-27-million-viewers/P

So ... is this going to end cord-cutting?  Is this your argument?

Or are you saying you're willing to pay $300-ish/year for some version of "NFL ticket?"
----
10 years ago, ESPN had 100 million subscribers paying about $6/month ($600 million/month). Today, they have about 70 million paying $9/month ($630 million/month). So, 50 million people pay for ESPN and do not give a Sh!t about the NFL but are paying for it.

This link is the exact reason we have cord-cutting! They don't want to pay for stuff they don't want. And you posted a link that about 75% of the cable-paying public is uninterested in the NFL. And they are going to cord-cut and stop paying for it.

See the many stories I posted above: cord-cutting is accelerating, and $630 million/month is now falling, but broadcast rights are rising. This is why Disney wants to sell ESPN to the NBA/NFL.

When the 75% that are uninterested in the NFL complete cord-cutting, the 27 million that do care have to shoulder all the payment of the broadcast fees owed to the NFL. 

Do you think 27 million Americans will pay the NFL $300-ish/year to watch the Bills/Jets on Monday night? Are you?

[ATL MU Warrior]

But cable television isn't their main product from a profit margin perspective. Mobile and broadband services are. The way I have heard it described is that cable is to Charter as gas is to convenience stores. But in this case, their wires are already in your house.

This is why I think Charter is so willing to play hardball here. They know that many of their customers will flock to other services - most of which will be delivered over their broadband.

This is true, but every cable subscriber they lose is lost revenue that they are not going to make back via other channels.  Isn't that still a net loss for them? 

[Uncle Rico]

So ... is this going to end cord-cutting?  Is this your argument?

Or are you saying you're willing to pay $300-ish/year for some version of "NFL ticket?"
----
10 years ago, ESPN had 100 million subscribers paying about $6/month ($600 million/month). Today, they have about 70 million paying $9/month ($630 million/month). So, 50 million people pay for ESPN and do not give a Sh!t about the NFL but are paying for it.

This link is the exact reason we have cord-cutting! They don't want to pay for stuff they don't want. And you posted a link that about 75% of the cable-paying public is uninterested in the NFL. And they are going to cord-cut and stop paying for it.

See the many stories I posted above: cord-cutting is accelerating, and $630 million/month is now falling, but broadcast rights are rising. This is why Disney wants to sell ESPN to the NBA/NFL.

When the 75% that are uninterested in the NFL complete cord-cutting, the 27 million that do care have to shoulder all the payment of the broadcast fees owed to the NFL. 

Do you think 27 million Americans will pay the NFL $300-ish/year to watch the Bills/Jets on Monday night? Are you?

No, my argument is, NFL rights fees will go up a lot again.  NFL is rolling

[Not A Serious Person]

No, my argument is, NFL rights fees will go up a lot again.  NFL is rolling

And who is going to pay these fees? Most of the fees are paid by those who do not watch the NFL. When these people stop paying it (aka cord-cutting), riddle me this ... how many Americans are willing to pay $300-ish/year for the NFL only?