The other death of sports issue was very carefully not mentioned in the article... look at the median age of baseball fans over the past decades. Its literally a dying sport, as in the fans are aging and dying and not being replaced. Obviously not an issue for some of the other sports. However being a sports nerd in the sitcom stereotype sense is definitely a boomer and pre-boomer generational thing, not so much with younger people, and old people have a way of dying off.
The biggest mistake the article made was conflating sport related spending with the housing bubble. The housing bubble blew because the last entrants into the ponzi were tapped out. The cost of sports is microscopic in comparison and very few people give up cable because they're completely and utterly tapped out. They just spend the $100 on something else. Probably a smartphone and some subscription services. Certainly the last entrant into the ponzi of paying a billion bucks for a team on the assumption you'll sell to a greater fool at two billion has not been reached, nor has the very last new sports fan been born yet.
The biggest oversight in articles of this type is no one wants to discuss bundling. The kind of business that forces all video subscribers to pay $30/mo for sports even if they're not sports fans, could, with just a couple clicks on a keyboard, change the bundle so all the cablemodem subscribers pay the same $30 extra for their cablemodem, but now it comes with free ESPN video or some kind of web access deal. There are, after all, only a handful of monopoly providers. So either pay $30 for ESPN, or disconnect yourself from the internet.
Trying to avoid paying for sports is like trying to avoid paying for organized crime. Or disorganized crime, for that matter. Unfortunately you can either pay up, or leave the geography and culture entirely. The government and corporations certainly are not going to help us because they are the organized crime in this analogy.
ESPN already tried this when the writing was on the wall almost a decade ago. ESPN360/ESPN3/WatchESPN/whatever they call it now can only be watched if your ISP pays ESPN royalties for every subscriber on a take it or leave it basis. Time Warner called their bluff and only bundles it with your connection if you also buy basic cable.
You still "pay for ESPN" in the sense that TWC prices low-end internet-only packages to be uncompetitive with cable+internet bundles, but if you opt for the internet-only package TWC keeps the money. This works out great for TWC but not so much for ESPN or sports fans used to subsidy.
This is probably true but I think ESPN is leading the pack because of how bloated they are.
They run multiple channels 24/7 and a ton of their content is studio analysis-type shows, most of which I find absolutely terrible. I'm sure they have reasons for how they select and utilize the talent they have, but aside from a few writers and commentators, I have a hard time watching or reading anything they produce.
I was hoping they'd eventually figure out a way to do more Grantland-produced television, where someone with some journalistic and creative taste, as well as more creative freedom could develop, but that obviously did not happen. Maybe Bill Simmons will be able to do that with HBO and finally create a legit competitor to ESPN's non-live sports programming.
> I was hoping they'd eventually figure out a way to do more Grantland-produced television, where someone with some journalistic and creative taste, as well as more creative freedom could develop, but that obviously did not happen. Maybe Bill Simmons will be able to do that with HBO and finally create a legit competitor to ESPN's non-live sports programming.
Their 30 for 30 films are awesome (thanks to Bill Simmons though, we'll see if it continues).
I think the main difference is (or at maybe was) that ESPN shows lots of live games. You can't just binge watch at your leisure like with Netflix.
I'm a huge football fan and while I still watch live games on ESPN and the major networks, I find most of my analysis and commentary online. At the moment a substantial percentage of that is from ESPN, but more and more I'm getting it from Reddit, sports-specific web sites like Pro Football Talk, and -- the channel most ready for the future -- NFL Network.
It would be cool if a tech company sprouted up that was live games 24/7. When not showing nfl or mlb or college football, they were showing Italian soccer or Indian cricket, or other more obscure sports
The biggest mistake the article made was conflating sport related spending with the housing bubble. The housing bubble blew because the last entrants into the ponzi were tapped out. The cost of sports is microscopic in comparison and very few people give up cable because they're completely and utterly tapped out. They just spend the $100 on something else. Probably a smartphone and some subscription services. Certainly the last entrant into the ponzi of paying a billion bucks for a team on the assumption you'll sell to a greater fool at two billion has not been reached, nor has the very last new sports fan been born yet.
The biggest oversight in articles of this type is no one wants to discuss bundling. The kind of business that forces all video subscribers to pay $30/mo for sports even if they're not sports fans, could, with just a couple clicks on a keyboard, change the bundle so all the cablemodem subscribers pay the same $30 extra for their cablemodem, but now it comes with free ESPN video or some kind of web access deal. There are, after all, only a handful of monopoly providers. So either pay $30 for ESPN, or disconnect yourself from the internet.
Trying to avoid paying for sports is like trying to avoid paying for organized crime. Or disorganized crime, for that matter. Unfortunately you can either pay up, or leave the geography and culture entirely. The government and corporations certainly are not going to help us because they are the organized crime in this analogy.