[fingerprinter]

It's likely a combination of a few things including people going directly to NFL (Gamepass), NBA, NHL and MLB for the content as well as people simply dropping cable altogether. Those cable subscribers might not have cared/watched sports anyway, though they /paid/ for it and were counted as "subscribers" on ESPN numbers.

Another way to think about it. ESPN, outside commentary and opinion, is really nothing more than a middleman. The leagues can go direct to the consumer and they likely will do this much more in the future.

ESPN cannot go direct to consumer per the contracts. It is required that to consume much of the ESPN content, you need a cable subscription (even to stream on the internet). That is a broken model and is slowly (or quickly?) dying. That's not great for NFL etc but horrible for ESPN. The sports leagues could recover, ESPN likely couldn't.

[jsaxton86]

One of the problems with Game Pass is that you can't actually watch live games.

You can listen to live audio. You can watch replays of games. In fact, you can watch replays from 22 different camera angles. You can watch condensed replays. You can even watch live preseason games. But you can't watch live games that matter.

[steve-howard]

Do you mean the all-22? I don't think they actually have 22 different camera feeds.

[infosample]

Zoomed-out angles that show all 22 players on the field. The TV broadcast zooms-in on the quarterback so you can't see the receivers, corners, and safeties downfield. All-22 shows everything.

[seibelj]

And the commentary has become pretty awful. Stephen A Smith is unwatchable[0].

[0] http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17823563

[bogomipz]

Can you get NFL Gamepass directly without a Cable/Satellite service provider? I thought that was a Direct TV exclusive. But maybe that expired?

[infosample]

Yes. Just can't watch games live in the United States.

NFL Sunday Ticket is a DirecTV exclusive unless you can prove you can't get DirecTV at your address then you can stream live games.