[elmerland]

Why would they make less money by moving to a streaming model? I would imagine more people would go and buy just that instead of getting a cable package. They can also start charging a reasonable amount based on what it costs to produce the content.

If right now they rely on people paying for the channel but not watching it. Wouldn't switching to a streaming model mean that advertisers would be more interested because more people were actually watching the channel and saw ads?

[bmh_ca]

ESPN is paid by cable subscriber, regardless of whether they watch sports.

Most people (>50% iirc) don't watch sports, but because of the arrangement described above most cable subscribers end up subsidizing it.

As a result: Selling sports directly to people who watch it dramatically undercuts their business model.

[coldcode]

ESPN's contracts forbid it to sell to anyone other than a Cable system. Otherwise it would be selling direct like Netflix. This is the terrible deal that major sports networks forced on it (and it took on anyway). Some day all that massive money will vanish and sports leagues will be gasping for income.

[protomyth]

> ESPN's contracts forbid it to sell to anyone other than a Cable system.

In Major League Baseball's case, they reserve that right for themselves. Of course, every baseball team also has its own local contract or network.

I get the feeling that ESPN is a middleman that is increasingly being seen as not adding enough value for the price by its subscribers.

[maxlybbert]

> I would imagine more people would go and buy just that instead of getting a cable package. They can also start charging a reasonable amount based on what it costs to produce the content.

ESPN probably expected that as well. In the US, you would expect almost any sports channel to have enough fans to make a profit. If people are going to drop channels they don't want, you would expect sports channels to be immune.

Apparently it hasn't turned out that way.

I can say that the last three times I went shopping for cable TV, the sports bundle was extra. Personally, I like hockey, but not much else. I would be happy to pay $7 a month for hockey games, but I wasn't given that option. I needed to pay much more, for a much larger bundle, and I chose to live without it.

[voltagex_]

It's that way in Australia - and worse. You've got our pay TV provider doing silly things like [1] and something strange with the broadcast rights meaning I can't really stream all the games until 2020.

Cable/satellite isn't really as big in Australia as it is in the States and Canada, but the last time I looked it was still $30+ a month if you wanted sport in HD (you know, so you can actually see where the ball is)

1: http://www.afl.com.au/news/2016-12-06/foxtel-decides-against...

1a: https://www.reddit.com/r/AFL/wiki/streams

[robryan]

AFL streaming right now is broken due to the rights deal. Telstra paid such a small amount compared to 7 and Foxtel for the online rights that they had to accept a lot of restrictions, such as only steaming on mobile devices and no tablet full screen.

I suspect Foxtel will be in a similar position to ESPN come the next rights deal, where they can't afford to pay as highly due to people cancelling cable. Hopefully though that just results in a better streaming deal.

[maxerickson]

There's ~50 million households in the US that subscribe to cable.

That's a lot of streamers to get to commit to 12 months of subscription.