[Dan_Nguyen]

ESPN is suffering from a two pronged death.

Like you, there's plenty of people who aren't interested in sports and aren't interested in paying extra for a sports-bundled cable package.

Then there's people like me who like sports and don't like the programming on ESPN. Two decades ago, ESPN reporting used to be legitimately great. They'd talk about strategy, roster moves, interviews with players/coaches, etc. These days it's TMZ with a sports focus. Even something as mundane as Tom Brady's new haircut became a talking point on ESPN. The most recent example I have of ESPN's decline was the recent NFL draft. It was nothing but baseless conjecture on who's getting whom. It's a lot of random guesswork and hot takes portrayed as journalism. The talking heads would just shout about the most outrageous conjecture with no rationale.

ESPN has gotten complacent and they're paying for it now. In my opinion they were relying on cable subscriptions when that's going away, and they haven't invested in quality programming to keep the sports fans in the longest time.

[BoiledCabbage]

I've posted this elsewhere, but it's relevant here too. The problem that's affecting ESPN is the same problem that's affecting newspapers and the same root cause that's behind reality TV, and buzzfeed and the like. The issue is the advertising model and the cost of creating content.

A number of people here complain about ESPN swapping to talking heads and opinions. The reason for doing this is because it's significantly cheaper to have people give opinions (everyone has an opinion) than the costs of doing journalism. ESPN isn't swapping to these shows because they have worse ratings, comparatively they get higher ratings.

Everyone talking about he glory days of the 90s and ESPN. That time is in the past. People turn to the internet for sports updates and scores, as well as highlight reels.

Ultimately, it's a failure in the "advertising model" of paying for content. As long as content creators are paid a roughly flat fee per viewer, their only incentives are to get more viewers and cut costs. Previously the market was inefficient enough to sustain it, but now that there are alternatives the inevitable is happening in all areas of content creation. Moving to cheap to produce, easy to digest low substance, high viewership content.

Imaging you were running a restaurant, and you couldn't charge a customer per meal. You only received a small flat rate for the number of customers who ate there. You're not going to run a top end steak house where your payment doesn't even cover the materials. You're gonna run a mcdonalds. Get as many people in there for as cheap as possible. You have no choice, the money doesn't support an intimate fine dining experience.

The that the same thing happening in all aspects of content creation. The market is becoming efficient, and the only way to survive is low cost production. Fast-food of content.

[valuearb]

You really missed the point, the article nailed it and your analogy is entirely wrong. ESPN got a flat fee per user + the ability to advertise to them. That gave them a huge financial incentive to overspend on the best content they could get to build the greatest sports "steakhouse" of all time and they did it. They spent up the wazoo on content. But the bottom is dropping out of the model because of cord cutters so now they have change and adapt to not getting flat fees for much longer.

[white-flame]

"Because of cord cutters" seems awfully accusatory here. The real confounding factor from the article is that ESPN was being subsidized by fees from customers who don't watch the channel, but still were paying high bundled fees compared to other channels.

This is shifting to them receiving fees from those interested in their programming, which seems much more reasonable in concept.

[noxToken]

It's not that cord-cutters are a bad thing, but isn't that the crux of ESPN's financial woes? Nearly everyone and their mama had cable about a decade ago. No matter if you were a 4 person family, living off campus where utilities were covered, or in the military - people had cable. If you were fancy, you had satellite programming. Then cord-cutting happened.

It is the fault of cord-cutters, because they aren't subsidizing the cost of ESPN for people who want to watch ESPN. Then ESPN could not pivot quickly enough to stop the bleeding. So yeah, ESPN is getting money from people who are interested in sports, but it is because cord-cutters had enough.

[rhino369]

That is definitely a huge part of it. And it's not just cord cutters. Many cable stations now don't include sports channels in the basic package. So many people who pay for cable no longer pay for ESPN.

Another factor is that the Internet is a better source for sports news. Highlights are on YouTube. Twitter feeds post links to analysis from all over the web. Nobody needs to watch sports center for news anymore.

[BoiledCabbage]

I'll explain it less confrontationaly than you did. First, the argument you presented actually is evidence for what I wrote.

> But the bottom is dropping out of the model because of cord cutters

As I wrote, the market across the board is becoming efficient. This is restating my point. Previously the only option was for cable, now there are other options for consumption. This is increased market efficiency.

> so now they have change and adapt to not getting flat fees for much longer.

Yes they have to change from their previous fee structure, but there are many things they could've changed to that would've supported quality programming. Instead ESPN changed to an advertising model, which doesn't support it. (Ex. Why does HBO get showered with awards year after year? And how do they monetize viewers?).

To understand the difference, imagine a directed graph with a transition between two nodes. You're too focused on the node it's leaving - instead I'd recommend focusing on the node it's arriving at (efficient market advertising model). Regardless of where you come from, if that's where you end up you will quickly produce fast-food content or you'll go under.

ESPNs problem from before is not that they had a subscription model. It's that they had a bundled subscription model. It was bundeled with Cable, and they were making money from people who never watched them. Their revenue was inflated. Rather than trim and find the true medium, they're throwing it all away and going advertising.

Sports can absolutely be supported via expensive subscription (see NFL Game Pass, NFL Sunday Ticket, MLB Packages, ...). Up to $400 / year for it. But ESPN is going a different route. One that will unfortunately turn them into the MTV of sports. But they won't be the only one.

[JKCalhoun]

The article should have gone further then — as ESPN suffers, so will the NFL, NBA, etc. They're not going to be able to get astronomical payouts for their content. Soon we'll start to see the owners of the teams losing millions.

Ripple-effect can be a bitch.

[infogulch]

This is an intriguing line of thought. Have you expounded on it more elsewhere?

[scotch_drinker]

And it's only going to get worse. The article notes that most of the 100 laid off were reporters and that ESPN was moving towards opinion. This is the beginning of the end for most sports fans, I'd imagine. I remember the days of being home in the morning from classes in the early 90s and seeing Australian Rules Football or a quality discussion of some sport on ESPN. Now it's Mike and Mike or some other inane uselessness.

[Dan_Nguyen]

No kidding. I miss the old days of ESPN. Doesn't help either that ESPN isn't showing good games anymore and that it has big competition now.

For football, this past season they were only showing the MNF games. In the Bay Area, NBC Sports Bay Area has broadcast rights to all the Giants and Warriors games. IIRC, NBC broadcast holds the rights to the Sharks. In San Diego, Fox Sports San Diego has the rights to the Padres. I can't remember the last time I tuned into ESPN to watch a game I wanted to see beyond "Oh that's on, I guess I'll watch."

Even ignoring the broadcasting rights, sports talk on other channels have become vastly superior to ESPN. My two favorite segments on sports this year (ARod + Pete Rose discuss batting, Isiah Thomas discusses dribbling) came out of Fox Sports and TNT. I'd pay good money to hear more detailed analysis from former players, rather than talk endlessly about how Tom Brady looks like he's from NSync with his haircut.

In my opinion ESPN just got too complacent with their status and is digging themselves into the grave. I swear I can go on for hours over all the things ESPN is doing wrong in the sports media today.

[hkmurakami]

Well the giants were on Fox before (at least in 2001 when I followed them religiously) and tbh ESPN has never carried MLB games in the home region since the network (non cable) channels with bigger viewership can outbid them?

[_asummers]

Not to mention them turning down their hockey coverage dramatically after they lost the TV deal (remember when they had an hour show devoted to NHL?), followed by them laying off all their competent hockey guys in the recent round of layoffs.

[AdamJacobMuller]

> most of the 100 laid off were reporters

What I was thinking when I saw the lay-offs is that this is exactly the wrong move for them. I understand why ESPN did it, to cut costs, but they're cutting them in the wrong area.

ESPN needs more reporters and more people doing direct content production.

ESPN needs to go back to content producers (sports leagues) and tell them that they're no longer able to force effectively 100% of the population to subsidize subscription costs for the percentage of the population that watches their sport and that their license payments need to be renegotiated to compensate.

[curun1r]

There's still some legitimately good content, both on the channels and in print, but you just have to wade through a mountain of keep-you-engaged filler content to find it. The 30 for 30 series had some really high quality, poignant documentary content that, more often than not, transcended sport to become a commentary on other walks of life. I especially liked "The Two Escobars" because it recontextualized an event from my childhood (the US victory over Colombia in the '94 World Cup) that I remembered very differently. And here's two articles [1][2] that, while long, I found very engaging reads. But I see your point that the constant bombardment of drivel you get on the channel and online could give the impression that there's nothing of value there.

[1] http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10984370/portrai... [2] http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12728744/how-gol...

[slg]

People always say this as if the people running ESPN don't see their own ratings numbers or aren't professional television producers. They see that shows like First Take, Around the Horn, and Pardon the Interruption get higher ratings than NFL Live or Baseball Tonight. The in depth stuff simply doesn't attract viewers. Almost no one cares about what strategy decisions lead to the Minnesota Twin's winning the 28th game of a 162 game season outside of Minnesota and the people who do care have already watched the game, read a recap of it, seen the highlights on Twitter, or found some other quicker way to get the information they wanted about the game. The reason ESPN has been shifting to a "TMZ with sports" focus is because that is the only thing outside of live sport that has consistently been garnering them viewers for the last decade plus.

[tcbawo]

This may be true. But, if they switch from adding color commentary to being solely color commentary, will people still tune in? I get the sense that people tune in to have their opinions validated. ESPN analysis opinions matter because of ratings. It seems to be a risky strategy.

[ssharp]

Having to fill up 24 hours of daily airtime, across multiple channels (how many do they have now? four -- espn, espn2, espnu, espn classic?) has to require thinning out the content.

I'm mostly like you. Sportscenter is largely useless with highlight available on-demand, and the only time I've watched it over the past few years was when major events happened around a team I like. I think that was twice -- Lebron James coming back to the Cavs and the Cavs winning the championship.

There is so much garbage content and I can't imagine spending an entire Sunday morning watching their NFL pregame shows. They are so bad and rehash the same things over and over again. None of their content is any better. PTI set the standard for what a lot of their programming has morphed into, but PTI worked because the guys on it were smart, took interesting angles, and the show was novel. Now that there are 50 other programs just like it, the novelty has worn off and the hosts are largely "hot take" machines.

Really, besides their national NBA game broadcasts or college football, I can't think of any reason why I'd watch ESPN on a routine basis any more. There are sports podcasts that are far better and don't require my full attention than the studio shows ESPN produces.

[noxToken]

> PTI set the standard for what a lot of their programming has morphed into, but PTI worked because the guys on it were smart, took interesting angles, and the show was novel.

Slightly off-topic. I didn't watch a lot of ESPN when I had cable. When I did, it was mostly SportsCenter and PTI. Are you saying that PTI marking the beginning of ESPN's programming declination or that other opinion shows failed to capture what made PTI good. It really doesn't matter, but I'm genuinely interested in your opinion here.

[mcgrath_sh]

Not the OP, but I think (and I agree) he or she is stating that other shows failed to capture what made PTI good. When there were a couple of shows like PTI or Around the Horn it was great. Now there is basically national, local sports talk radio. Except with none of the fans, just yelling journalists. At least with local sports talk some of the redemption is that they are fans. I cut out sports talk radio almost a decade ago for podcasts. And I cut out ESPN about 3-4 years ago when I could get what I wanted elsewhere and none of what I didn't want. I am a sports person. However, I will not watch ESPN unless it is for a game. I just don't get any value.

[JohnJamesRambo]

I've found myself wondering lately if ESPN dumbed down and sensationalized their programming or if they are just accurately making programming for the current American citizen. A sort of chicken or the egg situation. I pray that it is the former.

[Infernal]

I wonder if the TMZification of ESPN was first a reaction to or cause of people like you and me moving to other outlets for detailed sports news?

[rsync]

"Then there's people like me who like sports and don't like the programming on ESPN."

Do you watch PTI ?

I think PTI is the best show on TV.

EDIT: PTI = Pardon the Interruption

[douche]

PTI is good, but they also have two old-school beat writers in Wilbon and Kornheiser who have credibility and talent helming the show.