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Comment by jknoepfler | Hacker News Reader

so ESPN:

1. consumes monopoly priced content (ESPN pays $1.9 billion/year for "Monday Night Football") with waning appeal.

2. produces content only to obsolete content providers (cable/satellite t.v. providers), appears contractually bound to remain this way.

3. (imo) has a dubious content model in the 21st century. The ESPN content I've seen has been standard corporate-cable lowest common denominator garbage that builds no trust with the audience.

I'd be surprised they weren't dying more quickly, but it has taken me years at a time to get my older relatives to cancel cable subscription they never use (not just sort of never, literally never).

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ESPN is unfortunately bound contractually that they have to delivery their content through cable providers. I remember reading that if they developed their own direct-to-consumer product, they could no longer be on any cable channels.

That's why they've partnered with Sling TV and Sony Vue, whose numbers are not included in the 650k loss. I'm sure those services each have a couple hundred thousand subscribers, and anecdotally, many of my cord-cutting / sports fan friends get their ESPN fix through those instead of a huge cable bundle.

I feel like they'd have enough leverage to get out of that arrangement, considering the large number of people who only subscribe to cable for the sports packages. It's not like cable providers are going to say "Oh, you put your stuff online, well, we're just going to stop offering sports then", as they'd just plain lose customers by responding like that.

At least, that's my naive impression.

>3. (imo) has a dubious content model in the 21st century. The ESPN content I've seen has been standard corporate-cable lowest common denominator garbage that builds no trust with the audience.

I think ESPN Films (producer of 30 for 30) as well as properties like the now defunct Grantland or FiveThirtyEight show that ESPN is trying to expand its reach beyond a cable only model. But you can't just dump your big revenue stream overnight. To some extent they are weighed down by their past and can't shed it fast enough.

30 for 30 is by far the best ESPN original content in the past 10 years.

Also, 30 for 30 was another Bill Simmons idea...and he's gone.

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