Yet you posted garbage about race in the first place.
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ESPN firings
- Thread starter Mulder14
- Start date
Someone else posted about it. I simply responded to his nonsense.
Is the information he posted wrong? That's what matters.You created an account just to write that?
Jackson kind of set him up for failure by talking about “his neighborhood.” Everyone knew what Jackson was implying. JVG just said it out loud.
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OK, Mr. Hallway Monitor.
I agree....Mark Jones behavior and comments are nonsense
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Sure......except for me and so many of my friends (who are huge sports fans) used to watch ESPN non stop for "sports" news. Now, we never watch anything but live games.
You can keep your head in the sand if you want to.
Just because it doesn't matter to you, doesn't make it any less accurate.
No, he’s correct about this.
80% of ESPN’s revenue comes from carriage fees from cable companies. ESPN collects about $120 per year from every single cable subscriber in the US, regardless of whether they actually watch ESPN.
Which means ESPN’s problems have nothing to do with their programming choices. Cord cutting is what’s hurting ESPN. Their entire business model was based on having non-sports watching cable subscribers subsidize their revenues, and cord cutting is killing that business model. Nearly 26 million have canceled their cable subscriptions since 2015, which means ESPN’s annual revenue is now ~$3.1 billion lower than it would otherwise have been.
ESPN could have kept all of their shows exactly as they were 20 years ago and they would still be facing the same problems. It has nothing to do with ESPN’s politics.
Gee, if only ESPN would have a + channel that streams their wonderful, positive, talking head shows and then the millions of cable cord cutters could watch them (because that's what America wants) and money would continue to pour into ESPN......
Oh wait, they do. And it's a disaster.
They really should bring back ESPN Classic with great old games and reruns of Sports Century . It surely wouldnt cost much relative to other programming
MAX KELLERMAN is ......gone.
F I N A L L Y. Igaf bout all the others. Whatever. But they laidoff KELLERMAN? Thank You Jesus
Ty Jesus!!!!!
WWJD? lay off Max KELLERMAN
F I N A L L Y. Igaf bout all the others. Whatever. But they laidoff KELLERMAN? Thank You Jesus
Ty Jesus!!!!!
WWJD? lay off Max KELLERMAN
Thats United Corporate States of America stuff right there!!
Who in deeee fyuk believed Disney lost money last year???? That will never happen. Ever
ESPN+ doesn’t address the problem of people of who cut the cord and never watch sports. That’s what’s hurting ESPN.
My grandmother has cable and has never watched ESPN a day in her life, yet ESPN still collects $120 per year from her. If she cuts the cable, ESPN is losing that money and she’s never going to sign up for ESPN+.
That’s ESPN‘s problem and there isn’t an easy way for them to fix that. For ESPN+ to make up the gap, they’d have to charge a ridiculously high monthly fee to make up for the lack of revenue subsidy from non-sports watchers. So again, it’s a problem with cord cutting and ESPN’s business model. It has nothing to do with their politics.
No. Disney is still making huge profits. Hard to imagine that ever changing.
I think you may be oversimplifying.
Yes, ESPN is clinging to legacy deals with cable/satellite companies that generate billions per year in revenue. That keeps them from breaking away with a completely stand alone service. They have too sweet of a deal already.
Cord-cutting is costing them, but how much? They currently have around 75 million subscribers scattered across cable, satellite, and streaming services like YouTube TV and Hulu+ Live TV.
Let’s say at around $100 per subscriber, they are losing close to $400 million per year with a 5% drop in subscribers.
However, not all cord cutters are leaving the fold completely. Many migrate to streaming services that also include ESPN. Even still, that $400 million number is probably decently close.
How to make that up? For starters, ESPN+ has crossed 20 million subs and now generates around a billion dollars per year from ad revenue. Nice chunk of change.
Speaking of ad revenue - that’s the point where I feel like your argument falls apart a bit. What drives ad revenue? Eyeballs. What drives eyeballs? Quality content.
Seems pretty clear that live sports are carrying most of the water here. What about the other programming? That’s the part where politics may or may not play a role.
My point is that it’s overly simplistic to categorically rule out politics playing a role in reduced eyeballs, leading to reduced ad revenue for some portion of ESPN’s programming.
The revenue loss from cord-cutting is somewhat out of their control, but it’s also been a known entity for years, and is largely baked into all of their modeling. As I’ve pointed out, one of their solutions (ESPN+) already generates a billion a year. They are hardly helpless.
Producing quality content outside of live sports to drive ad revenue has been another big part of their strategy. Some would argue that they’re failing in this respect, and costing themselves money in the process.
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I'm not saying cord cutters is not a major problem....It is.
But if their non-live sports ratings are tanking (and they are), advertisers will pay much less to advertise on the channel or decide to quit advertising on ESPN all together. That lowers ESPN's income drastically.
You can pretend the lower revenue are just from cord cutters, but when advertiser's income drops significantly because no one watches these horrible wokefests, then ESPN is getting exactly what it deserves.
If people were still watching these shows thru whatever means, then advertisers would flood ESPN with cash.
Ad revenue was down 35% last year too. ESPN like other networks are facing the same challenges. Look at the major networks primetime audiences now, they are literally a fraction of what they used to be.
The reason ad revenue is not a significant part of my argument is because it accounts for around 20% of ESPN’s revenue whereas fees from subscribers are roughly 80%.
In other words, ESPN’s entire business model is built upon and depends upon a large number of subscribers. Ad revenue is merely icing on the cake.
And the impact of cord cutting is significant. Just from 2020 to 2021 alone, ESPN lost about 6 million subscribers across all platforms. ESPN’s fees are around $10 per month per subscriber ($120 annually), so the 2021 loss of subscribers alone is an ANNUAL revenue hit of roughly $720 million.
Ad revenue pales in comparison to the impact of the loss of fees from subscribers.
Again, the loss of revenue from subscribers isn’t a surprise, and is baked into all of their modeling. Additionally, it isn’t as if they aren’t negotiating each year to increase the fees on existing subscriptions.
If they lose 5% of subs but raise everyone’s rates 3%, then the net rev loss becomes more like $150 million per year given current subscription estimates. And that’s assuming they aren’t raising rates 5-6% or more. They are if they can get away with it
But yeah, subscription revenue is this big block of money that they are not really able to grow currently and are trying to maintain. At some point they will hit an equilibrium where their modeling will tell them that adding a stand alone service will be just as profitable as their current arrangements. Then we’ll see a shift.
For those reasons, they are currently hyper focused on streaming and ad revenue generation, as they have known for many years what the future holds and have operated accordingly.
Will they pull it off? Great question. Disney overspent on Fox, are dealing with a string of box office flops, and have generally been floundering for a couple of years now. My guess is they would rather spin off ESPN than to wait around on what’s next. Any takers though?
Time to face facts, everything is racist these days.
What in the hell website is that?
You probably need to scan your HP for viruses and malware.
Yup that was good stuff - old school boxing and college football games!
Whether or not the loss of subscribers is a surprise to ESPN and/or baked into their modeling is not relevant to this discussion.
The point being debated is what is driving the issues at ESPN that are causing them to reduce costs. The key driver of this is the dramatic erosion of their subscriber base. While this erosion may not be surprise to them, that does not change the fact that it is having a significant effect and is fundamentally upending their business model.
Over the past 7-8 years, ESPN has lost 25% of their subscriber base due to cord cutting, and the declines are predicted to continue. That’s the problem driving ESPN’s decision making. It’s not because people are unhappy with ESPN’s politics. Whether or not they saw that coming doesn’t change that fact.
People in this thread parroting the woke BS have no clue what they're talking about. Disney has struggled because:
- Unless it's a live game ESPN has been replaced with places likes Reddit and Twitter. Why tune in to an hour long SportsCenter to watch highlights when they're online 5 seconds after they happen? So ESPN has to fill airtime with something, so they have to try to fill it with talking heads who say controversial things on purpose to drive engagement. Stephen A. and Perkins are playing characters on television, they're not giving their actual opinions.
- Every single media company has taken a hit over the last 18 months or so, not just Disney. They all went all in on streaming, and Wall St. pivoted incredibly quickly from only caring about subscriber numbers to only caring about if these services are turning a profit. Netflix is cracking down on password sharing and creating ad supported tiers, Warner Discovery has no clue what to do with HBOMax and tried to completely reinvent itself and its stock is down 50% of the last year, there are reports Paramount+ might not be around this time next year, and Comcast lost over 50% of its value in between 2021 and 2022.
- Disney Parks attendance is falling and is very soft for the foreseeable future due to constant price hikes and nickling and diming their guests. It seems like they've finally used up all of their goodwill and it's causing their most loyal guests to vacation elsewhere.
I’m not basing what I say on the crowd I run with. I’m basing it on an understanding of ESPN’s business model, how they generate their profits and what the numbers are saying.
They’re hemorrhaging subscribers due to cord cutting, which is an industry-wide trend and not specific to ESPN. And this is happening at the same time that rights fees have continued to increase, so they’re getting squeezed on both sides. Those are significant business issues that have nothing to do with politics.
If ESPN had avoided politics entirely over the past decade, they’d be in the same situation.
Common theme is people don’t want to pay for any of that - Netflix/Amazon are major players in the content business.
I don’t think you’ve got it quite right. I’ve been trying to explain how ESPN has been countering the subscriber base reduction, and that this has been ongoing for years.
But that’s only part of the story. Cable and ESPN very much have a symbiotic relationship, and it isn’t entirely clear who will pay the biggest price if/when it severs. In other words, for every grandmother who never watches ESPN, there is an 18-49 year old male who only keeps cable, or YouTube TV or whatever, for live sports.
ESPN will go to a streaming model at some point and they will get millions upon millions of subscribers to pay them probably $20-$30 a month. It’s possible that ESPN will do just fine - even grow their revenue - while cable takes a hit.
At any rate, the story remains the same. Produce quality content. Drive subs and ad revenue.
ESPN isn’t Blockbuster. They aren’t wasting away, losing their brand to the streamers. They essentially control live sports. The biggest question is how long it will take to fully modernize the delivery method of that content.
But no, their problems are not nearly as simple as only cord cutting, no matter how much you want to insist on fitting everything in that box. To some degree they are paying for the sins of the rest of Disney, with the Fox overpay, movie flops, and some questionable theme park decisions. If you want to pretend like none of this is related to politics, be my guest.
How much of ESPN specific revenue loss is related to their politics? Couldn’t say for sure. But it seems pretty narrow-minded to insist that number is zero.
By the way, I agree that they are getting squeezed on rights fees. It’s one of the reasons I said that I could see them trying to sell if they had a buyer. Because despite controlling live sports, the price of maintaining that position is problematic, especially given their other financial issues.
ESPN doesn’t essentially control live sports - only the cfp and one nfl game a week
Fox/cbs has nfl/college football and basketball
Fair enough. Maybe should say they control live sports among cable channels. They are also the go to source for sports info, on the level that Google has traditionally been the go to for search.
There’s also some thought that ESPN has a future as an aggregator of live sports, offering links to events being broadcast by competitors.
Someone gets it . As far as the people fired yesterday I think most of them had the bigger salaries so they are gone . Kellerman , Suzy K. , Jalen Rose were some of the best at what they did . But they also were some of the most popular and active so it is easier to fire 13 high salaries then 30 bit lower ones.
To me, this is the main takeaway. While getting a bit political didn't help, it seems some folks just really want to believe "they" are the ones taking down all the "woke" companies. I guess it gives them a sense of power when the reality is ESPN's current model is out-of-date and in a give-it-to-me-now world, there's not a real need for some of what ESPN provides when there isn't a live game on. And even if there is, it doesn't feel like Gen Z is as obsessed with sports as previous generations were/are.
How uninformed are you and the other pseudo intellectuals on here who trumpet the overused term of “woke” of the intellectually limited? Disney didn‘t lose billions last year. Net income was $3.0B. Their mistake was a failed streaming service which did lose money. The ESPN problem has nothing to do with wokeness. It’s a platform that simply doesn’t hold up anymore when there are so many listening and viewing options.
Because stating things that are plain and obvious for all to see is now racist. Especially if the person you’re making the observations about is ethnic/black. If water was an ethnic group, calling it “wet” these days would be racist.
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