dskillzhtown
keep your strippers out of my American football
People can get Sling or Playstation Vue to get ESPN for about $30/month (along with other cable channels). ESPN is making moves towards a stand alone watchespn app as well.
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ESPN loses over 3 million subscribers over the past year
- Thread starter Kinsella
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People can get Sling or Playstation Vue to get ESPN for about $30/month (along with other cable channels). ESPN is making moves towards a stand alone watchespn app as well.
As with all things, it depends where you live. That's a pretty good price if you live, for example, in the Bay Area.
Yes, for all of the people lamenting about how cord-cutting is the primary reason for the abandonment of ESPN you neglect to factor in how terrible in quality the actual channel has become.
I believe that several brands have made the exact same mistake ESPN has: user growth at the expense of the core mission of the brand. ESPN is supposed to be the world leader in sports, but instead of focusing on that mission, they saw something that worked (Pardon the Interruption) and built the entire channel around that.
Loud, flamboyant personality driven content is like salt in a recipe, it works as a counter-point to the other flavors of the recipe to bring out the best flavor. However, ESPN's current product offering is nothing but salt and no one wants to eat that.
but you're still buying a package of about 30-50 channels at the low and middle tiers. There is a market out there for people who just want to buy the channel ala cart, by itself, period.
Playstation VUE only works on PS3, PS4, and Amazon Fire. It doesn't even work on regular android.
SDCowboy
Member
EPSN is in 4k?
IISANDERII
Member
$30 for something which has a constant barrage of advertisements. How much greed is possible?? I think ESPN will be fine, they could give it to the viewer for free and still make loads of money. Oh the dickface execs will have to fuck off for that to happen
Oh really? Mind shooting me a link? My dad will be happy to hear this, he uses PS Vue as his "cable TV" and has been looking into buying amazon fire sticks.
Allforce
Member
Anecdotal but I share a login with my brother-in-law just to catch certain games on WatchESPN app, but your point about outright illegal streaming really hits. I know at least 5 families, all of which are not tech savvy in the slightest way turn to those pre-programmed Android boxes with Kodi baked right in and just use those for all their programming.
It's funny because they all think they've just hit the jackpot ("We watched Finding Dory last night at home!") and have no realization that it's just Piracy for Dummies. I can't really judge since I have Kodi installed on a FireTV and definitely have used it to watch some sporting events I couldn't get otherwise (UFC, NHL, etc) but the fact that it seems so commonplace now is pretty telling.
I mean you can buy a jail-broken Amazon FireTV stick, ON AMAZON, for roughly 20 bucks more than a regular Amazon FireTV stick.
I'm asking, would ESPN in 4K be enough reason to subscribe back?
I like Hubie Brown, but TNT puts a much better product in my mind, and it's not even that close (though it's probably closer to the competition than their baseball and football offerings).
Dusk Soldier
Member
Not enough people even have 4K TVs for it to matter.
So I can watch Sportscenter in 4k?
Edit: That's more snark than I intended, but outside of some playoff basketball, I feel like there's not enough live sports on ESPN that I'm interested in to make it worthwhile.
I got a question
why the fuck is HD an extra cost in 2016?
at this point they might as well go "well the basic converter box is in black and white, if you want color you have to pay extra"
That's where I was
MNF is trash tier football, that probably drives some disconnects as well
Dreams-Visions
Member
Why even bother making the distinction? People don't buy HD TV's to watch programming in SD. You know it, I know it, we know it and these cable TV providers know it. So they gouge consumers with the box. And god forbid you want to record some of these programs! That'll be a $15-$20/month box rental.
Fuck all of that nonsense.
The problem with ESPN is that its model is unsustainable, but their contractual obligations prevent it from pivoting easily or cleanly.
There's a large number of people on cable who would love to cut out ESPN and pay a lower cable bill. There's a number of people who want ESPN, but are only willing to pay up to $X for it, X being lower than what ESPN needs to continue operating as it does now. As noted already, a separate online/a ala carte service for streaming ESPN kicks in a bunch of other provisions in other contracts.
ESPN is in a slow death spiral, but there's not a lot it can do unless it takes a hard look at renegotiating existing contracts and its programming for millennials.
There's a large number of people on cable who would love to cut out ESPN and pay a lower cable bill. There's a number of people who want ESPN, but are only willing to pay up to $X for it, X being lower than what ESPN needs to continue operating as it does now. As noted already, a separate online/a ala carte service for streaming ESPN kicks in a bunch of other provisions in other contracts.
ESPN is in a slow death spiral, but there's not a lot it can do unless it takes a hard look at renegotiating existing contracts and its programming for millennials.
Waddle Dee
Member
Not into sports myself but I'm not surprised this is happening. My brother is a diehard sports fanatic but even he has said recently that he's considering dropping ESPN. It's apparently too costly and is too limited in scope at the moment. Sounds like some higher ups just aren't with the times.
Gonna go to his house to see Street Fighter V top 8
Perhaps that's the actual problem. ESPN paid too much for sports events that not many people would consider worth subscribing for. If that's the case, even if every event was 4K, it wouldn't make a difference in terms of subscribers.
I'm surprised. I thought the prospect of watching monday night football in 4K would have more traction.
Let's not pretend like TiVo is cheap. You have to buy the box, pay Verizon $6 a month for cable card, and pay TiVo $15 a month for guide data.
This is true and not true. You have to remember that ESPN for a long time was effectively a monopsony until 2006ish. If you wanted eyeballs on your sport at a national level, you pretty much had to play ball with ESPN. With Comcast/NBC, CBS, and Fox all wanting the sports market (a TV market seen as more stable than non-sports programming, less likely to record/DVR, more likely to watch commercials), sports broadcast contract values exploded. Everyone not ESPN was willing to overpay to get marketshare, and ESPN had to be both choosey about what they were willing to go after but still had to pay going rates for content. So while it's true that ESPN is overpaying relative to the kind of returns (or non-returns) they're getting, it's in line with what everyone else is willing to pay for these contracts as well.
I'm hesitant to say ESPN is in a death spiral because everyone has the same problem ESPN has to some degree. ESPN is just the giant that everyone knows so their struggles are getting more scrutiny than say those of CBS Sports Network, which captures so few eyeballs that they don't pay Nielsen to figure out how many people actually watch the network, or NBC and its Olympics contracts which never seems to actually make them money.
Definitely not free. But far better long term. And Verizon charges $6? Comcast gives you the first card for free (essentially your first "box").
jstevenson
Sailor Stevenson
TiVo Lifetime service is pretty easy to acquire, especially if you buy a used box.
But usually lifetime + box + Tivo's multiroom service with a mini ends up paying for itself within a couple years, if not sooner.
6 bucks a month from Verizon is extortion though.
jstevenson
Sailor Stevenson
Bingo. The Giant is going to be just fine. People won't stop watching ESPN or live sporting events. No way, no how. The model may change, and sports may not make quite as much money, but they aren't going away.
What is really screwed are all the tiny guys. They are the ones that truly survive off the cable model. If that goes away, they may not be able to get enough ala carte customers to be on their own. Can Lifetime or Spike or whatever survive if it isn't just in your feed all the time like it is on cable?
In some ways, the bigger streaming services have the same thing as cable --- you pay for HBO Now to get Game of Thrones, but you also get a bunch of other stuff HBO pays for. If HBO put out a smaller Game of Thrones subscription, would people rather pay for that?
Amusingly, the cable model is basically exactly what these new platforms (Netflix, HBO Now) are doing, except they do it on a program basis versus cable's channel basis.
Overall though - I think the ease of use of streaming (on demand, no commercials, high-quality) is one thing hurting cable badly, and the other is the high amount of content available (supply is high, with Netflix alone you can watch tons of things) - have reduced the price people are willing to pay for content in both a hoops (having to record on a DVR, watch at a certain time) and dollar amount (the price of cable).
SoRuffShoNuff
Member
NBA TV is terrible compared to ESPN and is easily the worst of the league dedicated channels. They were so bad they handed production over to Turner Sports which is why you see them adding Barkley, Kenny, and Shaq to random shows. They can barely get people on for video interviews as often it's just a picture of them on the screen. The post game shows are treated like afterthoughts as often you have no idea who will be in the studio. Sometimes it's Steve Smith, other times its Dennis Scott, and if those two aren't there they bring in random fill ins.
Sometimes NBA TV doesn't even have a dedicated broadcast crew, they just air a local feed and if it's a Cavs or Celtics game you are subjected to some of the worst homers you will come across in any sport.
But just ignoring ESPN, if you cut cable you don't get the TNT games which are usually the best of the week and has the best pre/post game show.
I remember reading about how Michael Eisner was not too keen on ESPN when Disney bought ABC, because they aggregate content and didn't create it like with the studios and theme parks. Despite that, ESPN itself today is more than 50% of Disney profit wise because they're getting subscription revenue on top of ad revenue. That's why almost all sports programming that could be moved to ESPN from ABC was.
Long term, I don't know if the smaller competitors can survive overpaying, but live sports also keeps getting so much more valuable to advertisers it kind of off sets things. The other thing is ESPN's ubiquity keeps leagues from being able to drop ESPN completely. You don't wanna end up like the NHL at the mercy of where NBC can find a place for you. More stuff is going online, but as you guys have pointed out, it isn't easy to get production teams in place.
The only possible threat I can see down the line would be if MLB sold their streaming business to one of ESPN's competitors. Then ESPN would be behind in the streaming migration and lose a lot of influence in the process.
Long term, I don't know if the smaller competitors can survive overpaying, but live sports also keeps getting so much more valuable to advertisers it kind of off sets things. The other thing is ESPN's ubiquity keeps leagues from being able to drop ESPN completely. You don't wanna end up like the NHL at the mercy of where NBC can find a place for you. More stuff is going online, but as you guys have pointed out, it isn't easy to get production teams in place.
The only possible threat I can see down the line would be if MLB sold their streaming business to one of ESPN's competitors. Then ESPN would be behind in the streaming migration and lose a lot of influence in the process.
n0razi
Member
I would highly advise against Fire Sticks... it works but the performance is terrible (constant 2-3 second lag everytime you change channels, etc)... get a full blown FireTV or Roku
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