ESPN loses 621,000 subscribers last month alone

One possible reason: ref ball.
Was at a sports book watching all the games and at any given time half the screens were of officials explaining calls.
It's turning into cspan

ESPN's product has been declining for a while. Too many women reporting on sports they clearly don't really know what they talking about.

AIRWOLF said:

Digital media disrupting the traditional cable business model is finally happening. Figuring out what's next for live sports in a world where "cord cutters" are becoming more and more common is the challenge for everybody involved.

We would have dropped our cable subscription by now if there was a good option for watching live sports on an a la carte basis.

I've got to guess that at some stage the bullshit bundling model will get broken. It will pretty much have to be.

It will be interesting to see what happens when the "bubble bursts" (as the article puts it) and all these sports stations will be forced to go a la carte. Bundled cable packages tend to prop up niche stations, so I wouldn't be shocked if channels like the Pac-12 Network would go away entirely (which is probably a good thing - most of their programming is filler in my opinion) or exist in some scaled back web-only version.

salemcoog said:

I wouldn't be surprised to see Disney come out with their own streaming service that they could offer post 2022 after the promise of not going over the top of the cable and satellite providers has no recourse if broken. That's what I would do if I were them.

Comcast will just squeeze their data caps a little tighter if they smell more competition.

AIRWOLF said:

HoustonHusky said:

UWhuskytskeet said:

They lost 621,000 people that subscribed to a package that included ESPN. 0 of those people might have actually watched ESPN the month before.

The only thing that matters is ratings, which could be dropping too, but that isn't what's being talked about in the article. ESPN isn't selling spots to advertisers based on Grandma's cable subscription that happens to include ESPN, they sell it based on how many people actually watch their channel.

Not quite true...they get paid by the cable company per subscription:
http://www.whatyoupayforsports.com/numbers/

Long term ratings matter, but their $$ from cable companies is through subscribers, their money through advertisers is ratings.

Digital media disrupting the traditional cable business model is finally happening. Figuring out what's next for live sports in a world where "cord cutters" are becoming more and more common is the challenge for everybody involved.

We would have dropped our cable subscription by now if there was a good option for watching live sports on an a la carte basis.

I've got to guess that at some stage the bullshit bundling model will get broken. It will pretty much have to be.

THIS

People are getting pissed at the cable monopolies and extortion pricing. ESPN is the most expensive (non-premium) channel for cable carriers by a pretty wide margin. So now in our family we split costs - one person subscribes to Direct TV and shares HBO/ESPN Direct PW w/everyone else, another subscribes to the digital version of the newspaper we all read and shares PW w/everyone else, someone else subscribes to Hulu, someone else subscribes to Netflix, etc.

The only thing I don't get through this system is the fucking Pac-12 Network, which is pretty much where #MyDeadDucks will be the rest of the season.

Praise Allah for xrxs.net and AirParrot.