Cable cutters
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I’m one of the millions of people to get rid of the exorbitantly priced cable in favor of over the air broadcasts and internet tv. I’m interested to see what happens as the hundreds of millions of dollars that were being spent on cable disappears. Will sports contracts start to go backwards? Will the money be there to sustain these leagues without new revenue sources like gambling? ESPN has laid off numerous employees the last couple years and is ending its magazine this year as well (gonna miss the body issue). Change is coming and it appears to have less money for sports under the current construct.
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@dylans It is a interesting issue for sure. I think the channels make most of their profits from commercials. Which will help the balance as long as people are streaming it some way. I had DirectTV for a couple of years and to the sports channels. Which is all I watch besides HGTV and History it $125 a month. I have Sling now and its $40 for every ESPN and Fox Sports channel. The trouble is the companies are realizing streaming is where the money is. So folks like Disney and NBC are removing content from Netflix and Hulu so they can do there own. So if someone wants to watch multiple shows and movies before long, they will have to pay subscriptions to 3 or 4 companies.
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I actually think that streaming will make sports leagues even more money long after cable is out of business. Either from starting their own platform or bidding things out to HULU/Netflix/Prime/Apple/Disney/Sling.
I do not expect live sports to ever have an issue fetching absurd amounts of money for their broadcasting rights.
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Imagine a Netflix for American Sports. $50-75/mo, all the sports you could watch. NFL, NHL, MLB, MLS, NCAA, UFC, NBA.
YES (Yankess network) Has 14M subscribers.
Longhorn Network has 7M subscribers.
SEC Network claims to reach 69M homes.
So it’s not out of the question to think that an all sports streaming package could fetch 100M subscribers world-wide. And that it would be worth anywhere from $50-$75 a month. Which would generate something between $60-90B of revenue in total.
Let’s go high end. $90B. Say you give NFL $25B of the 90B. And then you give $15B to the NBA, NHL and MLB each. UFC can take 1.5B. MLS can have $3B. The rest goes to the NCAA schools. At 15B remaining, that would be like $30M+ a school AND the NCAA could still keep like a Billion for DII and DIII competitions.
Low end still has significant revenue growth for all sports.
So I don’t really worry about sports ever losing income really. People will pay to watch live sports.
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@Kcmatt7 I agree look at what ESPN+ is doing right now. A KU fan can get a pregame show, a post game, hawk talk and the game if it’s on the ESPN network. I can watch them on my phone, computer or TV . Which is handy with little kids like I got. I’d be fine Fox sports did something similar. If I could get all sports for $20 give or take a bit, I’d be cool with it. The internet is what’s expensive here in the middle of nowhere ($105 a month for average service) lol.
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We shall see. So far it’s the way they’re trying to replace the 13 million lost viewers over the last 6 years. Hope they can replace the revenue without bending us Hawk fans over. How many Duke games are held hostage on ESPN+? Is it 1/4 of their season as well? Is it a good thing for National exposure or is it just drain on the fans (our) wallets?
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@dylans I’d shocked if the Dookies play on ESPN plus at all.
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Duke plays 8 games on the ACC Network. While it is not a streaming service it is also not exactly a channel everyone gets. I get almost every sports channel there is and this Fall when football started I learned that I do not get ACCN. Direct TV told me in order to get it I would have to pay $15 a month for whatever package it was in…
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@Woodrow I have it on sling, comes with the ESPN package. All together it’s $40 a month. Direct is a bunch of crooks.
