(04-13-2018 05:18 AM)Efan Wrote: (04-12-2018 09:23 PM)ETSUfan1 Wrote: $5 a month, so a total of $30 for the months that ETSU football and basketball are in season. Worth it to me.
To me, this is less about the money and more about how stupid, greedy, and out of touch ESPN is. They already have commercials on those channels, so now it’ll be pay per view as well? Where’s thedoctor in all this? He’ll definitely be fired up.
Ok.......here I am. First of all, that link (outkickthecoverage) by Buckyball in the next post (the one immediately before this one) is great. It lays out the problem in exquisite detail. However.........I've been watching this develop over the last 2-3 years from the business/stock market perspective, vis-à-vis Disney. Which is a broader perspective and so I knew some sort of change had to happen. Disney's shareholders have been demanding they do *something*, and this is the best (for now) that they could come up with. Their options, as the outkickthecoverage article demonstrates, are limited.
Read more here, which is the perspective I've been seeing, like I said, for 2-3 years (altho I certainly didn't know *how* they would respond):
Disney's just trying to sort it all out
(Not sure why that has today's date on it; it came out Thursday night, I believe.)
So I don't know whether this will be successful or not. Nobody does, but it may be a very tough slog. My sense is that somewhere along the way (and I've thought this a while).........somebody's going to kill the goose that laid the golden egg(s). The NCAA, NFL, MLB, etc., etc., all deserve some responsibility. The owners of the major league teams (of all major sports) deserve a lot of the blame for the escalating salaries, which of course led to escalating rights' fees. But it's illegal (and rightfully so) to collude to keep a lid on those things.
*Certainly* the various cable companies (and maybe to a slightly lesser extent, the satellite companies) deserve A LOT of the blame for constantly raising rates, and claiming that that was ok because they were adding channels (and other excuses). Cord-cutting was inevitable once it became technologically feasible (followed shortly by "legal"). (You all probably don't want to hear my rant on all that. I could go on for pages!)
Add to that everyone's desire (and I would argue, near "right") to be able to watch things a-la-carte, and you have a recipe that was simply not sustainable in the long run. And the outkickthecoverage article may have it right - each league needs to have their own 'deal', either with the fans directly (or my suggestion: *some other* middleman - an aggregator).
So am I fired up? No. What we had just wasn't sustainable. Am I sad? Yes. And as we wondered even as it was happening, the 'free' games would likely have held down live attendance - among other issues. I vividly remember the first time I was in a movie theater and a pre-movie commercial came on the screen (a Coke commercial). I was livid, and went and bitched to the manager about it. Obviously I didn't win that argument, but that, along with truly ridiculous ticket prices, has kept me out of movie theaters for well more than 12-15 years now. But that's just me (and quite a few of my friends, too, btw).
I think each person/subscriber/fan will just have to make their own decision, or find their own 'solution' via however it gets done.
Yes, ESPN has been "stupid, greedy, and out of touch" (well maybe less so that last one). But it's been mostly at the direction of Disney, Bob Iger, and their shareholders. You all may be shocked at this, but, even with Disney owning ABC, fully 40% of their revenue comes from ESPN. They *can't* afford to keep losing money on it like they've been doing. They *have* to do something, and this is the best they've come up with for now. They're sort of over a barrel, and a lot of people know it. That's why Disney's stock price has been essentially stagnant over the last 3 years, while most of the market has boomed.
I think it's possible, or even likely, that this is merely the first baby step in changing their entire business model - which, as Netflix has demonstrated, is probably necessary.
Maybe that's a more 'global' overview than is applicable here, but it's a VERY big picture to digest. And this is sort of a 'shotgun' response to the many different aspects involved. I really can't worry much about it. I'm (thankfully) not even a Disney shareholder - and never have been.