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ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
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whittx Offline
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Post: #141
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-01-2022 05:59 PM)ken d Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 03:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 12:31 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(05-30-2022 09:53 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(05-30-2022 05:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Disney+ loses money because they are spending a lot to create more content. ESPN+ might not be losing money. The content they have there is relatively inexpensive, and the PPV UFC cards once a month get about a million subscriptions each at $75 per -- that's a gross of $75 million/month for PPV alone.

One cool thing about the PPV is that while I've only bought one PPV package, I still see plenty of UFC action even when the main card is PPV, because they almost always show the undercard, which can be several fights, on ESPN+. So you still get good viewing action even if you don't want to spring for the PPV.

UFC has 10 preliminary fights then they give you a 6 fight main event card with at least one other championship outside the headliner or feature fight like Chandler vs. Ferguson at UFC 274 to bring in eyeballs.

UFC is running fights 46 out of 52 weekends a year but only 1 weekend a month do they have a PPV night. Due to this 90% of UFC is free content and you can pick and choose if you want a PPV.

I personally won't buy a PPV unless I feel its a 50-50 fight. Gane vs. Ngannou was the last UFC fight I picked up and it was a close decision. UFC 274 I knew with certainty Oliveria would have no problem with Justin Gaejthe and it was over in the first round. Wasn't really a super fight but the UFC uses its PPV's as space for its championship fights.

Boxing I bought the Canelo vs. Bivol fight because I thought there was a good chance that Canelo might lose and I was right. I had to buy that through DAZN. DAZN has been charging me $19.99 a month and then it was another $59.99 for that fight.

Originally DAZN was $9.99 and you didn't have to pay extra for its PPVs along with having signed Canelo Alverez and Anthony "no chin" Joshua. At one point they had Bellator MMA and an extra innings MLB show on there too but that has all gone away and they've moved the base charge up to $19.99. Canelo now has peaked and AJ in his last one lost to a guy half his size so they're losing the must watch status.

Definitely with the fight sports there is pole positioning as nobody wants to be considered the 4th major outlet for Boxing or MMA. DAZN I kept on longer for the Canelo/Bivol fight but I think I'm just going to drop it as Showtime boxing is reviving. HBO got out of the fight game a few years ago, some of which was driven by not having an appealing promotional roster compared to its competitors.

Yes, most of the UFC cards on ESPN are not PPV, which means you can see about 5-6 hours of UFC action most weekends, and you can do that 3 or so times a *month* for your $6 ESPN+ fee. That is a colossally good deal, IMO.

And that's just one of the things that are on ESPN+.

I swear, "+" absolutely rules in my book.

So, I take it that ESPN+ is more than just college sports that have little expectation of a sizable audience. Since I have no interest in any of these other things that makes an easy decision for me.

Given what you say about your man-cave, I wonder how you have time for anything else in your life. 04-cheers

Also MLS, out of market NHL, CFL, English Soccer (lower leagues and cups, La Liga, etc.
06-02-2022 02:29 PM
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billybobby777 Offline
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Post: #142
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-02-2022 01:41 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:49 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 12:46 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 08:33 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 07:46 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  Yes, I watch boxing on ESPN+ as well. They do have some good stuff.

I was never a UFC fan until the pandemic hit. My brother has been a huge fan for years and had tried numerous times to get me to watch but I never did. Then UFC became one of the only sports operating in summer 2020, so I gave it a try, and got hooked.

He also is a big DAZN user too, but I have never subscribed to them. I see all the boxing I want on Showtime, ESPN and others places, and the occasional PPV, like Fury vs Wilder, etc.

For about a year there from late 2018 to late 2019 DAZN was the place to watch boxing. Everything else was splintered between Fox, Showtime and ESPN.

Pandemic hit boxing harder than UFC which started throwing closed circuit events two months after the lockdown began and it was the only live TV people had to watch. Boxing really struggled in 2020. MLB was out and that left DAZN. The level of content is down and limited mostly to UK and Mexican boxing cards.

I was a Showtime boxing fan before DAZN but I switched over to them and now I'm back as DAZN has petered back. But I could still stream the Fury/Wilder trilogy without having Showtime (just the first one was there). I certainly didn't order Fury vs. Whyte though as Dillian is a journeyman material at the world level. He could hardly control a fight against near club level competition.

You can watch old fights too and catch up on a fighters back catalog. Who tunes into old baseball games from the middle of 2008? Fight sports have a big edge in replay value and even if you know the result its still interesting to see how a fight went down. Very different than last weeks SEC game.

There's a lot of SEC games that don't have much replay value, but a few do, like the SEC Championship, Georgia-Florida, Alabama-Auburn, Georgia-Auburn, etc. Go for the big rivalry games.

Would you watch last week's card of boxing matches again???

Typically in a card there might be 2 fights that I care about but they might be spread out between 3-4 fights. If I start the card from the beginning I can let it roll while I work in the background and then just tune in seriously for that fight. This is assuming I missed the card the first time out.

When friends and family come over I cherry pick fights to watch. I even got my girlfriend into it but UFC is where she drew the line. Personally I enjoy a high profile UFC fight more as it has the sweet science of boxing like stance and ring generalship but its so much more unpredictable. The fights are also shorter, about double the pace as boxing.

One negative I do say about the UFC is they tend to recycle the same fighters over and over. A lot of II and III fights against guys in the Top 10. Guys have been ranked for years and years on their past reputations. Boxing is different in that you have 4 major belts and often a guy with 1 belt might only be the 6th or 7th best in his division so their are undefeated paper champions. There is a lot of cherry picking going on.

UFC if you are the champ you can dodge a top challenger for a year but then you'll have to fight. Boxing you can dodge a bad style matchup indefinitely unless that particular person becomes a mandatory to the belt. Then you have to fight them within a year (or get a pass from the belt sanctioning body for a mega fight).

FWIW, though I am a bigger boxing fan than UFC fan, I like the UFC organizational situation way better. I like having one clear-cut champ, and I like when I tune in for a card, the fights happen on time, like clockwork. Dana White runs a tight ship.

In boxing, a star fighter basically calls the shots. He fights who he wants to, when he wants to, and even on fight night makes his way to the ring when he wants to. And the alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies, with their dizzying plethor of belts - "super" this and "interim" this and all that crap, just waters everything down.

I liked the day on one boxing champion too. Tyson was the heavyweight champ while Hagler was the middleweight champion.
Now it’s the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, WBF, IBC, NABF, USBA. The WBC super champion the WBC regular champion the WBC Continental champion etc etc. A guy just buys himself a belt. BS.
06-02-2022 05:54 PM
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quo vadis Online
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Post: #143
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-01-2022 05:59 PM)ken d Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 03:32 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 12:31 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(05-30-2022 09:53 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(05-30-2022 05:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Disney+ loses money because they are spending a lot to create more content. ESPN+ might not be losing money. The content they have there is relatively inexpensive, and the PPV UFC cards once a month get about a million subscriptions each at $75 per -- that's a gross of $75 million/month for PPV alone.

One cool thing about the PPV is that while I've only bought one PPV package, I still see plenty of UFC action even when the main card is PPV, because they almost always show the undercard, which can be several fights, on ESPN+. So you still get good viewing action even if you don't want to spring for the PPV.

UFC has 10 preliminary fights then they give you a 6 fight main event card with at least one other championship outside the headliner or feature fight like Chandler vs. Ferguson at UFC 274 to bring in eyeballs.

UFC is running fights 46 out of 52 weekends a year but only 1 weekend a month do they have a PPV night. Due to this 90% of UFC is free content and you can pick and choose if you want a PPV.

I personally won't buy a PPV unless I feel its a 50-50 fight. Gane vs. Ngannou was the last UFC fight I picked up and it was a close decision. UFC 274 I knew with certainty Oliveria would have no problem with Justin Gaejthe and it was over in the first round. Wasn't really a super fight but the UFC uses its PPV's as space for its championship fights.

Boxing I bought the Canelo vs. Bivol fight because I thought there was a good chance that Canelo might lose and I was right. I had to buy that through DAZN. DAZN has been charging me $19.99 a month and then it was another $59.99 for that fight.

Originally DAZN was $9.99 and you didn't have to pay extra for its PPVs along with having signed Canelo Alverez and Anthony "no chin" Joshua. At one point they had Bellator MMA and an extra innings MLB show on there too but that has all gone away and they've moved the base charge up to $19.99. Canelo now has peaked and AJ in his last one lost to a guy half his size so they're losing the must watch status.

Definitely with the fight sports there is pole positioning as nobody wants to be considered the 4th major outlet for Boxing or MMA. DAZN I kept on longer for the Canelo/Bivol fight but I think I'm just going to drop it as Showtime boxing is reviving. HBO got out of the fight game a few years ago, some of which was driven by not having an appealing promotional roster compared to its competitors.

Yes, most of the UFC cards on ESPN are not PPV, which means you can see about 5-6 hours of UFC action most weekends, and you can do that 3 or so times a *month* for your $6 ESPN+ fee. That is a colossally good deal, IMO.

And that's just one of the things that are on ESPN+.

I swear, "+" absolutely rules in my book.

So, I take it that ESPN+ is more than just college sports that have little expectation of a sizable audience. Since I have no interest in any of these other things that makes an easy decision for me.

Given what you say about your man-cave, I wonder how you have time for anything else in your life. 04-cheers

Man, I'm a tenured professor, I do what I want to do when I want to do it, as long as I have the money, LOL.

That rules out traveling the world in a yacht, but time for watching sports on TV? Plenty of that, LOL.

04-cheers
(This post was last modified: 06-02-2022 05:59 PM by quo vadis.)
06-02-2022 05:56 PM
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Kit-Cat Offline
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Post: #144
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-02-2022 05:54 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:41 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:49 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 12:46 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 08:33 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  For about a year there from late 2018 to late 2019 DAZN was the place to watch boxing. Everything else was splintered between Fox, Showtime and ESPN.

Pandemic hit boxing harder than UFC which started throwing closed circuit events two months after the lockdown began and it was the only live TV people had to watch. Boxing really struggled in 2020. MLB was out and that left DAZN. The level of content is down and limited mostly to UK and Mexican boxing cards.

I was a Showtime boxing fan before DAZN but I switched over to them and now I'm back as DAZN has petered back. But I could still stream the Fury/Wilder trilogy without having Showtime (just the first one was there). I certainly didn't order Fury vs. Whyte though as Dillian is a journeyman material at the world level. He could hardly control a fight against near club level competition.

You can watch old fights too and catch up on a fighters back catalog. Who tunes into old baseball games from the middle of 2008? Fight sports have a big edge in replay value and even if you know the result its still interesting to see how a fight went down. Very different than last weeks SEC game.

There's a lot of SEC games that don't have much replay value, but a few do, like the SEC Championship, Georgia-Florida, Alabama-Auburn, Georgia-Auburn, etc. Go for the big rivalry games.

Would you watch last week's card of boxing matches again???

Typically in a card there might be 2 fights that I care about but they might be spread out between 3-4 fights. If I start the card from the beginning I can let it roll while I work in the background and then just tune in seriously for that fight. This is assuming I missed the card the first time out.

When friends and family come over I cherry pick fights to watch. I even got my girlfriend into it but UFC is where she drew the line. Personally I enjoy a high profile UFC fight more as it has the sweet science of boxing like stance and ring generalship but its so much more unpredictable. The fights are also shorter, about double the pace as boxing.

One negative I do say about the UFC is they tend to recycle the same fighters over and over. A lot of II and III fights against guys in the Top 10. Guys have been ranked for years and years on their past reputations. Boxing is different in that you have 4 major belts and often a guy with 1 belt might only be the 6th or 7th best in his division so their are undefeated paper champions. There is a lot of cherry picking going on.

UFC if you are the champ you can dodge a top challenger for a year but then you'll have to fight. Boxing you can dodge a bad style matchup indefinitely unless that particular person becomes a mandatory to the belt. Then you have to fight them within a year (or get a pass from the belt sanctioning body for a mega fight).

FWIW, though I am a bigger boxing fan than UFC fan, I like the UFC organizational situation way better. I like having one clear-cut champ, and I like when I tune in for a card, the fights happen on time, like clockwork. Dana White runs a tight ship.

In boxing, a star fighter basically calls the shots. He fights who he wants to, when he wants to, and even on fight night makes his way to the ring when he wants to. And the alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies, with their dizzying plethor of belts - "super" this and "interim" this and all that crap, just waters everything down.

I liked the day on one boxing champion too. Tyson was the heavyweight champ while Hagler was the middleweight champion.
Now it’s the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, WBF, IBC, NABF, USBA. The WBC super champion the WBC regular champion the WBC Continental champion etc etc. A guy just buys himself a belt. BS.

The 4 major belts are WBC, WBO, WBA and IBF.

If you hold a belt a sanctioning body receives a payout. This is why fighters choose to move up or vacate if they no longer need it for any marketing purpose.
06-02-2022 06:34 PM
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billybobby777 Offline
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Post: #145
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-02-2022 06:34 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 05:54 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:41 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:49 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 12:46 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  There's a lot of SEC games that don't have much replay value, but a few do, like the SEC Championship, Georgia-Florida, Alabama-Auburn, Georgia-Auburn, etc. Go for the big rivalry games.

Would you watch last week's card of boxing matches again???

Typically in a card there might be 2 fights that I care about but they might be spread out between 3-4 fights. If I start the card from the beginning I can let it roll while I work in the background and then just tune in seriously for that fight. This is assuming I missed the card the first time out.

When friends and family come over I cherry pick fights to watch. I even got my girlfriend into it but UFC is where she drew the line. Personally I enjoy a high profile UFC fight more as it has the sweet science of boxing like stance and ring generalship but its so much more unpredictable. The fights are also shorter, about double the pace as boxing.

One negative I do say about the UFC is they tend to recycle the same fighters over and over. A lot of II and III fights against guys in the Top 10. Guys have been ranked for years and years on their past reputations. Boxing is different in that you have 4 major belts and often a guy with 1 belt might only be the 6th or 7th best in his division so their are undefeated paper champions. There is a lot of cherry picking going on.

UFC if you are the champ you can dodge a top challenger for a year but then you'll have to fight. Boxing you can dodge a bad style matchup indefinitely unless that particular person becomes a mandatory to the belt. Then you have to fight them within a year (or get a pass from the belt sanctioning body for a mega fight).

FWIW, though I am a bigger boxing fan than UFC fan, I like the UFC organizational situation way better. I like having one clear-cut champ, and I like when I tune in for a card, the fights happen on time, like clockwork. Dana White runs a tight ship.

In boxing, a star fighter basically calls the shots. He fights who he wants to, when he wants to, and even on fight night makes his way to the ring when he wants to. And the alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies, with their dizzying plethor of belts - "super" this and "interim" this and all that crap, just waters everything down.

I liked the day on one boxing champion too. Tyson was the heavyweight champ while Hagler was the middleweight champion.
Now it’s the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, WBF, IBC, NABF, USBA. The WBC super champion the WBC regular champion the WBC Continental champion etc etc. A guy just buys himself a belt. BS.

The 4 major belts are WBC, WBO, WBA and IBF.

If you hold a belt a sanctioning body receives a payout. This is why fighters choose to move up or vacate if they no longer need it for any marketing purpose.

That’s 3 too many. 1 belt. 1 champion.
06-02-2022 11:14 PM
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JRsec Offline
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Post: #146
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-02-2022 11:14 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 06:34 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 05:54 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:41 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:49 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  Typically in a card there might be 2 fights that I care about but they might be spread out between 3-4 fights. If I start the card from the beginning I can let it roll while I work in the background and then just tune in seriously for that fight. This is assuming I missed the card the first time out.

When friends and family come over I cherry pick fights to watch. I even got my girlfriend into it but UFC is where she drew the line. Personally I enjoy a high profile UFC fight more as it has the sweet science of boxing like stance and ring generalship but its so much more unpredictable. The fights are also shorter, about double the pace as boxing.

One negative I do say about the UFC is they tend to recycle the same fighters over and over. A lot of II and III fights against guys in the Top 10. Guys have been ranked for years and years on their past reputations. Boxing is different in that you have 4 major belts and often a guy with 1 belt might only be the 6th or 7th best in his division so their are undefeated paper champions. There is a lot of cherry picking going on.

UFC if you are the champ you can dodge a top challenger for a year but then you'll have to fight. Boxing you can dodge a bad style matchup indefinitely unless that particular person becomes a mandatory to the belt. Then you have to fight them within a year (or get a pass from the belt sanctioning body for a mega fight).

FWIW, though I am a bigger boxing fan than UFC fan, I like the UFC organizational situation way better. I like having one clear-cut champ, and I like when I tune in for a card, the fights happen on time, like clockwork. Dana White runs a tight ship.

In boxing, a star fighter basically calls the shots. He fights who he wants to, when he wants to, and even on fight night makes his way to the ring when he wants to. And the alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies, with their dizzying plethor of belts - "super" this and "interim" this and all that crap, just waters everything down.

I liked the day on one boxing champion too. Tyson was the heavyweight champ while Hagler was the middleweight champion.
Now it’s the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, WBF, IBC, NABF, USBA. The WBC super champion the WBC regular champion the WBC Continental champion etc etc. A guy just buys himself a belt. BS.

The 4 major belts are WBC, WBO, WBA and IBF.

If you hold a belt a sanctioning body receives a payout. This is why fighters choose to move up or vacate if they no longer need it for any marketing purpose.

That’s 3 too many. 1 belt. 1 champion.

Oh the irony! Men who wear tights or boxers fighting for belts! Golden Gloves at least made some sense.
06-02-2022 11:28 PM
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AllTideUp Offline
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Post: #147
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-01-2022 07:04 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 05:54 PM)whittx Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 02:00 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  I just checked and I'm paying $6 dollars a month for ESPN+, not $5.

Netflix at its top tier is charging $19.99 and HBO Max is $15. A $30 a month streaming service from ESPN is probably not quite economically viable at this point.

If it was ESPN Ultimate and included ESPN+ for $24.95 it might have some legs. But I think ESPN wants the consumer to have to buy everything by itself.

RSNs charging $30 dollars must be assuming a smaller subscriber base so they need to charge more to make up for it.

To be fair, the $6.99 (or whatever portion of the Disney bundle you assign to ESPN+) also includes the ESPN Insider articles you used to have to either subscribe to the ESPN Magazine or pay $5 a month for. Definitely worth it when you have the bundle.

I didn't know about the ESPN Insider thing. I haven't read an article on ESPN probably since the 2010 realignment. Never considered the Disney+ bundle, not even for a second. I will admit its a slick way of pumping up subscriptions for that portfolio.

Direct to consumer has been a big benefit. Streaming has made PPVs so much easier. Just download the app and fill in your billing information. You don't need a cable subscription for the right to purchase a PPV.

The percentage of households that would consider a TV package with HBO or Showtime was far lower before the era of smart TVs. Then I'd say maybe 1/3rd would go for it as it was considered a premium service. Now that you can buy it stand alone probably 90% would at least be receptive.

What as also helped as how cheap TVs have become. You can get a 4k 55 inch smart TV in the box for $270 dollars. One shift at your local McDonald's these days will bring home enough money to pay for one.

TVs have become cheap, but heck, I need to work at that McDonald's because that would be over $33 an hour for an 8 hour shift. :D

But I also agree with the idea that ESPN could charge $30 a month for its portfolio and it would probably be cheaper than that for people who wanted to pay annually.

If you took everything on ESPN and went exclusively online then there's a ton of people who lose any motivation to have traditional cable which means they've got plenty of money to simply have an ESPN subscription and maybe a couple of other streaming services if they want some other type of content.

Frankly, that's a huge market disruptor. There are a ton of companies who rely on the popularity of sports in order to motivate consumers to buy cable bundles. If that motivation goes away or severely decreases(as it's not as though ESPN has all sports content) then that hurts the media value of a lot of other companies.
06-03-2022 04:52 AM
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quo vadis Online
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Post: #148
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-01-2022 07:04 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 05:54 PM)whittx Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 02:00 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  I just checked and I'm paying $6 dollars a month for ESPN+, not $5.

Netflix at its top tier is charging $19.99 and HBO Max is $15. A $30 a month streaming service from ESPN is probably not quite economically viable at this point.

If it was ESPN Ultimate and included ESPN+ for $24.95 it might have some legs. But I think ESPN wants the consumer to have to buy everything by itself.

RSNs charging $30 dollars must be assuming a smaller subscriber base so they need to charge more to make up for it.

To be fair, the $6.99 (or whatever portion of the Disney bundle you assign to ESPN+) also includes the ESPN Insider articles you used to have to either subscribe to the ESPN Magazine or pay $5 a month for. Definitely worth it when you have the bundle.

I didn't know about the ESPN Insider thing. I haven't read an article on ESPN probably since the 2010 realignment. Never considered the Disney+ bundle, not even for a second. I will admit its a slick way of pumping up subscriptions for that portfolio.

Direct to consumer has been a big benefit. Streaming has made PPVs so much easier. Just download the app and fill in your billing information. You don't need a cable subscription for the right to purchase a PPV.

The percentage of households that would consider a TV package with HBO or Showtime was far lower before the era of smart TVs. Then I'd say maybe 1/3rd would go for it as it was considered a premium service. Now that you can buy it stand alone probably 90% would at least be receptive.

What as also helped as how cheap TVs have become. You can get a 4k 55 inch smart TV in the box for $270 dollars. One shift at your local McDonald's these days will bring home enough money to pay for one.

Yes, it is an astonishing development.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, my family was comfortably middle class, nice big house in the suburbs, two new cars in the garage, a family vacation to Disney World every summer, all of that.

And yet, buying a new TV - *the* TV because nobody except millionaires had more than one - was a Big Deal. Something mom and dad spent a couple weeks on, driving around to different stores and malls before making the Big Decision. That's because a TV then was a major piece of furniture, about six feet across, a big wood console costing about $500, or the equivalent of around $3,500 in today's money - and that was for a 21-inch color TV, LOL.
(This post was last modified: 06-03-2022 07:09 AM by quo vadis.)
06-03-2022 07:09 AM
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whittx Offline
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Post: #149
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-03-2022 07:09 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 07:04 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 05:54 PM)whittx Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 02:00 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  I just checked and I'm paying $6 dollars a month for ESPN+, not $5.

Netflix at its top tier is charging $19.99 and HBO Max is $15. A $30 a month streaming service from ESPN is probably not quite economically viable at this point.

If it was ESPN Ultimate and included ESPN+ for $24.95 it might have some legs. But I think ESPN wants the consumer to have to buy everything by itself.

RSNs charging $30 dollars must be assuming a smaller subscriber base so they need to charge more to make up for it.

To be fair, the $6.99 (or whatever portion of the Disney bundle you assign to ESPN+) also includes the ESPN Insider articles you used to have to either subscribe to the ESPN Magazine or pay $5 a month for. Definitely worth it when you have the bundle.

I didn't know about the ESPN Insider thing. I haven't read an article on ESPN probably since the 2010 realignment. Never considered the Disney+ bundle, not even for a second. I will admit its a slick way of pumping up subscriptions for that portfolio.

Direct to consumer has been a big benefit. Streaming has made PPVs so much easier. Just download the app and fill in your billing information. You don't need a cable subscription for the right to purchase a PPV.

The percentage of households that would consider a TV package with HBO or Showtime was far lower before the era of smart TVs. Then I'd say maybe 1/3rd would go for it as it was considered a premium service. Now that you can buy it stand alone probably 90% would at least be receptive.

What as also helped as how cheap TVs have become. You can get a 4k 55 inch smart TV in the box for $270 dollars. One shift at your local McDonald's these days will bring home enough money to pay for one.

Yes, it is an astonishing development.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, my family was comfortably middle class, nice big house in the suburbs, two new cars in the garage, a family vacation to Disney World every summer, all of that.

And yet, buying a new TV - *the* TV because nobody except millionaires had more than one - was a Big Deal. Something mom and dad spent a couple weeks on, driving around to different stores and malls before making the Big Decision. That's because a TV then was a major piece of furniture, about six feet across, a big wood console costing about $500, or the equivalent of around $3,500 in today's money - and that was for a 21-inch color TV, LOL.

The grandparents had the monster TV. We had to settle for the "portable" model.
06-03-2022 07:22 AM
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quo vadis Online
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Post: #150
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-03-2022 07:22 AM)whittx Wrote:  
(06-03-2022 07:09 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 07:04 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 05:54 PM)whittx Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 02:00 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  I just checked and I'm paying $6 dollars a month for ESPN+, not $5.

Netflix at its top tier is charging $19.99 and HBO Max is $15. A $30 a month streaming service from ESPN is probably not quite economically viable at this point.

If it was ESPN Ultimate and included ESPN+ for $24.95 it might have some legs. But I think ESPN wants the consumer to have to buy everything by itself.

RSNs charging $30 dollars must be assuming a smaller subscriber base so they need to charge more to make up for it.

To be fair, the $6.99 (or whatever portion of the Disney bundle you assign to ESPN+) also includes the ESPN Insider articles you used to have to either subscribe to the ESPN Magazine or pay $5 a month for. Definitely worth it when you have the bundle.

I didn't know about the ESPN Insider thing. I haven't read an article on ESPN probably since the 2010 realignment. Never considered the Disney+ bundle, not even for a second. I will admit its a slick way of pumping up subscriptions for that portfolio.

Direct to consumer has been a big benefit. Streaming has made PPVs so much easier. Just download the app and fill in your billing information. You don't need a cable subscription for the right to purchase a PPV.

The percentage of households that would consider a TV package with HBO or Showtime was far lower before the era of smart TVs. Then I'd say maybe 1/3rd would go for it as it was considered a premium service. Now that you can buy it stand alone probably 90% would at least be receptive.

What as also helped as how cheap TVs have become. You can get a 4k 55 inch smart TV in the box for $270 dollars. One shift at your local McDonald's these days will bring home enough money to pay for one.

Yes, it is an astonishing development.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, my family was comfortably middle class, nice big house in the suburbs, two new cars in the garage, a family vacation to Disney World every summer, all of that.

And yet, buying a new TV - *the* TV because nobody except millionaires had more than one - was a Big Deal. Something mom and dad spent a couple weeks on, driving around to different stores and malls before making the Big Decision. That's because a TV then was a major piece of furniture, about six feet across, a big wood console costing about $500, or the equivalent of around $3,500 in today's money - and that was for a 21-inch color TV, LOL.

The grandparents had the monster TV. We had to settle for the "portable" model.

I recall when I turned 14 in 1978, my parents got me my own TV for my birthday. It was 12 inches and "monochrome" (black and white, LOL), and to me it was the greatest gift in the world. I loved that TV so much, with its two long extendable antenna that could pick up about 9 local channels with varying degrees of fuzziness or clarity, depending on the weather.
(This post was last modified: 06-03-2022 07:27 AM by quo vadis.)
06-03-2022 07:25 AM
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Thiefery Offline
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Post: #151
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-02-2022 09:27 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 08:17 AM)Thiefery Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 12:31 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(05-30-2022 09:53 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(05-30-2022 05:09 PM)Wedge Wrote:  Disney+ loses money because they are spending a lot to create more content. ESPN+ might not be losing money. The content they have there is relatively inexpensive, and the PPV UFC cards once a month get about a million subscriptions each at $75 per -- that's a gross of $75 million/month for PPV alone.

One cool thing about the PPV is that while I've only bought one PPV package, I still see plenty of UFC action even when the main card is PPV, because they almost always show the undercard, which can be several fights, on ESPN+. So you still get good viewing action even if you don't want to spring for the PPV.

UFC has 10 preliminary fights then they give you a 6 fight main event card with at least one other championship outside the headliner or feature fight like Chandler vs. Ferguson at UFC 274 to bring in eyeballs.

UFC is running fights 46 out of 52 weekends a year but only 1 weekend a month do they have a PPV night. Due to this 90% of UFC is free content and you can pick and choose if you want a PPV.

I personally won't buy a PPV unless I feel its a 50-50 fight. Gane vs. Ngannou was the last UFC fight I picked up and it was a close decision. UFC 274 I knew with certainty Oliveria would have no problem with Justin Gaejthe and it was over in the first round. Wasn't really a super fight but the UFC uses its PPV's as space for its championship fights.

Boxing I bought the Canelo vs. Bivol fight because I thought there was a good chance that Canelo might lose and I was right. I had to buy that through DAZN. DAZN has been charging me $19.99 a month and then it was another $59.99 for that fight.

Originally DAZN was $9.99 and you didn't have to pay extra for its PPVs along with having signed Canelo Alverez and Anthony "no chin" Joshua. At one point they had Bellator MMA and an extra innings MLB show on there too but that has all gone away and they've moved the base charge up to $19.99. Canelo now has peaked and AJ in his last one lost to a guy half his size so they're losing the must watch status.

Definitely with the fight sports there is pole positioning as nobody wants to be considered the 4th major outlet for Boxing or MMA. DAZN I kept on longer for the Canelo/Bivol fight but I think I'm just going to drop it as Showtime boxing is reviving. HBO got out of the fight game a few years ago, some of which was driven by not having an appealing promotional roster compared to its competitors.
why pay $20 a month when you can get a whole year subscription to DAZN for $100?

They have increased annual price to $150.

I just re-upped last month at $100.. not sure if it's because I've been with them for like 3 or 4 years but that's all they charged me..
06-03-2022 10:10 AM
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Frank the Tank Online
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Post: #152
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-03-2022 07:09 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 07:04 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 05:54 PM)whittx Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 02:00 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  I just checked and I'm paying $6 dollars a month for ESPN+, not $5.

Netflix at its top tier is charging $19.99 and HBO Max is $15. A $30 a month streaming service from ESPN is probably not quite economically viable at this point.

If it was ESPN Ultimate and included ESPN+ for $24.95 it might have some legs. But I think ESPN wants the consumer to have to buy everything by itself.

RSNs charging $30 dollars must be assuming a smaller subscriber base so they need to charge more to make up for it.

To be fair, the $6.99 (or whatever portion of the Disney bundle you assign to ESPN+) also includes the ESPN Insider articles you used to have to either subscribe to the ESPN Magazine or pay $5 a month for. Definitely worth it when you have the bundle.

I didn't know about the ESPN Insider thing. I haven't read an article on ESPN probably since the 2010 realignment. Never considered the Disney+ bundle, not even for a second. I will admit its a slick way of pumping up subscriptions for that portfolio.

Direct to consumer has been a big benefit. Streaming has made PPVs so much easier. Just download the app and fill in your billing information. You don't need a cable subscription for the right to purchase a PPV.

The percentage of households that would consider a TV package with HBO or Showtime was far lower before the era of smart TVs. Then I'd say maybe 1/3rd would go for it as it was considered a premium service. Now that you can buy it stand alone probably 90% would at least be receptive.

What as also helped as how cheap TVs have become. You can get a 4k 55 inch smart TV in the box for $270 dollars. One shift at your local McDonald's these days will bring home enough money to pay for one.

Yes, it is an astonishing development.

When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, my family was comfortably middle class, nice big house in the suburbs, two new cars in the garage, a family vacation to Disney World every summer, all of that.

And yet, buying a new TV - *the* TV because nobody except millionaires had more than one - was a Big Deal. Something mom and dad spent a couple weeks on, driving around to different stores and malls before making the Big Decision. That's because a TV then was a major piece of furniture, about six feet across, a big wood console costing about $500, or the equivalent of around $3,500 in today's money - and that was for a 21-inch color TV, LOL.

Ha! Oh yes - I remember our TV having as much wood as our dining room table.

The VCR that my parent's received as a wedding gift in the mid-1970s would probably cost $7000 in today's money. The cost of a car versus getting a TV and/or VCR was legitimately comparable back then.

The trend has been that the real cost of physical goods have generally gone down dramatically over the past 20-30 years. The flip side is that the real cost of essential services - particularly health care and higher education - have skyrocketed during that same period.
(This post was last modified: 06-03-2022 10:32 AM by Frank the Tank.)
06-03-2022 10:31 AM
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Kit-Cat Offline
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Post: #153
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-03-2022 04:52 AM)AllTideUp Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 07:04 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 05:54 PM)whittx Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 02:00 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  I just checked and I'm paying $6 dollars a month for ESPN+, not $5.

Netflix at its top tier is charging $19.99 and HBO Max is $15. A $30 a month streaming service from ESPN is probably not quite economically viable at this point.

If it was ESPN Ultimate and included ESPN+ for $24.95 it might have some legs. But I think ESPN wants the consumer to have to buy everything by itself.

RSNs charging $30 dollars must be assuming a smaller subscriber base so they need to charge more to make up for it.

To be fair, the $6.99 (or whatever portion of the Disney bundle you assign to ESPN+) also includes the ESPN Insider articles you used to have to either subscribe to the ESPN Magazine or pay $5 a month for. Definitely worth it when you have the bundle.

I didn't know about the ESPN Insider thing. I haven't read an article on ESPN probably since the 2010 realignment. Never considered the Disney+ bundle, not even for a second. I will admit its a slick way of pumping up subscriptions for that portfolio.

Direct to consumer has been a big benefit. Streaming has made PPVs so much easier. Just download the app and fill in your billing information. You don't need a cable subscription for the right to purchase a PPV.

The percentage of households that would consider a TV package with HBO or Showtime was far lower before the era of smart TVs. Then I'd say maybe 1/3rd would go for it as it was considered a premium service. Now that you can buy it stand alone probably 90% would at least be receptive.

What as also helped as how cheap TVs have become. You can get a 4k 55 inch smart TV in the box for $270 dollars. One shift at your local McDonald's these days will bring home enough money to pay for one.

TVs have become cheap, but heck, I need to work at that McDonald's because that would be over $33 an hour for an 8 hour shift. :D

But I also agree with the idea that ESPN could charge $30 a month for its portfolio and it would probably be cheaper than that for people who wanted to pay annually.

If you took everything on ESPN and went exclusively online then there's a ton of people who lose any motivation to have traditional cable which means they've got plenty of money to simply have an ESPN subscription and maybe a couple of other streaming services if they want some other type of content.

Frankly, that's a huge market disruptor. There are a ton of companies who rely on the popularity of sports in order to motivate consumers to buy cable bundles. If that motivation goes away or severely decreases(as it's not as though ESPN has all sports content) then that hurts the media value of a lot of other companies.

I live in fair wage area. If I go to dinner I am not only expected to tip but also a fair wage tax of like 15% is tacked onto my meal.

Advertised "we're hiring" rates are like $22 to $24 for retail. A 12 hour backbreaker shift at McDonald's could probably get a 55" TV done. Of course they don't pay very much in taxes either at those income levels.

Streaming has been a serious disruptor to cable since its inception. Cable companies only have themselves to blame for gouging the consumer and customer retention policies that make it difficult to cancel.
06-03-2022 02:43 PM
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Post: #154
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-03-2022 10:10 AM)Thiefery Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 09:27 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 08:17 AM)Thiefery Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 12:31 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(05-30-2022 09:53 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  One cool thing about the PPV is that while I've only bought one PPV package, I still see plenty of UFC action even when the main card is PPV, because they almost always show the undercard, which can be several fights, on ESPN+. So you still get good viewing action even if you don't want to spring for the PPV.

UFC has 10 preliminary fights then they give you a 6 fight main event card with at least one other championship outside the headliner or feature fight like Chandler vs. Ferguson at UFC 274 to bring in eyeballs.

UFC is running fights 46 out of 52 weekends a year but only 1 weekend a month do they have a PPV night. Due to this 90% of UFC is free content and you can pick and choose if you want a PPV.

I personally won't buy a PPV unless I feel its a 50-50 fight. Gane vs. Ngannou was the last UFC fight I picked up and it was a close decision. UFC 274 I knew with certainty Oliveria would have no problem with Justin Gaejthe and it was over in the first round. Wasn't really a super fight but the UFC uses its PPV's as space for its championship fights.

Boxing I bought the Canelo vs. Bivol fight because I thought there was a good chance that Canelo might lose and I was right. I had to buy that through DAZN. DAZN has been charging me $19.99 a month and then it was another $59.99 for that fight.

Originally DAZN was $9.99 and you didn't have to pay extra for its PPVs along with having signed Canelo Alverez and Anthony "no chin" Joshua. At one point they had Bellator MMA and an extra innings MLB show on there too but that has all gone away and they've moved the base charge up to $19.99. Canelo now has peaked and AJ in his last one lost to a guy half his size so they're losing the must watch status.

Definitely with the fight sports there is pole positioning as nobody wants to be considered the 4th major outlet for Boxing or MMA. DAZN I kept on longer for the Canelo/Bivol fight but I think I'm just going to drop it as Showtime boxing is reviving. HBO got out of the fight game a few years ago, some of which was driven by not having an appealing promotional roster compared to its competitors.
why pay $20 a month when you can get a whole year subscription to DAZN for $100?

They have increased annual price to $150.

I just re-upped last month at $100.. not sure if it's because I've been with them for like 3 or 4 years but that's all they charged me..

$150 for only $12.50 a month is what I was quoted as a customer since 2018.

I would argue they aren't even worth the $100 anymore for what little they have on there.
06-03-2022 02:46 PM
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Post: #155
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro talks On balancing declines in cable subs with big increases to ESPN+ and a growing direct-to-consumer business — and what an ideal ESPN might look like in 2027.

Pitaro: The reason you don’t have a date on the (linear) flagship being direct-to-consumer is because we don’t have one. It’s that simple. We don’t have one. The reason why we don’t have a date is because these parallel paths that you referred to are going quite well for us today. Yes, the traditional ecosystem has been very valuable to us and today remains very valuable to us. At the same time, we are investing in direct-to-consumer ESPN+. I think on our last earnings call we announced 22.3 million subs (for ESPN+). That’s significantly ahead of where we thought we would be at this point. The rights that we’re acquiring for ESPN+, the content that we’re creating for ESPN+, the library that we’ve accumulated that is exclusively on ESPN+ … that’s all working.

So these two paths make sense to us because we have on one side folks who are still very much engaged with DirecTV or Comcast and we need to be there. We need to be serving them. You also have fans who are consuming sports content on their phones or tablets, so if you want to authenticate, you can get flagship. … We will continue to acquire rights that enable us to continue to advance both of these platforms, meaning traditional and digital.

If you look at the eight or nine deals that we’ve done over the past two years — I think it may be the best stretch in the 43-year history of this place just in terms of rights acquisitions and (ESPN president of programming and original content Burke Magnus’) team has had an amazing couple of years — the common theme here is acquiring content for traditional and digital. That’s going to continue because we see both working for us today. So to your question of 2027, what is going to look like? I don’t know if we’re going to have (a linear) flagship available. I can’t say we’re not. I can’t definitively say we are. We’re looking at these numbers on a month-to-month basis. Our commitment to the sports fan is that we’re going to continue to follow you. As the sports fan moves more and more to a digital platform, a direct-to-consumer platform, you’re going to see us moving more and more content that way. But today, having these two properties, both traditional and digital, it just makes sense for us.



Link
https://theathletic.com/3371588/2022/06/...1-big-ten/
(This post was last modified: 06-20-2022 12:42 PM by GTFletch.)
06-20-2022 12:36 PM
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Post: #156
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-02-2022 05:54 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:41 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:49 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 12:46 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  
(06-01-2022 08:33 PM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  For about a year there from late 2018 to late 2019 DAZN was the place to watch boxing. Everything else was splintered between Fox, Showtime and ESPN.

Pandemic hit boxing harder than UFC which started throwing closed circuit events two months after the lockdown began and it was the only live TV people had to watch. Boxing really struggled in 2020. MLB was out and that left DAZN. The level of content is down and limited mostly to UK and Mexican boxing cards.

I was a Showtime boxing fan before DAZN but I switched over to them and now I'm back as DAZN has petered back. But I could still stream the Fury/Wilder trilogy without having Showtime (just the first one was there). I certainly didn't order Fury vs. Whyte though as Dillian is a journeyman material at the world level. He could hardly control a fight against near club level competition.

You can watch old fights too and catch up on a fighters back catalog. Who tunes into old baseball games from the middle of 2008? Fight sports have a big edge in replay value and even if you know the result its still interesting to see how a fight went down. Very different than last weeks SEC game.

There's a lot of SEC games that don't have much replay value, but a few do, like the SEC Championship, Georgia-Florida, Alabama-Auburn, Georgia-Auburn, etc. Go for the big rivalry games.

Would you watch last week's card of boxing matches again???

Typically in a card there might be 2 fights that I care about but they might be spread out between 3-4 fights. If I start the card from the beginning I can let it roll while I work in the background and then just tune in seriously for that fight. This is assuming I missed the card the first time out.

When friends and family come over I cherry pick fights to watch. I even got my girlfriend into it but UFC is where she drew the line. Personally I enjoy a high profile UFC fight more as it has the sweet science of boxing like stance and ring generalship but its so much more unpredictable. The fights are also shorter, about double the pace as boxing.

One negative I do say about the UFC is they tend to recycle the same fighters over and over. A lot of II and III fights against guys in the Top 10. Guys have been ranked for years and years on their past reputations. Boxing is different in that you have 4 major belts and often a guy with 1 belt might only be the 6th or 7th best in his division so their are undefeated paper champions. There is a lot of cherry picking going on.

UFC if you are the champ you can dodge a top challenger for a year but then you'll have to fight. Boxing you can dodge a bad style matchup indefinitely unless that particular person becomes a mandatory to the belt. Then you have to fight them within a year (or get a pass from the belt sanctioning body for a mega fight).

FWIW, though I am a bigger boxing fan than UFC fan, I like the UFC organizational situation way better. I like having one clear-cut champ, and I like when I tune in for a card, the fights happen on time, like clockwork. Dana White runs a tight ship.

In boxing, a star fighter basically calls the shots. He fights who he wants to, when he wants to, and even on fight night makes his way to the ring when he wants to. And the alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies, with their dizzying plethor of belts - "super" this and "interim" this and all that crap, just waters everything down.

I liked the day on one boxing champion too. Tyson was the heavyweight champ while Hagler was the middleweight champion.
Now it’s the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, WBF, IBC, NABF, USBA. The WBC super champion the WBC regular champion the WBC Continental champion etc etc. A guy just buys himself a belt. BS.

As long as I remember, there was WBC, WBA and IBF. Its just that the holders tried to unite the title in big money bouts.
06-20-2022 12:48 PM
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Post: #157
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-20-2022 12:36 PM)GTFletch Wrote:  ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro talks On balancing declines in cable subs with big increases to ESPN+ and a growing direct-to-consumer business — and what an ideal ESPN might look like in 2027.

Pitaro: The reason you don’t have a date on the (linear) flagship being direct-to-consumer is because we don’t have one. It’s that simple. We don’t have one. The reason why we don’t have a date is because these parallel paths that you referred to are going quite well for us today. Yes, the traditional ecosystem has been very valuable to us and today remains very valuable to us. At the same time, we are investing in direct-to-consumer ESPN+. I think on our last earnings call we announced 22.3 million subs (for ESPN+). That’s significantly ahead of where we thought we would be at this point. The rights that we’re acquiring for ESPN+, the content that we’re creating for ESPN+, the library that we’ve accumulated that is exclusively on ESPN+ … that’s all working.

So these two paths make sense to us because we have on one side folks who are still very much engaged with DirecTV or Comcast and we need to be there. We need to be serving them. You also have fans who are consuming sports content on their phones or tablets, so if you want to authenticate, you can get flagship. … We will continue to acquire rights that enable us to continue to advance both of these platforms, meaning traditional and digital.

If you look at the eight or nine deals that we’ve done over the past two years — I think it may be the best stretch in the 43-year history of this place just in terms of rights acquisitions and (ESPN president of programming and original content Burke Magnus’) team has had an amazing couple of years — the common theme here is acquiring content for traditional and digital. That’s going to continue because we see both working for us today. So to your question of 2027, what is going to look like? I don’t know if we’re going to have (a linear) flagship available. I can’t say we’re not. I can’t definitively say we are. We’re looking at these numbers on a month-to-month basis. Our commitment to the sports fan is that we’re going to continue to follow you. As the sports fan moves more and more to a digital platform, a direct-to-consumer platform, you’re going to see us moving more and more content that way. But today, having these two properties, both traditional and digital, it just makes sense for us.



Link
https://theathletic.com/3371588/2022/06/...1-big-ten/

This guy's have blinders on to not know why his company is outpricing the lower income people out of everything. Demanding more money, and forcing like the ACC, SEC and the Longhorn Network on people who really did not want it is pretty shortsited on their part. There are more people cord-cutting, but not going in droves to get ESPN+. Why pay seperate services for that, Hulu and Disney+, plus get the other stuff that could cost up to close to $1000 to stream everything you can get on cable today.
06-20-2022 06:22 PM
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Post: #158
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
I did a scan the other day and discovered I can now pick up 70 free channels on my local antenna in my upstairs bedroom. You don't even need internet, just a simple antenna. That's how I watched the NBA finals this year. Over the local ABC channel. More sports leagues should be looking into this local free channels to get their content on the air.
06-20-2022 06:48 PM
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Post: #159
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(06-20-2022 12:48 PM)bullet Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 05:54 PM)billybobby777 Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:41 PM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 01:49 AM)Kit-Cat Wrote:  
(06-02-2022 12:46 AM)DawgNBama Wrote:  There's a lot of SEC games that don't have much replay value, but a few do, like the SEC Championship, Georgia-Florida, Alabama-Auburn, Georgia-Auburn, etc. Go for the big rivalry games.

Would you watch last week's card of boxing matches again???

Typically in a card there might be 2 fights that I care about but they might be spread out between 3-4 fights. If I start the card from the beginning I can let it roll while I work in the background and then just tune in seriously for that fight. This is assuming I missed the card the first time out.

When friends and family come over I cherry pick fights to watch. I even got my girlfriend into it but UFC is where she drew the line. Personally I enjoy a high profile UFC fight more as it has the sweet science of boxing like stance and ring generalship but its so much more unpredictable. The fights are also shorter, about double the pace as boxing.

One negative I do say about the UFC is they tend to recycle the same fighters over and over. A lot of II and III fights against guys in the Top 10. Guys have been ranked for years and years on their past reputations. Boxing is different in that you have 4 major belts and often a guy with 1 belt might only be the 6th or 7th best in his division so their are undefeated paper champions. There is a lot of cherry picking going on.

UFC if you are the champ you can dodge a top challenger for a year but then you'll have to fight. Boxing you can dodge a bad style matchup indefinitely unless that particular person becomes a mandatory to the belt. Then you have to fight them within a year (or get a pass from the belt sanctioning body for a mega fight).

FWIW, though I am a bigger boxing fan than UFC fan, I like the UFC organizational situation way better. I like having one clear-cut champ, and I like when I tune in for a card, the fights happen on time, like clockwork. Dana White runs a tight ship.

In boxing, a star fighter basically calls the shots. He fights who he wants to, when he wants to, and even on fight night makes his way to the ring when he wants to. And the alphabet soup of sanctioning bodies, with their dizzying plethor of belts - "super" this and "interim" this and all that crap, just waters everything down.

I liked the day on one boxing champion too. Tyson was the heavyweight champ while Hagler was the middleweight champion.
Now it’s the WBC, WBA, IBF, WBO, WBF, IBC, NABF, USBA. The WBC super champion the WBC regular champion the WBC Continental champion etc etc. A guy just buys himself a belt. BS.

As long as I remember, there was WBC, WBA and IBF. Its just that the holders tried to unite the title in big money bouts.

When I was growing up, it was just WBA and WBC.

IBF was formed around 1984, as a result of a power struggle in the WBA. It gained legitimacy shortly thereafter when Larry Holmes, the undisputed Heavyweight champ, gave up his WBC title to be recognized as the IBF champ.
(This post was last modified: 06-21-2022 06:26 AM by quo vadis.)
06-20-2022 07:22 PM
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GoodOwl Offline
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Post: #160
RE: ESPN loses eight million cable and satellite subscribers in 2021 - CFB implications
(05-23-2022 08:46 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  I think the large problem that so many of these articles on this subject have is that they’re looking solely the top line revenue decreases at ESPN and other cable networks but never acknowledge that they’re *still* extremely profitable. Even with everything that Disney owns, ESPN is still the single most profitable business in that entire company. That context can’t be emphasized enough. That alone answers Travis’ question about why Disney still holds onto ESPN. In fact, ESPN has been the biggest reason why Disney was able to get through the last 2.5 years of the pandemic ravaging pretty much every other business that it had outside of Disney+ (e.g. theme parks, movies, cruises, etc.).

Now, there can certainly be an inflection point where revenue decreases so much that it gets to the point where ESPN would outright lose money. However, even if the bottom is around 50 million subscribers (as Travis mentioned), I don’t know why Travis is critiquing a business that would still be generating $6 billion per year just on subscriber fees. Remember that sports also charge the highest ad rates out of any type of programming BY FAR, so ESPN is generating the highest ad sales in the industry on top of those subscriber fees. To put $6 billion per year in perspective, that’s still more in *only* subscriber fees every *month* than the domestic grosses of all but 16 movies in the entire history of cinema. Only one movie (the latest Spider-Man film) since the start of the pandemic has made as much as what even a 50 million subscriber base ESPN would make every single month *before* ads. We really need to understand the context of just how much money that is in order to properly compare it to anything else.

It’s not that I’m bullish on sports per se, but more that I’m bearish on the profitability of pretty much all other forms of mass market entertainment in general outside of a handful of marquee movie franchises (e.g. Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Disney Princesses, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park). When Travis asks why anyone would invest in sports when it doesn’t create a back catalog of programming like movies or TV shows, it’s because (1) the franchises are really what works for those types of programs, but there just aren’t that many of them and they’re expensive to do well and (2) we have no idea what TV shows that people will watch 10 years from now, but it’s still a good bet that people will still watch the NFL, NBA, MLB, college football and other major sports properties at a material level (even if it’s lower than today).

Finally, I just don’t think anyone can discount the value that sports are truly the only type of program that people watch live en masse anymore. 93 of the top 100 most watched programs last year were sporting events. Only 1 of that top 100 was a scripted TV show… and that was only because it was shown after the Super Bowl (the biggest sporting event of them all)!

So, as long as there’s an ad market where companies need to reach a large audience at the exact same time, then sports will also always have high value since it’s the only property that actually serves that market anymore.

(Note that the movie industry that Travis points to as where Disney could shift money to away from ESPN is super dependent on such live ad market. Every movie has a “time is of the essence” marketing campaign for a movie where they need to show the maximum number of ads in the last week or two before opening night. Nothing delivers that type of audience better than sports. See how the new Thor trailer is premiering tonight during the NBA Eastern Conference Finals on ESPN, which is a classic example of Disney corporate synergy.)

...and to put that in pespective, the gamer industy outearns ALL sports and movies combined...chew on that when you think of where Disney/ESPN might pivot...

Video Games Industry Is Bigger Than Film, Sports and Music

The gaming market has overtaken the movie industry - valued at nearly $180 billion in 2020 - and Gen Z values it more than sports.



so...measley $6 Billion, LOL! That's peanuts!
06-20-2022 10:33 PM
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