re: ESPN has released its financials for the first time ever

Espn owns nothing that people want to watch. They lease the rights to broadcast live events that people watch.

When other companies (Amazon, etc) start getting those broadcasting rights then espn will be dead. They’re screwed bc they have to over pay for tv deals bc they have nothing else of value.

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Everybody will say they are losing money compared to the 90's/2000's because ESPN "went woke" but in reality it's because sportscenter isn't appointment viewing now like it used to be with the highlight show being extremely antiquated.

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Anecdotally, my brother, father, and myself have all said we would love to still watch Sportscenter at night like we did for over a decade to catch up on that day's sports, but all of us have stopped because of the quality and content.

The other day I had it on the background while cooking dinner and they talked about the WNBA for 15 minutes, including a couple of panel experts, and then MLB playoffs for 10ish before moving to some football trade rumors or something for 5.

Sorry, but women's basketball is an abomination and no one watches it.

Espn+ is awesome for following the sport of college baseball. Even the tiniest colleges have most of their games televised on there.

ESPN is, and always will be, the biggest player in the sports broadcasting market. And hence why it’s the largest single charge for all of our TV, whether cable or streaming.

Just because people are cutting cords and moving to streaming doesn’t mean they don’t have ESPN anymore. We all still have it. A true sports fan wouldn’t be able to survive without ESPN’s family of networks.

The problem lies in Aunt Sue who doesn’t watch sports but currently pays for ESPN on cable. When Aunt Sue switches to non-cable streaming without bundling, ESPN has to make up that money somewhere. Now if Aunt Sue switches to Hulu or YouTubeTV or similar, nothing has changed…she’s STILL paying for ESPN even if she doesn’t watch sports.

The vast majority of people aren't switching away from bundles…. They’re merely switching from cable bundles to streaming bundles, of which ESPN is still a part of, and always will be.

What will happen over time is the price of our “streaming bundles” will go up to offset their losses for people that totally cut the cord and don’t buy and streaming bundles.

Devils advocate. Almost every employee justifies their salary by generating more revenue.

Or at least if you work for a for profit company anyway. The figure about a 30% drop off in revenue in 2023 sounds too significant to believe at first pass FWIW.

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That's significantly less revenue than Disney's entertainment division

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Now that's a shocker. We've all seen the backlash to the insufferable pandering (except to their core audience) awful shite they've put out the last 5 years.

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They are cooking the books, trying to make ESPN more attractive to a buyer like Amazon

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Yeah. Something’s up.

Supposedly they’ve been trying to offload ESPN but they’re profiting $3Billion?

ESPN slashed payroll because they were making billions.

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For example, we've gone from 100 million pay-TV households in the United States to about 70 million over the last decade.

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Because people don’t want to be lectured about social justice from clowns on a sports network. Show sports and highlights of sports.