re: What I Don't Understand about ESPN's Strategy

quote:

---

But they pay a lot of their personalities a ton of money. Berman was making like $4/5 million, and I bet he had some stock options on top of that.

---

They could fire their top 10 live personality earners and it wouldn't make a drop in the bucket. They literally owe billions of dollars a year to various sports leagues for the rights to broadcast their games. They paid 100 million for the right to broadcast the Texans/Raiders playoff game. Think about that! 100mm to air the worst playoff game in the last 20 years

Edited to add these figures

quote:

---

Presently ESPN is on the hook for the following yearly rights payments: $1.9 billion a year to the NFL for Monday Night Football, $1.47 billion to the NBA, $700 million to Major League Baseball, $608 million for the College Football Playoff, $225 million to the ACC, $190 million to the Big Ten, $120 million a year to the Big 12, $125 million a year to the PAC 12, and hundreds of millions more to the SEC. At an absolute minimum it would appear that ESPN presently pays out nearly $6 billion a year to sports leagues just in rights fees.

---