It’s said that a ship going down will look for any port in a storm, but for ESPN they might as well be stuck in the open ocean with a tsunami building to send them to the depths. As of now the network has announced that it can no longer afford to pay for Monday Night Football, which is a big wake up call to a lot of people and a death knell to the network. The funny thing about it is that they seem to think that playing it off as a good thing is going to be the right course. It’s like watching a person that’s just been gutted telling someone that it’s okay, now they have one less bodily function to worry about. Yeah, it might be an extreme analogy but it’s about as accurate as it gets right now since to be honest ESPN doesn’t own much of anything that’s worth selling and they don’t have a lot of original content that’s worth much of anything.
The NFL was their big hope and come 2021 that big hope will turn out to be their biggest downfall. They seem to think they’ll be okay since they have so many other programs and sports to rely on but the truth of the matter is that the NFL accounts for a huge chunk of their spending as well as their revenue. People don’t tend to sign onto ESPN when they can get their stats and their highlights for free on other networks and channels. The subscription to ESPN isn’t worth it if they’re not going to be showcasing anything that people think is worth watching. Would you really follow a channel that has nothing you’re interested in?
At this point people will be watching the NFL, if it survives into the future, on Facebook, Amazon, and other industries that will be more than willing to shell out the money in order to reap the benefits. Wait, Facebook already shows highlights courtesy of the NFL, right? So why in the world do we need ESPN again? It would be easy to feel sorry for the network if they weren’t trying to play this development off with the attitude of “I got this”. If you mean your executives and other higher-ups have got stomach ulcers from stressing about how they’re going to pay for those lavish lifestyles they’ve been enjoying for so long then you might be right. If you’re talking about the massive migraines that come from having to worry over just what’s going to take the place of one of the biggest cash cows that ESPN has ever had dealings with, then you’ve got this one hundred percent.
Other than that ESPN has nothing that’s really worth anything except a deal with will expire in a little over three years.
When the ship sinks you might hear a mournful dirge being played in the distance as the final death throes of ESPN reverberate across the media. That’ll be the final sighs and groans of the few folks aboard the failed voyage that thought “I got this” and suddenly realize they had nothing but hot air to fall back on.
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