ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More(outkickthecoverage.com) |
ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More(outkickthecoverage.com) |
I think this is great thing as the economics of large sports salaries have been artificially inflated by surreptitiously charging end users for things they might not want. As the internet continues to alter the landscape around content choice, traditional providers are going to have no choice but to push back on the networks which will, in turn, push back on the leagues which will, in turn, push back on high sports salaries. I wouldn't expect any of the limited sets of providers to accept any more price hikes from the sports networks. Sports costs have to come back down to earth as consumption specializes. It already has or will happen with other forms of content too.
Everyone knows the NFL could reduce injuries even more, but not at the cost of eyeballs. In a purely capitalistic view, players are much more expendable/replaceable than viewers. As a side effect, players will have to accept the risk of being injured for less money than they are now. While a couple of high profile NFL players have retired due to CTE concerns, in general there are many humans willing to make that sacrifice for even a fraction of what players are paid today.
Salary caps are about how your society values parity in whichever sport it is applied to. Regardless of the salary cap argument, do expect this to affect soccer as well, though further into the future. Right now many of those salaries, bumps for league promotion, etc are based on similar revenue sharing based on TV deals. And as US soccer eyeballs have grown, US TV deals have just added dollars to the already existing and new TV deals in soccer. They are on the upswing at the moment (kinda), but as fans get fed up with these draconian viewership requirements they are going to have to fight for the same in-between viewers (i.e. ones that would watch, but don't have to at all costs) that US sports are vying for across new mediums.
I should clarify that it won't affect the top teams in these situations. Man U and Barca and what not will still be fine due to ancillary sales and their brand. Rather it will affect the vast majority of other teams. Some owners are willing to take a hit, but only so much and for so long (except the super rich ones for which their team is their play thing).
ESPN just has to be the highest bidder. Someone has got to air the games.
Yes. It broadcasts < 20 NFL games per year. This is not a lot of airtime for a 24h sports network. It does spend a considerable amount of time talking about NFL, but that can continue whether it broadcasts their games or not. It has a 3-hour lead-in show on Sunday morning that gets sizable ratings while broadcasting zero games that day. Nobody subscribes to ESPN/cable just for MNF.
In contrast, ESPN broadcasts dozens of college football games per year and spends probably an equal amount of time - or more - discussing those. It spends about $1.4b per year in total on those TV rights which have lucrative advertising and cable subscriber value. That's in addition to all of the other sports ESPN broadcasts.
ESPN will bid less for MNF because they can't afford it any more but mostly because the ratings don't fully justify the current cost. The overall success of ESPN doesn't hinge solely on whether or not they broadcast any NFL games, it's based on how sensible the price is for the rights they own. They have plenty of other content to fill airtime that people watch and will pay a reasonable subscriber price for, even if that's not quite as much as they extract now from cable providers.
Cord cutters are upending the model, requiring ESPN to swim on its own without subsidies; my personal opinion is that there aren’t enough sports fans to support it except as an over the top app similar to what HBO GO is trying to do.
MNF has a long tradition before moving to ESPN. There are lots of fans who don't have a pay tv package that have been missing out on MNF.
I can name a hundred things leagues have done to dilute and harm their respective games in order to increase profits.
Back of the envelope, every viewer of MNF would need to pay $200 just to keep MNF and one wildcard game. More to get Sunday, Thursday, the playoffs and the Superbowl. Easily $300 - $400 per viewer a year.
That's a hard sell.
Can't watch ALL games live right? That's hardly completely superior. IMO, NFL would make less money on direct sales than they do when they charge networks which charge all cable subscribers (even via retransmission fees for those of us who can't get OTA) AND charge advertisers. That double dip is going to net more money than a specialized service for NFL fans.
You can't on television, either.
I pay about $30 to Sling TV just for Redzone. I've never watched any of the other channels that come with it. When the regular season ends I just cancel Sling.
I'd be happy handing over the $150/season or so directly to the NFL. Unfortunately, I'm probably worth more to advertisers just because of that.
They placed their emphasis on things other than sports. Sports fans will pay for sports, not politics.
That would allow the NFL to maintain ESPN as potentially the top tier while introducing new suitors with lower tiers and maintaining their revenue in aggregate.
The losers in this scenario are the fans: forced to purchase several subscriptions if they want to watch every game.
The irony of my comment is I'm making plans to watch KC vs Denver... and it's Monday.
The numbers have been decreasing for the past 6 years. It has nothing to do with NFL becoming political.
http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers-not-r...
I'd be shocked if politics haven't hurt ESPN, too, but the effect is probably completely swamped by changes in viewing habits and a reduction in Disney's clout with cable companies.
Really? Football has been played without network coverage. I could see a future whereby teams handled their own streaming, or where the NFL did it all through NFL.com. The days of "air" are quickly coming to an end. I'm a little surprised that Netflix, Google or even FB aren't bidding.
And if NFL owners want more people into the stadiums, curtailing broadcast coverage has been the traditional means. Ticket prices are already so high that it isn't inconceivable that they take it to the next level and market a game like a rock concert: be in the room or miss out.
I could see a future whereby teams handled their own streaming
Does someone? Sure, professional football has been very popular for many decades, but there's nothing about the order of the universe which states that it will remain so forever. We don't have chariot races, or gladiators, or bear-baiting — maybe someday we won't have professional football either.
I keep seeing pictures of half-empty stands behind kneeling football players, and ultimately if the NFL destroys its value by alienating too many fans with politics, there's no reason the entire business won't or shouldn't collapse.
Someone will pick up the rights to show the games, or the league will offer their own service, or the games won't be played on Mondays/Thursdays and will go back to just being a Sunday sport.
Regarding losing their audience and destroying their value:
I stopped following the NFL not because of politics (the kneeling thing hadn't yet started), but because their product was no longer worth my time. Thirty+ years as a fan, watching nearly every single game the local team played and I turned it off a couple years ago. It should not take 3+ hours for 60 minutes of "play", the bulk of which involves no action. It became so overloaded with commercials that it hit the point I was no longer interested. For a short while there was hope, they had the "game in 60" replays on the NFL network. That could have been amazing. Unfortunately, they screwed that up too, showing "all the action" in the first half (good!), then a shortened version of the halftime show (why?), then "all the action" in the third quarter (good!), and then they'd jump to the end of the fourth quarter (wtf?). Why did we need a halftime show when the whole thing a) is being condensed down to an hour, b) is a replay, and c) they sacrifice showing comebacks in order to bring us talking heads?
I think they've been losing their audience for a while; the politics is just the latest (and possibly biggest) factor in their decline. If they turn things around, great. If not, I won't feel sorry for them.
Think about it: an NFL team sponsored by the alt right vs. one funded by Ben&Jerry's.
They can just keep the salary cap low and stop paying for new stadiums.
It's a bit more complicated than that. In Europe you also usually have a relegation system. If I remember right, leagues are usually closed in the US?
Hoffenheim's football team is an interesting example (http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/european/hoffenh...). They did have a rich guy backing them, though; but still came out of basically nowhere into the Bundesliga in a few short years. Though still:
> “Obviously we are not spending money like the big clubs in Germany so we are really focusing on our youth development, on our academy. There is a big number of players like Niklas Sule [sold to Bayern Munich this summer for £18m], [Jeremy] Toljan, [Nadiem] Amiri, [Philipp] Ochs who all came from our Under-17s and Under-19s. That's what we want to keep on doing: develop our own guys, but also sign players for less money who increase their market value. This is how we are working.”
Its more about the availability of gladiators than the sports history of people in the stands.
NFL will not weather well a continued hit to ratings, which were down 8% last year and dropping again this year
[0]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19smEPxvpHQE3pByhDDPb...
Yeah, politics has been an issue, but you are correct, this isn't their first time they've offended viewers. Some people are ticked about the money grab around stadiums, the rule change to protect the QB, the concussion coverup, the various sex scandals locally (e.g. Vikings boat trip), wife beating, and (a really big factor) cannot afford to go to the games anymore. There has been a long line of things that are whittling away the fans. Never mind the problem of replacing fans who died with new young fans when entertainment options are vast.
NFL is not the only sport having problems. They are just the biggest in the US, and are showing the largest number loss. The general decline of ESPN, with all of the reasons to stop watching them, is also a factor. If you don't go home and watch Sports Center then maybe you won't be fired up for the NFL either.
At the end of the day, every decision is going to offend someone, just make sure the offended don't outnumber the people you attract to the sport.
[+] http://www.npr.org/2009/12/29/121975854/2006-and-the-death-o...
At the end of the day, I don't really care much whether ESPN stagnates like Sears or reinvents like Apple. But I think they live or die from a position of strength, present storm clouds aside.
You do that, and you take the wind out of the sails of a sport quickly. You probably have a better chance of success playing fantasy football (you know, gambling) than you would getting rich as a football player.
The adpocalypse is happening right now. We've been warning of it for years. Brands are figuring out their campaigns on "traditional TV" don't return nearly as much as targeted campaigns on online video on a per-dollar basis. The bloodbath is just beginning.
If the salary at the highest levels crashed dramatically, the pool of players at every level would shrink accordingly. We would probably see an effect similar to what happened to boxing: the best of the best would still be very good, but the rank-and-file that make up the rest of the sport would be so terrible that most people would lose interest and stop watching. I suspect that fan interest would hold through some level of decrease in overall skill level, but that there is some point where people will just stop watching because the quality of play is so bad (and because of the constantly growing evidence regarding the long-term health implications, which, going back to the boxing example, was another piece of what knocked boxing off its cultural pedestal).
It's just not right to encourage people to do that, and I think a lot of fans are choosing to watch something else.
Edit: Also, basketball has better economics and a more international fan base, so it's probably safe. Baseball is probably fucked too, at least in the current incarnation of MLB. But the NFL is definitely fucked.
Also, if the funnel of advertising (and thus TV) money goes away, the visibility of the sport will drop, and visibility reinforces popularity.
Without any substantiating evidence the opposite wouldn't surprise me either.
Please provide backing evidence that demonstrates the counts are maliciously inflated, at an increased rate, which masks lower turnout.
I did some quick calculation here, and it looks like attendance is not lower, in fact, it's slightly higher. 2016 average attendance was 66,586, while this year's average attendance so far is 68,925.
(This doesn't account for lower-attended games towards the end of the season for poor-performing teams; end of the season games often don't sell out for such teams, and these stats may be skewed because we haven't reached the end of the season yet. If I were to guess, by year's end attendance will be slightly lower for 2017.)
What is down is ratings. That is well-documented[1].
[0]: http://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance/_/year/2016
[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/20/media/nfl-tv-ratings-week-2/...
You can see massive amounts of empty seats in 4 or 5 NFL stadiums right now. Some cities have extremely loyal fan bases regardless of record (e.g. Green Bay, Pittsburgh), but you can see many seats going completely unsold in Levi's Stadium (49ers).
In fact, Pittsburgh was the reference standard that the 49ers (for one) used as a comparison in selling licenses for their building ("see how WELL those licenses are selling! Don't miss out!").
Has the popularity of boxing been impacted by this issue?
So far this year 15 African Americans have been killed while unarmed to 21 White Americans and the numbers are similar for the previous years where data is available
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
[ Edited Below Rate Limited Reply ]
It is about Ratios WillyOnWheels except police aren't killing a bunch of people for no apparent reason, so ratios will never be one to one based on racial data alone.
More than 90% of police homicide victims were armed, the vast majority of them were during the commission of a crime.
Do we want to go over violent crime stats and how that relates to the likelihood you will be killed by police.
It is your half-assed attempt to apply normative statistics to a non-normative issue that shines a light upon your ignorance and all who parrot the same statement without ever delving into the data
Of course the numbers are irrefutable, so down vote away
There are about 220 million White Americans. Your data claims 392 White Americans have been killed police in 2017 so far.
There are about 35 million Black Americans. Your data claims 190 Black Americans have been killed by police in 2017 so far.
If Black Americans were killed by police hypothetically at the same rate as White Americans, 62 Black Americans would be dead.
Do you see the huge disparity there?
I cannot fault people on the bottom not being particularly concerned about someone making millions. As a matter of fact lots of NFL players see their sport as a way out of the trailer park. Do you think the NFL players are stupid?
Let us have some empathy for the people who live in the underclass of society.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
The issue is that the data can't be conclusive unless you have an issue where you took two groups of people, gave them the same economic starting point, gave them the same systemic disadvantage, same opportunities and then could make a determination as to whether or not it has anything to do with culture.
Or you could easily look into the fact that economically there is a long history of repressing people of color and that systemic collection of repressions them still exist leading to the exact outcome expected, but still blame those people for "not picking themselves up by their bootstraps". It's as though you haven't seen Trading Places.