Cable TV sports giant ESPN is teetering on the edge of financial collapse after 11.5 million mostly Republican subscribers canceled subscriptions, disgusted with the sports broadcaster’s hard-left political provocations.
ESPN announced 100 layoffs recently, including letting go a number of high-profile broadcasters, as the financial punishment began to hit. The forecast is not looking good from this point.
What is happening with ESPN, and why is it important? As Clay Travis of the sports website Outkick the Coverage explains, the main ESPN business plan, the one that brings in the most revenues to the firm, is doomed to near-extinction, and there is nothing ESPN can do about it. Writes Travis:
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In recent times ESPN has lost 11,346,000 subscribers according to Nielsen data.
If you combine that with ESPN2 and ESPNU subscriber losses this means that ESPN has lost over a billion dollars in cable and satellite revenue just in the past five years, an average of $200 million each year. That total of a billion dollars hits ESPN in the pocketbook not just on a yearly basis, but for every year going forward.
It’s gone forever.
American consumers simply do not appreciate a sports channel preaching hard-left politics. It sticks in the craw. Even Democrat subscribers have complained that ESPN has lost the plot. Continues Travis:
ESPN is losing 10,000 subscribers every day so far in 2017. In the past six years they have lost 13 million subscribers and that subscriber loss is escalating each year. That’s billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Every year for the next five years ESPN is spending more and bringing in less. You don’t have to be Warren Buffett to see that’s a business problem.
Travis gets to the heart of the matter, and it isn’t pretty for ESPN:
ESPN is spending over eight billion dollars on sporting rights this year and by 2021 I believe they will be losing money regardless of how many people they fire. ESPN can’t fire employees into profitability. It’s just not possible. These firings are going to become a yearly thing and they still aren’t going to prevent the business from dying.
Liberals deep within ESPN have politicized and destroyed the once proud sports channel. If the powerful reaction of their audience doesn’t wake them up from their delusions, they soon won’t have an audience, or a business, at all.
