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ESPN -Dead Company walking?


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7 hours ago, wppete said:


YTD -30.26% This is not even arguable. Looks at the chart. 

The stock market has taken a hit but Disney is still turning an impressive profit.  Donald Duck just bought 15,000 shares so it could be a great buying opportunity.

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1 hour ago, Doc Brown said:

The stock market has taken a hit but Disney is still turning an impressive profit.  Donald Duck just bought 15,000 shares so it could be a great buying opportunity.


Ridiculous.  

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11 hours ago, Mc1320 said:

The people running this network thought it was a good idea to put that gasbag A-Rod on their flagship  Sunday Night Baseball broadcast.

 

Same people are trying to shove Robert Griffin III down our throats during football season.

 

He calls college games.  Is that what you mean by these bad men are forcing RG3 on you?

 

Anyway, your personal trauma aside, by many accounts, he's pretty good.  He auditioned for both Fox and ESPN.  Both made him offers.  He went with ESPN.

 

What is your particular problem with this?  Be very specific.

 

 

10 hours ago, wppete said:


YTD -30.26% This is not even arguable. Looks at the chart. 

 

you're conflating stock price with revenue.  

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20 hours ago, Coach Tuesday said:


How do you watch the nfl games?  Once they move to streaming I’m doing exactly what you’re doing but for now I’m stuck with a slimmed-down directv package.

 

Last year, I subscribed to Peacock and Paramount+ each $5.00 a month and was able to watch the NFL games on CBS and NBC. Fox is a little more difficult as it has no streaming service for live tv as far as I know. For that I just do free trials with sling tv or the other cable streaming options, the bills rarely play on fox so its not horribly inefficient. I just cancel the trial after the game.

 

TNF, you can usually get with Amazon Prime and their streaming service. If you don't have Amazon Prime, then you are probably stuck with TV streaming cable packages (basically cable)

 

MNF I believe ESPN+ is 5.99 a month.

 

So for about $28 a month you can get most individual games (except Fox). Hulu, Youtube, Sling TV offer cable packages that offset all of these at once for about $60-70 a month depending on the deal, so basically cable cost. If you want redzone then that is probably the direction you'd want to go.

 

All of the above is far better than cable which after 12 months up their "discount" from $70 to $100+, so I am not sure why some people think its a bad deal. Not to mention, when I had spectrum cable 2 years ago, I didnt get a cable box, so I used the spectrum app and the Bills games were often so pixelated that it was unwatchable. Switched to the CBS app and it worked perfectly. Hopefully they fixed that in the last couple years.

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On 5/29/2022 at 2:09 PM, Brianmoorman4jesus said:

ESPN plus is pretty good. Really helps a lot for sports betting with the NHL and College basketball 

 

Living outside of Buffalo, I've watched more Sabres this past year on ESPN+ than I have in the last 5+ years combined
 

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16 hours ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

 

"Disney+ now stands at 129.8 million subscribers. That’s up from the 118.1 million subscribers it had at the end of the previous quarter, and nearly 35 million more than the 94.9 million subscribers it had a year ago.

 

ESPN+ increased to 21.3 million subscribers, up from 17.1 million the previous quarter, and from 12.1 million from the first quarter of 2021.

 

20 hours ago, Rico said:

You get Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+ in the bundle. I don’t think too many people are buying ESPN+ by itself, but I could be wrong.

 

So I went to the sign up page. You can sign up for ESPN+ by itself, or get it in a bundle with HULU and Disney+.

 

Mr.WEO - I'm aware Disney+ is doing well with new subscribers. I am wondering if the ESPN+ subscription increase was due to bundle subscriptions or stand alone subscriptions? It is possible people want Disney and Hulu and could care less about ESPN+ but get it as part of a better package for the other two subscriptions, especially since Hulu is now streaming sports. It isn't clear if the 17.1 to 21.3 you have repeated is stand alone ESPN subscriptions or include a halo effet from being bundled with other stronger products like Disney+ and Hulu. That was the crux of my question.

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1 hour ago, RocCityRoller said:

 

 

So I went to the sign up page. You can sign up for ESPN+ by itself, or get it in a bundle with HULU and Disney+.

 

Mr.WEO - I'm aware Disney+ is doing well with new subscribers. I am wondering if the ESPN+ subscription increase was due to bundle subscriptions or stand alone subscriptions? It is possible people want Disney and Hulu and could care less about ESPN+ but get it as part of a better package for the other two subscriptions, especially since Hulu is now streaming sports. It isn't clear if the 17.1 to 21.3 you have repeated is stand alone ESPN subscriptions or include a halo effet from being bundled with other stronger products like Disney+ and Hulu. That was the crux of my question.

 

The article lists the increase in the two different products separately so it's assumed those are separate numbers.  

 

Even if it was in the bundle, it would be clear that the subscribers for ESPN content is going up and that this thread is way off target.

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ESPN still does live sports better than anybody.

 

ESPN+ is a great step into the 2020's.  Lots of content and live sports.  They just invented the Manning Cast which is another groundbreaking discovery.  

 

 

As far as channel surfing and watching ESPN?  I dont think I have done that since the early 2000s.  I haven't had cable television in almost 10 years.  I don't really watch anything.  I know people complain about Steven A Smith and hot takes and taking a political side and all that... but if you don't watch it, it shouldn't be a problem.   The world has moved on from a 6 hour loop of Sportcenter every morning being the most interesting thing in the world.

 

 

They certainly have lost a lot of market share now that NBC, Fox, CBS, MLB Network, NFL Network, SEC Network, Fox Sports 2, etc have all jumped into the fray.  ESPN has had trouble adapting a bit, and have made a number of errors for sure.    

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On 5/29/2022 at 11:22 AM, Gugny said:

I think I'd rather listen to ESPN than Dead and Company.

Ah yes, good old Emerson, Stills, Palmer & Nash.

One semester in college I was stuck between dueling neighbors with powerful stereo systems and very different musical tastes.

I woke up every Saturday morning in the middle of a progressive folk-rock nightmare.  Good times.

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I mean I would never listen to Clay Travis, but I think ESPN has taken somewhat of a hit. 

 

I also would agree with others here that ESPN still does live sports really well, even though they've missed on some of their assemblies of broadcasting crews for sure and they've had a lot of changes with their shows and other content. 

 

But you also have to look at the landscape, there's just so many options now and so many ways to stream or "illegally" watch sports, even if they were killing it with all of their changes I'm not sure if their numbers would drastically be up. 

 

 

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On 5/30/2022 at 11:07 AM, SCBills said:


Its both.  A show like First Take was decent, given they refuse to not comment on social issues, when Will Cain was on it with Stephen A.  They legitimately have different world views.  
 

Now that show is just Max Kellerman, now JJ Redick, in agreement with every political take that is debated. 
 

Stephen A and Michael Wilbon almost hyperventilated and fainted when KD attacked Mayor Adams over his covid policy given what was going on with Kyrie.   Why on earth do the sports-watching public need to hear an entire segment devoted to ESPN analysts covid views? ..and of course, those views were all on one side. 
 

This comes across in all their programming.   Not even moderate left leaning people want to be inundated with this when they try to get away by watching sports.  

 

Sometimes you get it in game… Mark Jones types just randomly lecturing the audience in the 2nd Quarter out of nowhere. 
 

Yes.. there is a lack of talent on the network…for sure, but their politicization of sports certainly plays a part. 
 

I’ll watch Bills/Cuse games wherever they are, but if I see an NBA Playoff Game is on ESPN, I’ll probably check out.  If it’s on TNT, I’ll likely tune in.  I don’t care about the teams involved, but TNT is a good product. 
 

 

 

I agree about having people with different world views on those shows. That's part of what's wrong with the news in general is CNN or Fox primarily just put on guests that agree with them so they're essentially just talking to themselves and affirming each other. Although I will say now that I've seen clips of Will Cain on Fox News, his ESPN stuff was only a glimpse into the nut job he really is. 

 

I love the NBA playoffs (I would probably love it in general if I wasn't a Knicks fan) so our views there are probably different, a weaker broadcasting team isn't going to deter me from watching the playoffs. But I do like TNT, especially catching clips of some of the great stuff from their postgame show with Shaq/Barkley/Kenny/Ernie, that team is amazing and hilarious. 

 

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ESPN’s business model once rights fees took off was always the highlights and pundits would produce the money while the sports would break even and be a gigantic ad for the networks. The rights fees are still massive and not making much for the network and the punditry and highlights are declining due to the internet.

 

Sports Center or your local news used to be the only place to catch a game highlight now you can get that online. There is also a lot more punditry options online too. ESPN will survive but it will not be the Golden goose it once was ever again.

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1 hour ago, Mr. WEO said:

 

The article lists the increase in the two different products separately so it's assumed those are separate numbers.  

 

Even if it was in the bundle, it would be clear that the subscribers for ESPN content is going up and that this thread is way off target.

 

Hey WEO I went through their quarterlies and saw that they do count each subscription in a bundle. So if someone gets the Hulu Live TV and VOD service they also automatically get Disney + and ESPN+ in the bundle. Disney reports +1 subscriber for each service included in the bundle. With the growth of Disney + and Hulu in it's many forms I do think ESPN+ is getting a pretty significant lift.

 

Disney also noted that they increased revenues by increasing the price of all of their streaming services except ESPN+. To me it points it is their weakest link. Disney gets $8 per month/ per cable subscriber and gets between $4 - $5 per month/per ESPN+ subscriber. So they need 2:1 streamer for each cable cutter.

 

That said your numbers were verified overall.

 

Disney's quarterlies did not break down subscriptions separately.

 

I do think there is some halo effect, and the loss of viewership on cable for whatever reason (cable cutting and bad programming) is affecting ESPN's revenue, but they are working on capturing it through their streaming service. The OP is overstated from what I can tell.

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