ESPN’s decision to insert left wing politics into their coverage of sports is still costing them, big time.They have lost millions of subscribers in the last year and that equals a lot of lost dollars.
Outkick the Coverage reports:
ESPN Loses Two Million More Subscribers In Fiscal 2018
Yesterday Disney announced in its yearly 10K filing that ESPN lost another two million subscribers in fiscal year 2018.
ESPN now has 86 million subscribers, down from over 100 million subscribers in 2011.
Now the positive for ESPN is that the rate of subscriber decline seems to have slowed this year, but the negative is that since 2011 ESPN has now lost 15 million cable and satellite subscribers. Those 15 million lost subscribers equate to $1.44 billion a year in lost yearly revenue that ESPN will never be able to book. (This is based on an $8 a month subscriber cost for ESPN multiplied by 12 months in the year.) Again, this isn’t just a one time yearly revenue loss, this is a loss in yearly revenue forever.
Now every cable and satellite channel is losing subscribers — as dumb Twitter users who don’t read this article will immediately respond in my mentions — but the impact disproportionately impacts ESPN for two reasons: 1. the network makes far more in revenue off the cable bundle than any other channel so it stands to lose, by far, the most off the collapsing business model and 2. the network has guaranteed tens of billions in sports rights fee payments over the next decade and more to sports leagues.
They made a horrible decision and now they’re reaping the negative benefits of it.
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