Would you pay $36.30 for ESPN?

[icedavis]

Quite a bit of football happens on ESPN and a la carte TV is

I thought this appropriate to post.

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/07/espn-ala-carte-price-unbundle-unbundling-price-per-month-hbo

As the world of unbundling and a la carte cable seems to be drawing closer and closer, sports fans will have an interesting decision to make: How much is ESPN worth to them?

While everybody who has cable, from the biggest sports diehards to someone who can’t tell Peyton Manning from LeBron James, pays the same $6.10 in subscriber fees now, an unbundling would raise the price of the network, as all that free money from those non-sports folks would disappear. How much would you have to pay per month? Michael Nathanson, of MoffettNathanson Research, told Forbes that $36.30 is his projected number. That’s about $435 per year for Chris Berman.

The rest of the article breaks down each of the top sports and what the author believes is each fan base's ability to go without the network.

Naturally people are gonna say that any number is "too much" because they don't truly think about what the item is actually worth to them.

Considering all of the big production they do (airing of the various sports, putting on events like the ESPYs, SportCenter and News Shows, special feature pieces like 30 for 30, Coach 1K or the new 1 to 1 series) down to all of the little side or not-as-noticed production items (mobile app, Grantland and similar web publishings, gamecasts, web streaming, as well as staffing for big and small production pieces)...and how much of that content you consume...

What is ESPN worth to you?

Personally, I don't watch all that much of the primary daily content. I mostly just check scores on the app, only watch a couple handfuls of college basketball and college football games or the 30 for 30s type specials. Surprisingly though, there is still a relatively high value to me for those things considering the infrequent usage I get out of it. Is it worth $36 per month to me? Probably not but not far off HBONow, which I hardly care for even though I think they have some pretty high value programs.

 

[onlyHskrfaninIL]

this include all their networks I'm assuming?

 

[icedavis]

The author assumes that and I would have to assume that as well. I would think that they would get raked over the coals if subscribers had to pay for each individually.

 

[Dagerow]

It depends of the time of year. I pay a lot for Big 10 Network when during its college football season, but apart from college football season, I wouldn't pay much.

 

[Redux]

I would MAYBE pay for it once I figured out when Nebraska might play on their networks.....or just go to a bar.

 

[Mierin]

Not for a full year. I'd maybe have it from September - January. Right now I don't have any cable.

 

[zoogs]

I just care about live TV -- and only a few sports, really. Sling is already $20/mo and gets you ESPN, among other things.

I'd want to watch Nebraska games, NFL games, and international soccer (which happens rarely enough that I don't think it'd figure into the equation). Really doubt I will ever have to spend approaching $400/yr on that.

If I do have to, I'll either decide it's worth it, or tune out. There's plenty of entertainment out there, and other things to do.

 

[ColoradoHusk]

ESPN's executives have been under a lot of fire lately from their bosses at Disney. ESPN is constantly trying to cut costs in an effort to bring in the profits the parent company wants to see. There were a number of layoffs a year or two ago, and ESPN hasn't renewed the contracts of Bill Simmons and Keith Olberman in the past couple of months.

When I am at home, the only reason I really watch ESPN anymore is for the live games, and the occasional 30 for 30. I will turn on SportsCenter out of habit, but I end up turning it after a few minutes because they rarely show true sports highlights.

 

[VectorVictor]

I just care about live TV -- and only a few sports, really. Sling is already $20/mo and gets you ESPN, among other things.

This is why I don't think the analysis done was entirely correct or spot-on. Plus, there are channels (e.g. SEC Network, Longwhorn Network) that people wouldn't want, which would be decidedly more expensive than generic ESPN/ESPN2/ESPN 8: The Ocho due to their specialized nature. Nixing those from the bundle brings the price down considerably.

On a related note, I'd love to cut the cord, especially since ESPN has Sling TV now and will have a stand-alone subscription service soon. But until BTN comes out with a Roku/XB1/PS4 app to where you can subscribe and use their app to watch live programming...I'll have to stick with overpriced cable providers.

 

[Mavric]

I just care about live TV -- and only a few sports, really. Sling is already $20/mo and gets you ESPN, among other things.

This is why I don't think the analysis done was entirely correct or spot-on. Plus, there are channels (e.g. SEC Network, Longwhorn Network) that people wouldn't want, which would be decidedly more expensive than generic ESPN/ESPN2/ESPN 8: The Ocho due to their specialized nature. Nixing those from the bundle brings the price down considerably.

On a related note, I'd love to cut the cord, especially since ESPN has Sling TV now and will have a stand-alone subscription service soon. But until BTN comes out with a Roku/XB1/PS4 app to where you can subscribe and use their app to watch live programming...I'll have to stick with overpriced cable providers.

I'm pretty interested in Sling. If I could get BTN, I might go with just that.

 

[VectorVictor]

I just care about live TV -- and only a few sports, really. Sling is already $20/mo and gets you ESPN, among other things.

This is why I don't think the analysis done was entirely correct or spot-on. Plus, there are channels (e.g. SEC Network, Longwhorn Network) that people wouldn't want, which would be decidedly more expensive than generic ESPN/ESPN2/ESPN 8: The Ocho due to their specialized nature. Nixing those from the bundle brings the price down considerably.

On a related note, I'd love to cut the cord, especially since ESPN has Sling TV now and will have a stand-alone subscription service soon. But until BTN comes out with a Roku/XB1/PS4 app to where you can subscribe and use their app to watch live programming...I'll have to stick with overpriced cable providers.

I'm pretty interested in Sling. If I could get BTN, I might go with just that.

From what I've seen (my BFAM has it) it works well, but it's uneven--some channels allow for the Cloud DVR service, some have On-Demand, some have both, and some have neither. Would like something to be a little more universal in terms of service (e.g. all on-demand, all cloud-DVR).

But streaming pic quality is great. And they're running a promotion right now where if you prepay, you get a free Roku 3 or Amazon Fire Stick.

EDIT: I lied. They've changed their promotion, and now it's 50% off a Roku 3 or Nexus Box, or a free Roku Streaming Stick if you prepay three months in advance. Still a good deal if you're looking to get a Roku 3, at any rate.

 

[knapplc]

I just care about live TV -- and only a few sports, really. Sling is already $20/mo and gets you ESPN, among other things.

This is why I don't think the analysis done was entirely correct or spot-on. Plus, there are channels (e.g. SEC Network, Longwhorn Network) that people wouldn't want, which would be decidedly more expensive than generic ESPN/ESPN2/ESPN 8: The Ocho due to their specialized nature. Nixing those from the bundle brings the price down considerably.

On a related note, I'd love to cut the cord, especially since ESPN has Sling TV now and will have a stand-alone subscription service soon. But until BTN comes out with a Roku/XB1/PS4 app to where you can subscribe and use their app to watch live programming...I'll have to stick with overpriced cable providers.

I'm pretty interested in Sling. If I could get BTN, I might go with just that.

I haven't had cable since January and I haven't missed it. If Sling adds BTN, I'll get that and forget about cable forever.

 

[Scratchtown]

In a perfect world. I need the ESPN networks, BTN, and Pac12 Network, (For Oregon's patty cake games) Fox Sports Networks, and that's it during College Football season. After football. I don't watch any television till the NCAA wrestling championships are on ESPN.

I can do without March Madness, and I already subscribe to MLB.tv, so no need to MLB network or television during that time.

 

[Red Five]

Here is a interesting article on the "espn bubble".

Basically says that espn is already feeling the pressure due to cable subs going down. And they are screwed if cable goes the unbundling route.

Here is a small piece of it:

So if people start cord cutting -- the catch all term for individuals who decide they'd rather not pay for a cable or satellite subscription -- ESPN has by far the most to lose of any channel in the country. ESPN has become the most powerful sports company in the world because just about every single cable and satellite subscriber in the country pays in excess of $6 a month for ESPN. That's despite the fact that only 20% of cable and satellite subscribers would be willing to pay for standalone ESPN according to a 2013 Needham and Company report. As a result, four years ago ESPN netted somewhere in the neighborhood of $7.2 billion a year in subscriber fees when the network boasted 100 million cable and satellite subscribers. But something alarming has taken place in the past four years, the Wall Street Journal reported last week that ESPN has lost over 7 million subscribers. Even more alarmingly, the pace of cord cutting is accelerating, the past year alone has seen ESPN lose over 3 million subscribers. That means in the past four years ESPN's subscriber numbers have declined by 10%, driving down revenue projections.

What has ESPN been doing with all this revenue? It's been buying up sports rights. Since these sports rights are the top ratings driver, the working consensus has been that you can never have too many live sporting events. After all, there are only so many games to go around. If you have them, your competitor can't. So buying up rights seems like the safest and most conservative way to protect and grow your business. It's hard to beat ESPN without great live sports programming because most people don't watch sports channels otherwise. (ESPN's top original program is "Pardon the Interruption," which receives around 900,000 viewers a day. That's a tremendously successful program for sports, but it's nothing when you consider that HBO's top program, for instance, "Game of Thrones," receives twenty million viewers. Put simply, ESPN doesn't have much original programming that very many people other than live sporting events. To be fair, no one does. Sports networks have never developed must watch programming other than the games themselves.)

ESPN has been on a buying spree of late pledging $1.9 billion a year to the NFL for Monday Night Football, $1.47 billion to the NBA, $700 million to Major League baseball, $608 million for the College Football Playoff, and hundreds of millions more to the SEC, the ACC, the Big 12 and the Pac 12. At an absolute minimum it would appear that ESPN presently pays out nearly $6 billion a year to sports leagues just in rights fees. The money from those rights fees comes from our cable bills. And, significantly, from tens of millions of people who will never watch a single game on ESPN.

So before it can make a dollar, ESPN has to pay out roughly $6 billion a year to sports leagues. That's every year for a decade or more. When cable and satellite subscriber numbers were staying constant, that was certainly doable, but what happens if those subscriber numbers start to decline? Right now ESPN has 92 million subscribers. What we don't know is this, what would happen if cord cutting eventually drove that number down to, say, sixty million subscribers? Then ESPN would bring in $4.75 billion and owe the sports leagues six billion. (Advertising would also decline in concert with overall revenues. Right now ESPN gets about 25% of its revenue from ad sales. But those ad sales are predicated on being in nearly 100 million homes. As ESPN's reach declines, so does its ad revenue.

 

[icedavis]

I will turn on SportsCenter out of habit, but I end up turning it after a few minutes because they rarely show true sports highlights.

I was just thinking this earlier. It's been driving me crazy lately when they post an article on the website with a video that has little to nothing to do with the article. Stats show that adding that video will draw more clicks but they have really gone down hill by skipping paying for the highlights and trying to add in their own talking head content. This has really driven my interest levels in their articles into the ground. The same goes with their daily tv programming...more talking heads speculating **cough* Chris Broussard **cough** rather than stuff I care about.