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ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

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Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#71

Post by DrScump »

sandworm101 wrote: post #6
rhino369 wrote: post #2

I think it's a bad assumption to think the NFL will demand more money when ratings and subscriptions are down. ESPN just has to be the highest bidder. Someone has got to air the games.

>> Someone has got to air the games. 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…

  I could see a future whereby teams handled their own streaming
NFL's financial viability depends on the combined, pooled TV revenues. If each team is reduced to parceling out its own TV rights, smaller-market teams simply won't survive. You would see revenue disparities worse than in baseball right now (compare the Dodgers' TV contract with that of the A's or Brewers or DBacks... or, before this season, Houston).

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#72

Post by Feniks »

brian-armstrong wrote: post #27
endtime wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if the highest bidder can't pay the NFL enough to make it worthwhile? 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.

I'm always a little shocked when people admit outrage over kneeling players but don't seem at all concerned that the sport endangers the players' wellbeing. What do you think contributes to this empathy gap?

Empathy is a privilege of the wealthy. NFL is primarily consumed by people working three shifts desperately struggling to keep their life together.

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.

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#73

Post by trowawee »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #51
exelius wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you take the NFL's revenue and it drops by 90% (as I think it will relatively quickly once "TV" ad rates start to come in line with online video -- oh yes, all these issues are related). So the salary range would have to shift to say, $2-3M a year for the top stars and about $200,000 for vets; with rookies making $50k-ish. Sure there would be endorsements, but it wouldn't be the ubiquitous stardom. You're j…

I don't disagree with your assessment on the impact of a reduction in ad spend. Yet I don't agree that how much a player makes impacts the popularity of football. All you have to do is look at college football where the overwhelming majority of athletes are just getting a scholarship. Most fans support a jersey not the person in it.

The highest levels of popularity and fan support in college football are mostly focused on high-level play - i.e. the schools in P5 conferences. Are there rabid fans at lower levels of play? Sure, but it decreases. Far fewer people are lining up to watch North Dakota State play than to watch even lower tier P5 schools like Iowa or Ole Miss, despite NDSU winning five championships in the last six years at the FCS level.

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).

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#74

Post by trowawee »

u801e wrote: post #70
exelius wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think interest in football is waning because the sport is a lot less fun to watch now that we know those bone-crushing hits actually leave guys debilitated for life. And not just in the long-term; Aaron Hernandez should be a wake-up call for the risks of CTE among active players. A broken leg from a sport is one thing, but widespread (something like 95% of former players show signs of CTE) traumatic brain injury is…

> but widespread (something like 95% of former players show signs of CTE) traumatic brain injury is another. Has the popularity of boxing been impacted by this issue?

Boxing went from the most popular sport in the country to being a niche sport. A large part of that was a shrinking talent pool; parents who, in earlier times would have let their kids box prohibited them from doing so. Muhammad Ali's Parkinson's diagnosis was an eye-opener for a lot of people.

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#75

Post by scruple »

trowawee wrote: post #74
u801e wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but widespread (something like 95% of former players show signs of CTE) traumatic brain injury is another. Has the popularity of boxing been impacted by this issue?

Boxing went from the most popular sport in the country to being a niche sport. A large part of that was a shrinking talent pool; parents who, in earlier times would have let their kids box prohibited them from doing so. Muhammad Ali's Parkinson's diagnosis was an eye-opener for a lot of people.

I'd argue that the largest factor in the decline of boxing has been the runaway success of MMA and companies like the UFC, Pride, etc...

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#76

Post by sls »

scruple wrote: post #75
trowawee wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boxing went from the most popular sport in the country to being a niche sport. A large part of that was a shrinking talent pool; parents who, in earlier times would have let their kids box prohibited them from doing so. Muhammad Ali's Parkinson's diagnosis was an eye-opener for a lot of people.

I'd argue that the largest factor in the decline of boxing has been the runaway success of MMA and companies like the UFC, Pride, etc...

Not to argue that point necessarily, but there's been only the one success of significance, the UFC. Pride went out of business 10 years ago and the organization founded to replace it, Dream, went out of business only a few years later. (Pride ended up as a UFC acquisition, as did the WEC, but both of them were foundering and were picked up for their rights - access to fighters and video libraries).

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#77

Post by Zarath »

eru wrote: post #47
kodablah wrote: post #15

This is going to be one of many reasons there might be a lockout in 2020 when it's CBA renewal time. This is going to trickle down to the players. NFL can't continue charging exorbitant access fees which means they will have to request a serious reduction in the salary cap (the owners aren't going to be willing to eat these losses). I think this is great thing as the economics of large sports salaries have been artif…

Those salary caps are really weird. In 'socialist' Europe, we have no cap on football players pay, and the sky doesn't come down.

I think the salary caps are for competitive parity, not for economic reasons. Don't watch European Football, but are the same teams good every year?

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#78

Post by toomuchtodo »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #58
jly wrote: post #49

> But can ESPN exist as a network without NFL games? Yes. It broadcasts 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…

My thoughts exactly. Their problem is that cable TV as a whole has increasingly viable substitute goods. But there's no reason ESPN can't play that same game. I imagine it's only a matter of time before they put together streaming packages they sell direct to consumer. But they'll ride the value revenue till the wheels fall off first.

The problem is ESPN was able to capture an outsized amount of revenue due to cable TV providers bundling it with other channels, so you had large amounts of people paying for it but not consuming it.

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.

Re: ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More

#79

Post by scruple »

sls wrote: post #76
scruple wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that the largest factor in the decline of boxing has been the runaway success of MMA and companies like the UFC, Pride, etc...

Not to argue that point necessarily, but there's been only the one success of significance, the UFC. Pride went out of business 10 years ago and the organization founded to replace it, Dream, went out of business only a few years later. (Pride ended up as a UFC acquisition, as did the WEC, but both of them were foundering and were picked up for their rights - access to fighters and video libraries).

That's very true. I mentioned Pride because it is still easily brand-recognizable to folks who are only vaguely familiar with the sport and because it came from the early days of MMA where it helped propel the sport to the mainstream.
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