ESPN in Cost Cutting Mode
I have often speculated what will happen to the Big Boys in college sports if anything happened to the escalating TV revenue they are now getting, and have built into their operating model. The old Ewing line "We make a lot of money, but we spend a lot too."
The Big 10 is in line for a new deal, and all expectations are for a big time contract. They probably will, but maybe not all from ESPN.
Interesting article on ESPN.
A couple quotes from the article.
"The company, majority owned by Walt Disney Co., has lost 3.2 million subscribers in a little over a year, according to Nielsen data, as people have “cut the cord” by dropping their cable-TV subscriptions or downgraded to cheaper, slimmed-down TV packages devoid of expensive sports channels like ESPN."
"The financial stakes are especially high for ESPN because it earns the most carriage fees of any TV channel, about $6.61 a month per subscriber, according to SNL Kagan."
That translates to a loss of over $21 million per month, or almost $254 million per year for ESPN. If the "cut the cord" trend continues this could be really interesting to follow. It will affect the Big 5 conferences the most, as the rest are all used to competing at a financial disadvantage.
http://www.wsj.com/article_email/esp...MjEzMDkxMjAwWj