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Bill Simmons Says ESPN Blew It By Not Embracing Tech (cnbc.com) 120

Posted by msmash from the trouble-in-paradise dept.
An anonymous reader shares an article: ESPN's problem isn't competition over content: They didn't position themselves for a future where cord cutting was a reality, according to former ESPN personality Bill Simmons. "They didn't see a lot of this coming," said Simmons. "They didn't see cord cutting coming. They weren't ready for it. A lot of decisions were made based on subs staying at a certain level. They had to realize they were a technology company. The ones winning are now Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Hulu. ESPN should have been in that mix, but they're in Bristol. They should have had a place in Silicon Valley. That was their biggest mistake." ESPN is far from over, Simmons points out. Though it may make less money in the future, it has such strong cable deals, he said. "Everybody in here was paying $7 for ESPN whether they watched or not," he said. Simmons left ESPN in May 2015 after a public breakup, and signed a deal for an HBO series called "Any Given Wednesday" shortly after. The HBO show was cancelled in November 2016. Simmons also launched a new website called The Ringer in 2016. Also read Bloomberg's profile of executives at the company: ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It.
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Bill Simmons Says ESPN Blew It By Not Embracing Tech More

Bill Simmons Says ESPN Blew It By Not Embracing Tech

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  • ESPN was a primary contributor to cord-cutting (Score:4, Informative)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:25PM (#54520109)
    Of the ~$28/month that cable companies pay for their basic basket of content, over $8/month goes to ESPN and neither the cable company nor end customer has a say in the matter.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Well, the customer does have a say in it, in that they discontinue subscribing to traditional pay-TV. They cut the cord.

      ESPN's foolishness was expecting the forced gravy-train to run forever, especially in the face of ever-growing costs to the consumer for subscription combined with other means of accessing content generally. Why should a customer pay close to a C-note a month for only a few networks that they actually want to watch? Why should a customer pay lots of money to access old reruns from broad

      • Well, the customer does have a say in it, in that they discontinue subscribing to traditional pay-TV. They cut the cord.

        I'm pretty sure that was exactly JoeyRox's point.

        It was certainly part of the reason we dumped that cable tier - we were spending roughly $65/month just for the privilege of watching the local baseball team and, occasionally, Food Network or Cartoon Network. I hadn't watched ESPN in years - I used to love the channel back in the 80s and 90s, but they've mostly stopped broadcasting actual games and have moved to the "talking jock head commentary show" format.

        ESPN isn't the only sports network which doesn't u

    • Yep, this tax was the primary reason I discontinued my Dish Network. I already had Netflix, threw in Hulu, Pandora and Prime into the mix (and now youtube red), and I still pay less than I did back then. I have more to watch than I can ever get to.

      The only thing I was disappointed to give up (back then) were the news channels, and now you couldn't pay me to watch that miserable nonsense.

  • ESPN Has Seen the Future of TV and They're Not Really Into It.

    Then fade away into the scrapheap of tech history along with cable. No one is going to miss you, no one owes you a living. There's a whole generation coming up that's never even heard of you.

    Funny how cable seems to see itself as so much more self-important than it really is.

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DickBreath ( 207180 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:34PM (#54520187) Homepage
      In the past, I wanted cable tv without ESPN.

      Now I want internet service without cable tv.

    • Funny how cable seems to see itself as so much more self-important than it really is.

      The cable companies spent a lot of time and a lot of money manipulating both local and national politicians into giving them de-facto local monopolies across the US... then the world completely changed underneath their feet. They're still in shock / denial.
       

  • I'm more interested in the long term affects of how this is going to trickle down into affecting higher "education" budgets.

    Back in the day people flocked to football games because it was seemingly the only thing to do. They graduated and continued watching their home team. Now there are multiple different events that students can participate in and follow. I had friends that skipped Homecoming to go to the LoL championships.

    I think that NCAA Football and the NFL is in for a rude awakening as their profits

  • The key quote in the summary... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweilo8888 ( 921799 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:44PM (#54520269)
    is this one: "Everybody in here was paying $7 for ESPN whether they watched or not."

    And that's precisely why I will never, ever watch ESPN, nor any sport it signs a deal with -- even if they subsequently leave ESPN. I've lived in the USA for a bit over 18 years now, and paid for cable or satellite TV for all of that time. Let's assume that $7 figure applies for the whole of that time, and does so in 2017 dollars (so in then-dollars it was some much lower sum). I think that's a pretty safe assumption, and it says I've personally paid US$6,700+ into the pockets of ESPN and its affiliated sports, yet I've watched maybe between five and ten minutes of ESPN in the last couple of decades. At around US$900/minute, that's hands-down the most expensive entertainment of my life.

    And it's also why I will never renew my cable or satellite TV subscription until a la carte is a thing. Nor will I sign up for any online service which doesn't either offer a la carte options, or which focuses solely on programming *I* am interested in. The likes of YouTube TV et al. which simply carry over these awful deals into the internet age hold no interest for me.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by pj2541 ( 600359 )
      Dude, buy a calculator! 18 years times twelve months times 7 dollars a month is $1,512. Where did you get $6,700? Did you think they were charging by the week?
      • Yes, brain fart and I typed it into the calculator as weeks because my mind was somewhere else. Thanks for the correction.

  • Ahhh yes, when business forgets it's core. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ai4px ( 1244212 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:45PM (#54520277)

    Let's see.... MTV used to play music videos, then got into reality tv. The weather channel used to have a person standing in front of a radar map, not you have to watch 10 minutes of "storm stories" to get your local weather. And ESPN forgot it was a sports network. In another industry, McDonalds seems to have forgotten it's core customer as well.... people wanting FAST food. If we wanted GOOD food, we wouldn't be here. Long gone are the days of walking into McD's and seeing what was on the line and getting that and getting out. They prefer just in time production model which makes we wait for a cheese burger behind the person who wanted a cheese burger w/o cheese and extra mustard. Like so many maturing companies, they have lost their direction.

    • Next you would be wistfully recalling the good old days on the Penna Turnpike with Howard Johnson burgers...
    • Music dropped in popularity as home video, video games and 24/7 TV ate away at people's free time (longer work hours in bad economies didn't help). Folks had more places to get the weather and didn't need that guy and his radar map as much so ratings fell. Minimum wage went up (marginally, but up all the same) and the cost of food shot way up pushing McDonald's into the fast casual market whether they wanted to or not. ESPN's in the same boat as music: fighting for attention.

      There's been a lot of changes

    • Let's see.... MTV used to play music videos, then got into reality tv.

      Thing is, in this example and probably the most, that their change ends up making them more money. Reality TV had less costs and brought in more viewers and money for MTV than playing music videos even if they were a juggernaut in the music industry. In many cases, providing easily digestible media content to the general population pays better than their core business of niche media.

  • If ESPN went OTT then all systems then get the right to move it to sports packs / hbo like pack / drop it on the spot. If they lose being forced into basic then they will lose subs big time.

  • Blew it like... (Score:3)

    by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @03:55PM (#54520357)
    Microsoft giving tablets to the NFL and the broadcasters kept calling them iPads throughout the games?

  • ESPN blew it because of reliance on bundling (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @04:00PM (#54520389)
    Technology had little to do with it. ESPN blew it for business reasons. They relied upon the forced bundling of ESPN with the other Disney channels to assure that ESPN would get its $9 per subscriber fee, even if the subscriber did not want ESPN. Without the forced bundling of ESPN with Disney and ABC (you want Disney channel, well then you also need to carry ESPN), ESPN cannot survive because of the expensive content contracts that ESPN has on the books.

    .
    The forced bundling made ESPN complacent about costs, and now ESPN is the most expensive cable channel, by a long shot. Many people no longer want to pay for ESPN. Talk about killing the goose that lays the golden eggs... that is ESPN's problem. Pure business greed,.

  • Didn't embrace users (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ESPN should have been in that mix, but they're in Bristol. They should have had a place in Silicon Valley.

    No, no, no. Nothing against Silicon Valley, but they don't need to be there. Nobody really does, except maybe some infrastructure people.

    ESPN rejected tech because they were rejecting basic ideas like fairness and customers' desires. They were getting paid by non-users, so why should they think about the users? So they didn't. Their entire outlook on sales is to score bundling deals, to avoid the marke

  • Disney knows this. They've got a huge library of content, and love it when you consume it in different formats. They don't care if you buy it online, stream it, VHS, DVD, laser disc etc. Netflix and Amazon know this and adapted as demonstrated by their switch to original programming.

    Notice how the VHS tape manufacturers are suffering or the companies that manufacture DVD discs? Technology changes and boom, nobody is buying VHS tapes any more.

    BUT we're still watching disney films, and watching sports. E

  • Which is disappointing because ESPN started as seeing a niche that could be filled and exploited (lack of Sports programming for non-major events). It's just what happens when you become overly-bloated and complacent.
    • In the very early days, they didn't have much big-name stuff, so they tended to air the offbeat sports that were inexpensive to get the rights to. You could watch Australian Rules Football or Sumo wrestling, and it was kind of entertaining for a change of pace. But now it is all the big $$$ crap. And if there isn't a game on, you have a bunch of idiots bloviating about sports just to fill time until some game actually starts. It is probably the case that you could use AI to come up with a bot that just

  • Huh? (Score:2)

    by NetNed ( 955141 )
    Tech? What? ESPN blew it when they decided to push political propaganda on its audiences. I turn on sports to see sports, hear sports, and escape the pc garbage on most other channels. They were thinking they will dictate what the audiences will watch

  • Not the least of which was injecting political commentary every chance they got. Oh, and you know, not really showing "all-sports, all the time" anymore. Their base tuned out, and here they are. No sympathy from me, and no amount of tech can save you when you essentially give the middle finger to your bread and butter.

  • If you look at the average cable bill, a good chunk of it is just for the royalties for ESPN. And ESPN insists that it not be a premium channel - they want *everyone* to have it, and they want everyone to pay. And to top it off, they keep paying astronomical sums of money for the broadcast rights to all sorts of dumb things, and how do they make it back? By jacking the fees that the rest of us pay. If they want to take ESPN and make it a streaming service that you sign up for if you want it, I would be
  • I would consider paying $7 a month to be able to stream ESPN channels over broadband. ESPN missed an opportunity and now they have been forced to cup personalities to address lost revenue due to cord cutting.
  • They cancelled Simmons' Any Given Wednesday. Damn, was actually a pretty good show when he had the correct guests.

  • Bristol, Silicon Valley, whatever....it doesn't matter. Yes, ESPN messed up and there is still time to correct the ship because they still are the leader in US sports broadcasting. But location doesn't matter when you're setting up an online presence.

  • As ignorant as hillary with what happened. (Score:3)

    by will_die ( 586523 ) on Wednesday May 31, 2017 @09:07PM (#54522401) Homepage
    ESPN can complain about whatever but the main thing is they are in trouble because people don't want to watch them and when you ask a large portion of those people they make comments along the line of having to suffer through the political garbage they keep bringing up.
    For example and why the subject, ESPN was in the background at work and one of the show started to talk about hillarys speech from yesterday.
  • when they drastically changed their web site into one of those annoying infinite scrolling sites with stupid videos all over the place.

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