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.
Would you pay it? That’s a big number for anyone, after all. So, we put ourselves in the shoes of the biggest fans of various individual sports to see whether a higher-priced ESPN would be worth it. Fans of some sports would have no problem at all cutting the cord. For fans of others, it’d be impossible. And if you only care about one team and live in that local market, going without ESPN would be a lot easier.
Here are our best guesses as to which fanbases could survive without ESPN and which couldn’t — all with the caveat that this is dependent on your income and, of course, on your ability (or inability) to procure an ESPN3 password from a sucker (like myself) who continues to pay full freight for the network. (Though one would think ESPN would get tougher with that practice in an unbundled world.) We’re also assuming that one price gets you all the ESPNs, because if it’s $36 for ESPN and, say, $18 for ESPN2, then the network is in trouble.
NFL fans
ESPN play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico (left) and analyst Jon Gruden kick off the Monday Night Football broadcast between the St. Louis Rams and the San Francisco 49ers at the Edward Jones Dome in downtown St. Louis. (Photo by Guy Rhodes-USA TODAY Sports)
With over-the-air networks airing more than 90% of games, live viewing wouldn’t necessarily be much of an issue without ESPN. And the NFL Network can give you just as much in terms of talking heads, over-the-top discussions, analysis, draft coverage and highlights of America’s sport and it does it 24/7 as opposed to the 16/7 that ESPN probably does. Monday Night Football is the big loss here, but not necessarily. If your favorite team is playing and you live in the local market (e.g. if the Raiders are on and you live in Oakland) the game is free on an over-the-air network, by rule. But I’m kidding. The Raiders aren’t even good enough for the watered down MNF.
Could an NFL fan live without ESPN: YES
MLB fans
(USA TODAY Sports Images)
America’s (onetime) past time has turned into such a local game, with Yankees fans only wanting to watch the Yankees, Nationals fans only wanting to watch the Nationals and Phillies fans just waiting around for Chip Kelly to screw up this Eagles season, that missing out on ESPN’s mostly excellent baseball telecasts (e.g. the ones without John Kruk) is doable. You’d miss the Home Run Derby, which suddenly turned awesome this year despite the presence of Berman, and one of the two wild card play-in games, but since Fox and TBS air the rest of the playoffs you wouldn’t miss much. But if you like highlights, you’d either need Baseball Tonight, which fluctuates in terms of watchability by the day (show more highlights, stop discussing tomorrow’s games and stop it with the 40 guys on set) or the MLB Network, which would have an unbundled cost of its own. (Same goes for NFL Network, Golf Channel, NBA TV and other individualized sports channels. That might be the bigger issue here: It’ll all be unbundled.)
Could an MLB fan live without ESPN: YES
NBA fans
(USA TODAY Sports)
Last year, ESPN had 75 national telecasts and 34 doubleheaders. (The official 2015-16 television schedule won’t be released until later this summer.) That’s a lot of LeBron, KD, CP3 and James Harden you won’t be seeing. Plus, with a heavy presence in the playoffs, including the airing of the entirety of one of the conference finals, ESPN is tough to miss. TNT and NBATV could sustain you, but unless you’re shelling out for a league pass (which blacks out ESPN games anyway) or are only interested in watching local broadcasts, you need ESPN, especially now that Bill Simmons is nowhere near that pregame show.
Could an NBA fan live without ESPN: NO, UNLESS YOU ONLY CARE ABOUT YOUR TEAM
NHL fans
(Marc DesRosiers, USA TODAY Sports)
Hahahaha. It is possible for ESPN to pay you to carry the channel?
Could an NHL fan live without ESPN: THEY ALREADY DO
College football fans
(Christopher Hanewinckel-USA TODAY Sports)
With nearly every game getting mass exposure somewhere — CBS, NBC, Fox, ABC, CBS Sports Network, etc. — you could survive without ESPN — right up until the College Football Playoffs. Plus, even though the ESPN noon games have become unwatchable of late, ESPN and ESPN2 still show the second-best SEC games of the week (which are better than almost every other game) and, of course, broadcasts College GameDay, the jewel of ESPN’s non-coverage programming. But depending on how Rece Davis does in Chris Fowler’s chair or how long Lee Corso has behind the desk, maybe that won’t be as big a deal anymore. Still, even though Papa Verne and Gary Danielson get you through some of the biggest games, the wall-to-wall coverage on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPN3, SEC Network and ESPN Goal Line makes the network a must-have for fans.
Could a college football fan live without ESPN: NO
Soccer fans
(Getty Images)
The World Cup went to Fox, NBC owns rights to the Premier League and unless you want the stray friendly or are really, really into MLS, there’s no reason to subscribe to ESPN at the moment if the beautiful game is your sport. That’s too bad, as the network’s World Cup coverage last year was one of the best things the network has ever produced.
Could a soccer fan live without ESPN: YES
College basketball fans
(Getty Images)
Last year, while doing Dickie V dirty, ESPN aired 1,600 college basketball games in various forms. There’s no substitute for that, until you get to March. And if you’re a college basketball fan who only cares about the tournament, then you’re not a real college basketball fan.
Could someone who only fills out a bracket live without ESPN: YES
Could a real college basketball fan live without ESPN: NO
Golf fans
(David Cannon/Getty)
ESPN won’t have the British Open much longer (NBC has the rights starting in 2017) and its U.S. Open coverage is gone too (who ever thought they’d miss Chris Berman). So if you can get by watching a few hours of Masters coverage on Thursday and Friday off your computer, you should be just fine.
Could a golf fan live without ESPN: YES
Tennis fans
(Getty Images)
Now that ESPN has first ball to last ball coverage at almost every major (the exception is the French Open, where ESPN still has a presence), ESPN might be most important to a tennis fan. Sure, the lesser events get terrible time slots while others get great coverage on The Tennis Channel (even if the announcing from a studio in Los Angeles is far inferior to the Eurosport commentators actually at the matches) for the big-time stuff, ESPN has made its cord uncuttable.
Could a tennis fan live without ESPN: NEVER
Now that we’ve established a majority of fans, including those of the biggest sport in the country, could live without ESPN, what would be the right price point for an a la carte subscription? ESPN is a luxury, not a need, except for fans of those aforementioend sports.
HBONow is $15 per month. Hulu Plus is $7.99. Netflix, to new subscribers, is $8.99 for streaming. Somewhere in the middle of those is ESPN’s wheelhouse. The HBONow for $15 sounds fine on a per-month basis, but when you multiply for the yearly cost, $180 seems more daunting. Given that HBO tries to attract the highbrow television viewer and ESPN looks more for the common man, $9.99 per month seems like the right price, to be bumped up later to $10.99 or $11.99. But is that doable when the network is shelling out billions in rights fees? Who knows? All we do know is that $36.30 ain’t gonna fly.
