ESPN can't afford Monday Night Football any longer

ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More


"But if you think the cable and satellite companies are going to keep paying $7 a month to ESPN without the NFL package, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. This final sentence is hysterical ESPN spin: “Sure, distributors would be aghast, demanding to negotiate lower fees probably immediately, but the point is, there would be negotiations, enabling ESPN to do everything it could to keep those numbers as high as possible.”

Another way to put this would be as follows: ESPN’s business is collapsing so rapidly that they are now trying to figure out which would be more destructive — losing billions on the NFL or losing billions in cable and satellite revenue because they don’t have the NFL."

 

It took Clay this long to realize that it's this, not its politics, that will sink it?

 

So where is the NFL going to replace that $2 billion per year? That's roughly 15% of the league's annual revenue.

 

From the comments:

"Disney will be like Paulie and ESPN will be the restaurant owner in Goodfellas. Can't afford MNF? F**k you, pay me. Business is bad? F**k you, pay me. Studio got hit by lightning? F**k you, pay me. And then finally when you can't borrow another buck from the bank or buy another WNBA contract, you bust the joint out, you light a match."

Cue "Layla".

 

Television and the NFL have each other in a death grip. If one goes, so does the other. Their business relationship is more complex than that post realized. So would be the rules of hopscotch.

 

The article posits that the rights are bought by Facebook, Netflix, some tech who is flush and needs content.

 

The whole model depends on this -- one network, cable or broadcast, is desperate to overpay because nothing it has comes close to the NFL for drawing an audience. NBC was the one before Sunday Night Football. Guaranteed some network would feel the same way about Monday night.

 

Every game on cable that's in a local market also goes to a local broadcast station. Same would happen with those entities.

 

I don't buy it. $2 billion a year for a continual string of Tennessee games.

ESPN fucked up bigtime when they overbid. I don't see someone else doing it.

 

Ragu's post is the complement to mine. NFL has always prospered because of the desperation of its rightsholders. If they go in a different direction, pattern changes. This being TV, I'd bet on the NFL before I'd bet on broadcasters changing their "how do I keep my job until the end of the month?" business model.