Sports Channel ESPN continues to hemorrhage subscribers since they decided to be a far left channel that sometimes airs sports.
ESPN lost another 2 million subscribers in fiscal year 2018.
Since 2011 ESPN has lost 14 million subscribers — or one-seventh of its subscriptions!
ESPN reported:
Yesterday Disney announced in its yearly 10K filing that ESPN lost another two million subscribers in fiscal year 2018.
ESPN now has 86 million subscribers, down from over 100 million subscribers in 2011.
Now the positive for ESPN is that the rate of subscriber decline seems to have slowed this year, but the negative is that since 2011 ESPN has now lost 15 million cable and satellite subscribers. Those 15 million lost subscribers equate to $1.44 billion a year in lost yearly revenue that ESPN will never be able to book. (This is based on an $8 a month subscriber cost for ESPN multiplied by 12 months in the year.) Again, this isn’t just a one time yearly revenue loss, this is a loss in yearly revenue forever.
Now every cable and satellite channel is losing subscribers — as dumb Twitter users who don’t read this article will immediately respond in my mentions — but the impact disproportionately impacts ESPN for two reasons: 1. the network makes far more in revenue off the cable bundle than any other channel so it stands to lose, by far, the most off the collapsing business model and 2. the network has guaranteed tens of billions in sports rights fee payments over the next decade and more to sports leagues.
