I’m not sure how right he is.
I think it had more to do with the de-bundling of cable services and ESPN now being carried as a Premium Channel by most providers. In addition to that, ESPN is offered at an exorbitant rate compared to other Premium Channels.
For instance, if you were paying $20 a month for let’s say, channels 30-45 and one of those channels was ESPN, $6 of that $20 was because of ESPN. De-bundle that and go to ala carte pricing and millions of people that have NO interest in ESPN regardless of what they were talking about, dropped the channel.
It hurt Disney’s stock price the exodus was so great. Now, couple that with what the author mentions too, and I’m sure it plays a part. But I think $$ is the biggest factor.
And they paid very handsomely for rights to broadcast various sports. Probably overpaid.
For a long time, ESPN was seen as the bulwark that kept people from cutting the cord, but eventually even they couldn’t stop it. The fact is that millennials don’t care about sports. Compounding the problem is that ESPN has spent a lot of money buying the television rights to a lot of sports, and with the revenues falling, there’s no way to recover that money, which is the major source of income to those sports. The next time those contracts come around, you’re going to see a lot less being bid, and a lot of guys who make millions a season are going to be making less.
As noted on twitter, people are paying as much per month for cable (and Net etc) as new car payments or close to it. Some are cutting the cord.