Bristol bloodbath

[Brad Beam]

Some 20 on-air names have been let go from da Woildwide Leader….
https://nypost.com/2023/06/30/max-kellerman-keyshawn-johnson-laid-off-as-espn-firings-continue/


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[PGage]

We know that Disney, like other media companies, is determined to cut costs. But some of the big names involved here suggest to me more than just economizing. 

First, ESPN in particular is always likely to fire employees who threaten to become bigger than the brand. 

Second, this kind of feels in part like the cost of over paying for their MNF talent (and of course you can see the argument that, whatever the future of ESPN, the most important jewel in their crown will be a vibrant NFL foothold.)

Third, I wonder if they were trying to hide ongoing dissatisfaction with high profile talent under the fig leaf of budget cutting. Here I am thinking of Jeff Van Gundy. JVG’s act has gotten a bit frayed, and lots of NBA fans love to bash him, but he remained a real signature presence, and was refreshing in that he was willing to challenge NBA rules and initiatives. Even when his ideas were absurd, it was nice to have a presence that punctured the almost fascist devotion to PR that so often characterizes the Association. I wonder if someone highly placed in the NBA let it be know that if ESPN was looking to cut talent costs they would not be displeased if they started with JVG.

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[David Bruggeman]

I follow U.S. sports and sports hot-takeism in a scattershot fashion, but it just seems like teams and companies covering the sports teams are overextended financially and eating their own proverbial tales.

But this doesn't seem like a complete correction, or even an overcorrection, given big deals extended to various football announcers and *some* of the talking heads in this space.  As for the talking heads, I'd be more forgiving if the coverage was much more about the games and less about who said what about whom.

And in the actual playing space, the arms race in both player salaries and television/streaming rights deals strikes this observer as leading to a scenario where an increasingly shrinking number of subscribers will be paying more and more for product that is of inconsistent quality.

But absent a pay-per-view only Super Bowl or similar measure, I think this will continue for some time.  Because people seem to love watching a lot of lousy sports games and paying top dollar for it.

Maybe I'd feel differently if my only experience in a four-sport TV market has been Washington, D.C.

Best,

David

[PGage]

I do think this is just the beginning of ESPN, and other sports TV departments, drastically restructuring their salary costs. ESPN said as much in the announcement, that these cuts were part of a new salary philosophy that would also be informing future salary negotiations. Basic message here: when you send your agent to negotiate your next contract at ESPN, your reference should not be Aikman’s $90 Million, but Van Gundy’s pink slip.

The problem is that, at the same time ratings for linear TV are plummeting, and the cable model for ESPN unsustainable, live sports is becoming even more vital for the survival of linear TV. 

As a sports fan I would love it if the decline of linear TV meant draining sports of a big chunk of the excess money that has unbalanced traditional sporting values, but it seems that any sport whose live telecast can deliver reliable good to great ratings is actually going to be worth more to broadcast and cable networks in the future (at least as long as they survive).

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[Tom Wolper]

The weird part of this is ESPN giving Pat McAfee a wheelbarrow full while they cut back on legacy talent. My view of the situation is they see their current situation as unsustainable as people continue to cut the cord in numbers and their desired demographic doesn’t keep Sports Center and First Take on as background. Plus the 18-34 or even 18-49 look at Wilbon and Kornheiser as dinosaurs.

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[PGage]

To me it is not just absurd but inexplicable. But Mcafee seems to think his shows will be so popular that ESPN’s revenue will increase enough to never have to layoff talent again. So, he is actually savings jobs.

https://deadline.com/2023/07/pat-mcafee-addresses-backlash-espn-layoffs-1235428851/

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[PGage]

Dylan Byers at PUCK News had a helpful piece on this today. One takeaway for me highs perhaps obvious mistake I was making in my analysis, which is that the decline of linear TV, accompanied by downsized profits from streaming, will not put downward pressure on sports licensing fees, because the deep pockets in streaming have other reinforcements at play besides some analog of ratings. ESPN is not not is facing the end of its sweetheart cable deals that forced almost every cable subscriber to pay the equivalent of a monthly streaming service fee even if they never watched the service, but is no longer competing against network sports divisions, but against the largest corporations in the world. The value of the NFL, or the NCAA March Madness Tournament, is not measured in ratings or subscriptions but (as Byers put 

It) the sales of toilet paper and iPhones.

Thomas also makes the point that as much as ESPN needs to financially restructure, unloading the $3M (or whatever it is) that Jeff Van Gundy made is not going to even scratch the surface of the problem. As he writes:

“Notably, the solution here may come down to dealmaking. I have reported in the past that a spin-out was discussed inside the Disney boardroom long before many on the outside realized it. (I was glad to have my reporting confirmed a year later in public commentary from Iger.) Will Disney get spun as its own entity, perhaps with ABC? Will it be sold to private equity? Flipped to Comcast in exchange for part of Hulu, as my partner Bill Cohan has discussed in Puck? Or just managed for leaner times? The answer, of course, is that no one knows, but now everyone in the media is thinking about it. At the very least, it seems everything is on the table.”