The truth, though, is that in the long run ESPN remains the most stable part of the cable bundle: it is the only TV “job” that, thanks to its investment in long-term rights deals, is not going anywhere. Indeed, what may ultimately happen is not that ESPN leaves the bundle to go over-the-top, but that a cable subscription becomes a de facto sports subscription, with ESPN at the center garnering massive carriage fees from a significantly reduced cable base. And, frankly, that may not be too bad of an outcome.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen.
Read the whole post, which post surveys the media landscape. I used to pontificate on the topic, but now I am old and out of touch. The best way to forecast the media business is to observe young people. Years ago, I saw data that showed that young people were subscribing to newspapers at much lower rates than their parents had at similar ages. It was not hard for me to extrapolate from that.
I am surprised by Thompson’s optimistic outlook for sports. I think that pro sports on TV historically worked as a sort of focal point or lowest common denominator in households where the TV is always on in the background. People want something else to do while they’re chatting, so they turn on the game.
Nowadays, the TV is not the universal background noise. People have phones to keep them occupied. If you are going to watch sports, you have to be committed to it, and my sense is that young people are not as committed to sports as they used to be. Gambling on games, including fantasy sports, generates some commitment, but that is more of a niche than the sort of mass market that sports used to represent.
In recent years, when I have gone to baseball games, young people have been discussing homework, taking selfies, and watching the Jumbotron. I wonder if the passion for sports is something that is gradually fading away with the younger generation.
If ESPN is the future of TV, then TV may not have much of a future at all.
I agree.
I suspect sports has reached it high point, but somehow I don’t see it diminishing that much here. (Let us no local team will get the deal like the Dodgers did.) And most kids still play organized sports in the US where they gain interest. Probably the biggest strength of sports is, programming is real time and all the internet sources react to it. Lots of people are now watching with their internet phones and it really easy to follow your team day to day these days.
That said:
1) Your age point is probably true for not just watching but playing. So if less kids are playing golf today then I suspect it drops 20 years from now.
2) Will we see football popularity diminish with the increase understanding of head injuries and the decrease of youth football? Possibly but this stuff has been out 10 years so it is not new. (It may increase popularity of Professional anyway.)
3) Think about the death of Football. (I have heard Baseball for decades and it is still doing well.) We have been hearing about Football death for 20 years and in fact it probably gained popularity and the Super Bowl is still almost a ‘Holiday’ in the US.
4) Sports has another complimentary product that will really protect its popularity: Gambling! That is not going away anytime soon.
In general, it is probably wise to remember that most people are going to work less than the generation before. So any all forms of entertainment will not decrease.
I’m a hockey fan, and the narrative and tension of trying to score goals requires continuous focus. Not something young people do much. The reasons I can’t watch most other sports in the US is the constant interruptions, ads, etc. If I’m watching, I want to WATCH. That makes me pretty old, I guess.
I was thinking of the highlight reel on the evening news when I was younger. Why watch a game hoping to see something exciting, when the internet is basically an infinite highlight reel? Not only that, but on any given day, you’ll find an entirely new SPORT to watch. (Case in point: B-Dubs TV at Buffalo Wild Wings has downhill ice skate races, some kind of firehouse levitation surfing thing, soccer played in giant plastic bubbles, and eleventy-one other weird clips on a loop that changes about once a month. Football is something your grandfather watches.)
Funny you should mention hockey. The sport has quite a following out here in Colorado (pay no attention to the just finished Ave’s season). Participation, too. This weekend they just held the annual 9280 pond hockey competition at Keystone & pulled in almost a thousand players: kids and adults. Lots of girls and women play — which you might not expect.
Here’s a nice video: http://www.9news.com/mb/sports/pond-hockey-at-9280-feet/390590163
(the g’kid shows up at ~2:00, white helmet, dark blue jersey. He lives, eats, and breathes hockey.)
*5280* duh
Sports continually refreshes current content, like news, whereas much entertainment can be queued and binged.
Also, every time we make the mistake of trying to watch non-sports we get punished.
True story: cartoon network had an ad that contains the exact quote “Google porn.”
On the other hand, sometimes it this way, sometimes it’s the other. In a fractionating world, will team loyalty be diluted away also, or will it be the last man standing as one organizing principle that survives?
Quick google brings up an estimate for 25 million fantasy football players for 2013, and 75 million for 2015. Not only is that not a niche, it would also represent insane growth.
I watched 3 drives in one of the playoff games yesterday. What I saw was more commercial time than football, and they were all ads I have seen dozens of times. I do not think I will ever watch another pro game from beginning to end. I will probably watch one quarter of the Superbowl.
Most college football games and almost all bowl games are on ESPN now. Since I won’t buy cable TV, this means I won’t be watching these games live any more. Many of these games make it onto youtube the next day, in “30 minute” format with all the ads and dead time removed. This is perfect.
It probably puts me into a minority, but I’m not going to pay $50 a month so I can watch sports live.
Fantasy leagues are big and currently growing, but surely this will end up feeling contrived? I also think that it leads to a place where you stop being a fan of a team, and start treating the sport as moneyball. I don’t think in the long run this is healthy for sports.
Counterpoint: I am already one of those people Thompson is discussing. Of the $100 a month a pay my TV provider, my internal calculation says the ability to watch live sports is $99 and everything else is worth $1. The omnipresent second screen (normally a laptop, sometimes phone or tablet) is complementary to the TV viewing experience, turning an otherwise solitary pursuit into a social one and filling the otherwise potentially problematic down time (which is probably a bigger problem for in-person attendance rather than home viewership).
Judging by my son and his (male) friends (who are all recent grads), interest in sports really hasn’t waned that much. Certainly we’re not seeing declining interest show up in ticket prices. But I’m not sure continued interest will be enough to keep the cable model going. ESPN is already available ‘over the top’ as a part of the ‘Sling TV’ package and is supposedly working on its own service. But ultimately the leagues may cut the broadcasters out of the deal entirely. You can already get a package from MLB.com that includes streaming access to every baseball game for your favorite team or for the entire league.
May I be so rude as to suggest that what you may be experiencing is your “bubble”? I live in the Boston media market, and here the #1 most popular radio station has a 100% sports talk format. The #2 most popular radio station is of course a competitor, also with a 100% sports talk format. And my personal experience (my “bubble”?) is that for many people passionately following a sports team is signaling behavior for commitment to the local community.
My I be so rude as to suggest that the young people that Mr. Kling refers to don’t listen to the radio (and this may be *why* two sports stations are top ranked).
Sports started abandoning the next generation back in the 70’s, when World Series games started ending after 11PM. When they did that, they were obviously doomed. You have to let the kids learn to love the games.
What’s lagging is viewership on authorized channels. I was raised on broadcast TV. Games were free, paid for by advertising. Pandora and YouTube stream music and entertainment for free. The savvy young know how to get anything they want online for free. Image quality might not always be great, but it beats paying all the extra fees for ESPN, regional college sports networks, and all the other cable channels that carry games. I’d pay maybe up to $10/month for live access to everything ESPN carries, but that deal is not (yet) available. There are other options.
Has anything really happened besides the NFL having an off year in 2016 after years of getting ever stronger? Both the NBA and MLB enjoyed epic 7 game final series between likable teams that went down to the last possible moment.
“Game 7 of the 2016 World Series between the Chicago Cubs and Cleveland Indians saw the highest rating in 25 Years, averaging 40 million viewers and more than 75 million viewers saw all or part of the game.[1]”
Live sports will be the last big reason for TV, rather than saved for convenience.
There might even be expansion to special smaller big Screen local movie theaters for championship games.
For those who get emotional about the outcome, nothing beats watching the game, ads & all. I don’t think the “too many ads” is yet on the declining with more ads Laffer curve of revenue, tho it’s pretty close to the expected peak.
But my kids, two already going to college, don’t play organized sport and don’t watch. They DO play esports (League of Legends, perhaps most watched esport), and sometimes watch live altho more often saved.
The lower average number of participants will be balanced by greater hours of those watching for many sports for a few years. And Hockey is more likely to graduate to a spot in the expanded Top 4, rather than MLB drop out leaving Football & Basketball as a Top 2 — tho this might depend on how the counting is done.