Opinions on the current state of ESPN?
Minus the live sports broadcasts, I’m having a hard time finding any value in ESPN other than SportsCenter and College Game Day, and SportsCenter isn’t what it used to be.
Their website is near useless, anything worth reading is paywalled, and I’m not gonna pay. They can take their ESPN+/insider and shove it. Also, if I have to watch Stephen A. throw another hissy fit I’m going to shoot myself. It’s been a slow steady decline but the bottom has got to be close.
Am I right, or have I been drinking too much this afternoon?
[Ed-S: had to delete the comments and start over]
April 20th, 2020 at 10:07 PM ^
Mods still exist?!
April 20th, 2020 at 10:34 PM ^
The ESPN thread got more political than the others? Who saw that coming.
April 20th, 2020 at 10:21 PM ^
I mean the big allure of sportscenter back in the day was that it was a hub of all sports news and events. Then the internet got big and ESPN/Sportscenter could hold on to their market position for only so long as the market got saturated with sports news/coverage, particularly niche sites that catered to a specific sport/team.
With regard to paywalls... historically, journalism was always subscription based and paid, not free. Online news started out free as competition to paid journalism, with online ad revenues covering the cost. As print journalism went away, ad placements became more competitive, and ad blockers became more prevalent, causing more paywalls to form.
It's really analogous to most other big media companies, swap out sports for politics and you could make a similar argument for most political sites/networks.
Oh yeah, I also think you just don't like Stephen A. *shrugs*
April 20th, 2020 at 10:39 PM ^
I agree with this take. I find a lack of content and not takes. Male version of US weekly. For example, I believe it was a first take(doesn’t matter) the topic was: would Brady have won 6 Super Bowls without Belichak?
maybe I am too much of a fact guy, but me and the guy at the bar can have the same debate with the same outcome...no skill, analytics necessary
end of rant
April 20th, 2020 at 11:26 PM ^
I deleted the app a month ago. But I'll probably reinstall it whenever team sports resume.
April 20th, 2020 at 11:31 PM ^
Just get the Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+ bundle and stop whining.
You get all the stuff online, you get everything streamed. The Disney stuff and Hulu (w/ ads).
Or cry about it some more.
I’m going with option C
Wish I could have been here when the bomb went off. I have no idea what got said, but It’s disheartening that a post on a sports blog about sports related content would turn into a political dumpster fire.
Things were going fine the first 50 comments or so. Some people agreed with me, others did not, but I expected that because I asked for your opinions. It’s my personal belief that whoever took this post and twisted into a political ridden shit show to the point that the comments had to be wiped, should face the ban hammer.
Back to sports related content,
On Stephen A., his endless rants are tiresome, they started out as entertaining but have become quite stale over the years and distracts from any true journalistic talent he has.
I think it's similar to what happened with national news, it became all opinion and random obscure stats to back up points, ie: "the only player to score 32 points and have 12 rebounds in 20 straight games" (WTF cares??) During a football season, you turn on ESPN, and across all their platforms, they have "experts" which are overwhelmingly great college players with little or no pro success prognosticate without clearly watching a majority of the games. And the week ends, the game is played...they are typically wrong. Then they do the exact same for the following week. One thing I enjoy about Cowherd is that he owns his shit. Every Monday he goes over things he was right and wrong about. I would love to see more people do the same in the sports industry.
I think also the content is stale. Once the reality tv craze hit sports, it's all talking heads. Around the Horn was creative, and PTI..there was nothing on tv like those shows. And ESPN decided to make their entire broadcast, basically versions of those shows using people who aren't good at pretending to be unbiased.
Has been declining for years long before Covid-19. Only watch live events and some of the "30" features.
ESPN is not relevant under the circumstances. They will get a blip on covering the NFL draft and then back to slumber. At least FS1 airs some vintage NASCAR races but also in the same boat as ESPN.
Fragmentation has allowed other networks that did not exist (Longhorn, Big Ten, etc) 15-20 years ago to buy rights, spreading live events - which draw better ratings than studio shows - across a wider landscape. As this happened over the past 15 years, they failed to continue to produce highly charismatic anchors that drew viewership (Patrick/Olbermann/Mayne/Scott/Eisen/Berman/Cohn), and in the 1990's dramatically captured the zeitgeist of sports and humor without taking themselves too seriously. There was poor top-executive leadership as they lost their corner of the sports market.
I'd agree with the OP that there's not much use for ESPN or Sportscenter beyond live games and Gameday. And thankfully no one with brain worms has entered this thread with LOL ITS CUZ OF THE LIBS