The Rise and Fall of ESPN’s Leverage
stratechery.com
Charting ESPN’s rise, including how it build leverage over the cable TV providers, and its ongoing decline, caused by the Internet.
  • Klystron
    2·
    1 year ago

    Pretty cool and in depth read. Thanks for posting it.

  • reddig33@lemmy.worldOP
    1·
    1 year ago

    This is a long article, and I don’t agree with everything in it (I think bundles are horrible for the consumer for example) but:

    The important point seems to be that the power has shifted. Charter doesn’t need ESPN to retain customers anymore — they’re in the ISP business now, and cable TV is dying anyway. If everyone canceled the TV part of their cable bill tomorrow, Charter would still make money.

    It’s similar to the Frontier article posted earlier — demands from providers like ESPN are just going to speed up cable providers pointing customers to digital solutions like YouTubeTV, and no longer carrying cable channels.