I find it amazing that ESPN is in such financial trouble yet they send Jesse Rodgers on every road trip with the Cubs. Freedell travels with the Bulls as well. I'm sure it's similar in other markets as well.

The SCORE doesn't have their beat guy travel with the teams. In fact, it's just Shuester. He covers all the teams.

those costs are a pittance compared to idiotic annual fees like 1.9 billion/yr for garbage MNF games.

that's why ESPN is broke. not Jesse's delta flight to Cincinnati.

And because of all the unsubs. Less than a month left for me being a cable subscriber!!

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

ESPN is gonna fire all their excellent reporters and replace them with more talking heads with hot takes. Might as well just go back to the old days. Nothing but sports highlights all day.

Sarah Spain and Sam Ponder picked a bad time to try to sabotage a show at the expense of their own company. So long you aging talentless hacks. They will be replaced by better looking, cheaper, and more talented versions of themselves poached from NESN or YES.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

That is $1.9 Billion for games which can't be flexed (NBC pays 1/2 that for Sunday night and gets to flex games)

ESPN's model could work if they didn't spend all of their energy and resources bidding against themselves to drive up the TV rights bubble. They spent the last decade driving up their own costs because they thought people would always have cable.

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“When I walked in this morning, and saw the flag was at half mast, I thought 'alright another bureaucrat ate it.'" - Ron Swanson

they could save money by not making more 30 for 30 docs about college football no one but territorial savants give a shit about

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'Your AT&T Universal Card has arrived'? Oh God, Kick-fucking-ass, I got a Master Card! I don't believe it, man. Life is kinda cool sometimes.

Probably right but the one about SMU was good as was the one about Miami. I haven’t seen a bunch of 30 for 30 episodes though as I don’t watch much ESPN anymore.

Agreed

Many of the 30 for 30 episodes have been excellent. SMU, Miami, 9.79, The Two Escobars, and the Jim Valvano were all excellent and stand out in my mind. The Valvano one on the '83 title with all the former players sitting around a table at a restaurant telling stories was fantastic. I haven't watched any of the recent one but I would bet they are interesting.

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Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.

at what point does Disney spin off ESPN into a separate corporate entity so they can declare bankruptcy and tear up and renegotiate their impossible to sustain contracts with NBA/NFL.

Or replaces regular hosts with Disney charterers....

Coming up on the 6 with Huey, Duey, & Luey...NFL news and notes by your pal Goofy! Plus an in depth look at women in sports with Daisy Duck and Clarabelle Cow

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@audioidkid

The 30 for 30 franchise is about the only good thing ESPN has produced in the last 15 years.

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ESPN takes in 7 billion or so in subscriber fees annually, the idea they would declare bankruptcy as a stand alone entity is misguided, unless Disney saddles them with unconscionable debt.

You've read Those Guys Have All The Fun, right? I'm sure everyone here has. The story of how ESPN completely fucked the dog in negotiations is really something else.

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so espn is paying more for content that it makes in subscriber fees?

https://www.fool.com/investing/2016/10/ ... inclu.aspx

and subscriber fees have dropped every year since 2011....and will continue to drop, anywhere from 300,000 to 600,000 subscribers drop ESPN every month.

I'm sure ad revenue on 88,000 viewer shows like Barstool Van Tawk will make up the losses tho.

I think someone buys ESPN and then does some serious renegotiating with the NBA and NFL. In 10 years we'll wonder how the hell did Mike Conley get $152M.

ESPN has been doing a good job improving income by cost-cutting.

Moving some of their operations to Los Angeles seems like it was kind of unnecessary. Keeping everything in an office park 20 minutes out of godforsaken Hartford surely kept a lot of costs down.

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Yep, they spent $125M on their set for what reason nobody knows. They were perfectly fine with a desk and couple of chairs.

Why not cut down the number of channels and, by doing so, the number of people who can claim to be on air talent?

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The equivalent of saving $150 month when your losing 10k a month.

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