ESPN has certainly lost plenty of talent this summer, but according to Fox Sports' Clay Travis, that's not the only thing the network is hemorrhaging.
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According to Fox Sports, ESPN has lost nearly 10 million subscribers since 2013, falling from 99 million to 89.465 million. Travis notes that every customer is worth around $80 a year, meaning ESPN is losing a whopping $840 million... per year.
"Toss in the subscriber losses at ESPN2 and ESPNU and ESPN has lost over a billion dollars a year, three billion total, in revenue over the past three years."
While the cord cutting issues are prevalent throughout the sports networking world, ESPN's losses are significantly worse than the opposition, per the report.
"FS1 lost 950,000 (though FS2 gained 736,000), NBC Sports Network lost 300k and the NFL Network lost 324k. (FS1's decline in subscribers cost the network around $12 million — partially canceled out by an increase in FS2 revenue, NBC Sports Network lost just a million dollars and the NFL Network lost just $5 million."
ESPN's contracts with cable and dish companies currently restricts the worldwide leader to go the WWE route and have a specific network with subscribers. For now, it will continue to suffer the hit of inexpensive options through secondary providers. How long that lasts remains an unknown at this point.
Heather Cox, Cris Carter, Ray Lewis, Joe Schad, Trent Dilfer, Mike Tirico and Skip Bayless have left the company, and Chris Berman is expected to retire, or be re-assigned at the end of next year.
