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The end of the runway for Disney
When I talk to sports fans, I am often left questioning the numeracy of the public. Dollar values for college sports rights seem to be infinite, as if ESPN could afford at least 50 m for every team playing D1 football. Surely these games have 90 share in their home markets? Except they don’t and their overall ratings are good for this fragmented era, but not magically high. Convergence, as theorized by Jenkins, lead to amazing cross-polination for a limited time, and was good business for several years while legacy finance was still in place. It is true that sports are often the biggest things we have left in the market — the challenge for sports is that we are far enough into the new era of fragmentation that the market mechanisms that we aren’t dependent on going all-in on football to reach an audience. Twitter is learning this the hardest way right now, agencies and clients are looking to reach the right audience at the right time, if that happens on one platform, great, if they need a robust media-mix strategy, also great.
This brings us back to ESPN. One of Disney’s core businesses. Disney is reaching the point where what was once one of the single best bets in television might be a loser, prompting Disney to seek a new arrangement. How did we get here?
Tents Only Have a Few Poles
