ESPN Has Finally Realized This Whole Streaming Thing Has Legs

ESPN has personified the cable and broadcast industry's tone deafness to cord cutting and TV market evolution. Executives not only spent years downplaying the trend as something only poor people do, it sued companies that attempted to offer consumers greater flexibility in how video content was consumed. ESPN execs clearly believed cord cutting was little more than a fad that would simply stop once Millennials started procreating, and ignored surveys showing how 56% of consumers would ditch ESPN in a heartbeat if it meant saving the $8 per month subscribers pay for the channel.

As the data began to indicate the cord cutting trend was very real, ESPN's first impulse was often to try and shoot the messenger. Meanwhile, execs doubled down on bloated sports licensing deals and SportsCenter set redesigns, pretty clearly unaware that the entire TV landscape was shifting beneath their feet.

By the time ESPN had lost 10 million viewers in just a few years, the company was busy pretending they saw cord cutting coming all the while. ESPN subsequently decided the only solution was to fire hundreds of longstanding sports journalists and support personnel, but not the executives like John Skipper (since resigned for other reasons) whose myopia made ESPN's problems that much worse.

Ultimately, ESPN and Disney figured out that streaming was the future. In response, it launched a new direct-to consumer app dubbed ESPN+ that sort of gave users what they wanted, but not really. The $5 per month service basically took much of the fare available on ESPN's lesser-watched channels and offered it over the internet. But there were caveats; such as the service didn't really offer users what they really wanted (just a streaming version of ESPN's core channel) unless you subscribe to traditional cable, part of the "TV Everywhere" mindset cable execs can't seem to move past.

Even then, the service still managed to gobble up more than a million subscribers in just over five months, a fact ESPN was quick to highlight in a press statement about the milestone:

"Reaching one million paid subscribers is an important milestone for any video subscription service, but reaching this benchmark in such a short amount of time is an incredible testament to the teams from DTCI and ESPN who have worked tirelessly to bring this product to market and continually improve it since our April launch," said Kevin Mayer, chairman, Direct-to-Consumer and International, The Walt Disney Company. "We're thrilled so many sports fans have quickly come to love the service. The future is bright and we believe growth will continue as we add features, distribution partners and more exclusive content in the coming months."

While better late than never, you have to think ESPN would have far more than a million subscribers by now if execs had actually paid attention to the market they inhabit. And while ESPN+ is making progress, ESPN still finds itself between a rock and a hard place in terms of providing users what they actually want (again, just a streaming version of ESPN). In short, if ESPN offers a standalone version of ESPN, it only encourages customers to cut the cord and move to less expensive (and less profitable) alternatives. If ESPN doesn't give customers what they want, they'll cut the cord out of frustration.

That said, you'd rather be out ahead of a major paradigm shift than trailing behind, a lesson ESPN execs seem to be slowly but steadily learning.