ESPN Wants To Be Everywhere

ESPN's Jimmy Pitaro

The headwinds of the TV business have been dissected ad nauseam over the past decade as the cable bundle has shed 30 million homes and counting. Since ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro took charge in 2018, ESPN has lost more than 20 percent of its cable subscribers. ESPN Plus, which was launched around the time Pitaro took the job, has around 27 million subscribers. But the remaining 67 million cable subscribers, in most cases, are paying significantly more to watch ESPN than streamers are.

To replace its fleeing cable subscribers, ESPN is rolling out streaming products, according to The Washington Post. There is ESPN Plus, which carries lower-profile events the network owns the rights to, including German Bundesliga soccer and a bunch of NHL regular season games. Then there is Venu, a joint venture with Fox Sports and Turner that planned to show all of ESPN but is now in jeopardy because of a legal challenge. Next year, cord-cutters for the first time will be able to purchase a direct-to-consumer digital version of ESPN’s networks that will give them access to everything ESPN offers.

And beginning next fall, as part of ESPN’s fully a la carte streaming service, subscribers will be able to integrate their fantasy teams and bets on a screen as they watch a game. (This won’t be available to cable subscribers.) During a colorful panel discussion that included Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith, Pitaro’s content strategy was on full display: personality and more personality.

ESPN’s core mission since it launched is to be essential in a sports fan’s life. Executives used to track how a fan might spend a day with the network: watch a game at night, wake up with “SportsCenter” the next morning, stay for analysis throughout the day, then watch more “SportsCenter” before doing it all over again. This, of course, is far more difficult when fans are on so many different platforms and in so many different places.

“I’d argue serving the sports fan [wherever he or she is] is more relevant today than it’s ever been,” Pitaro said. “... We need to be everywhere.”

Clear challenges remain. ESPN, according to Nielsen, made up less than 1 percent of all TV and streaming viewing in July this year 

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