ESPN: The Worldwide Leader in Sports Television Monopolies

The Entertainment Sports Programming Network (ESPN) got its start over 30 years ago by founder Bill Rasmussen and is currently received in over 85% of cable and satellite watching households. Since its launch, ESPN has grown into the 24-hour central hub for everything sports related in the United States. Unfortunately over the years, ESPN has lost sight of what they originally set out to accomplish. Through commercialism, ESPN has become the sports television monopoly consumed by money, with firm control over what sports and stories are significant in our country.

         

It is commonly accepted throughout our country that football is the most popular sport to watch on television, followed by basketball and baseball. So it can be understood that ESPN would dedicate the vast majority of their time to these sports. But what about some of the sports that lack major coverage, such as soccer, hockey, golf, tennis, and MMA. Of all these sports, only soccer and MMA have shows (ESPN FC and MMA Live) completely devoted to their respective sports, each getting less than three hours of coverage per week. The other sports lack any sort of coverage outside of the occasional SportsCenter highlight, which are often times little to none. According to Patrick Burns, approximately 75% of SportsCenter’s coverage in 2012 was split between football, basketball, and baseball, while golf, NASCAR, hockey, Olympics, and tennis combined for around 10% of what aired (Burns, 2013). The result? A less diverse and ill-informed audience about everything that is current in the sports world.

So what drives ESPN to be so devoted the big three sports? Just like most other cable news networks, the answer is simple: money. When football, basketball, and baseball can create the most amount of revenue, why change what’s working? According to Businessweek.com, ESPN was projected to have revenues of $8.2 billion in 2012, and projected to grow at a rate of 9% per year (Businessweek.com, 2012). The $2 billion in advertising revenue competes with even the largest broadcast networks, so it is apparent that ESPN knows what they’re doing. Advertising and promotions have become some of the biggest benefits for ESPN, and they have numerous outlets to assist them. Since being acquired by Disney, ESPN has grown to have numerous affiliates (ESPN2, ABC, ESPN Radio, ESPNEWS, etc.) This allows for more coverage, more promotion, and thus more revenue.

A prime example of this was the Thursday night coverage of the #3 Oregon vs. #5 Stanford game airing on ESPN on November 7^th. Throughout the week on almost every network, advertisements for the game could be found on ESPN affiliate stations. Even after the game was over, SportsCenter spent over 8 minutes of the hour-long broadcast dedicated to highlights of the game. What ESPN chose not to promote was another game of similar importance between #6 Baylor and #10 Oklahoma that aired on Fox Sports 1 at the same time. Due to the large amount of promotion for the Oregon/Stanford game on ESPN affiliates, it should come as no surprise that ESPN got over 5.7 million viewers compared to FS1’s 2.1 million (TVByTheNumbers, 2013). This capability to promote between networks can help give ESPN that many more viewers, thus that much more in revenue.

People in America have made the argument that the reason our three major sports appear on television more is simply because they are more exciting. While that can be highly debated, there is no question that football, basketball, and baseball dominate the commercialism aspect. In sports such as soccer and hockey, there are often large gaps between commercial breaks (sometimes spanning 20 to 45 minutes), whereas in basketball, football and baseball there are often television timeouts less than every ten minutes. According to Deadspin.com, it is estimated that during an average football game, over one hour of every game is dedicated to commercials, versus eleven minutes of actual action.  The commercialism in sports like football and basketball is so great it becomes difficult to show other sports such as soccer. ESPN wants to show what will make them the most money, and the three major sports are the biggest contributor.

ESPN is also smart with how it discusses sports on their normal programming such as SportsCenter and talk shows such as First Take. It makes economic sense for their shows to discuss games and topics that will be shown on their own network, much like the Oregon vs. Stanford game. By promoting everything in-house, they can help decrease competition while gaining viewers for their own programming. This has become a constant loop between broadcasting what makes their network the most money, then discussing only what they broadcast. Over time, this influences the way we see sports by only being exposed to what ESPN allows.

The argument that I am trying to make is not one that is about what sports are popular in the United States, in fact far from it. I believe that the commercialism taking place at ESPN is going to lead ESPN down a terrible road of poor sports reporting and lack of equal coverage for those sports that deserve it. With the recent rise of channels such as Fox Sports 1, there is hope that maybe these channels will help keep ESPN in check, but until then, Americans will continue to endure the monopoly that self-proclaims itself as The Worldwide Leader in Sports.

Sources

Burns, Patrick. "What I Learned From A Year Of Watching SportsCenter." Deadspin. N.p., 26 July 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.

Clevens, Bernie. "For Better or Worse, ESPN Drives the Conversation in Sports."The Bowdoin Orient. N.p., 25 Oct. 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.

Greenfeld, Karl T. "ESPN: Everywhere Sports Profit Network." Businessweek. Bloomberg, 30 Aug. 2012. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.

Kondolojy, Amanda. "Thursday Cable Ratings: Thursday Night Football Tops Night NBA Basketball, 'Pawn Stars', 'Beyond Scared Straight' & More."TVbytheNumbers. Zap2It, 8 Nov. 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.

Petchesky, Barry. "There's Not Much Football In Your Football." Deadspin. N.p., 15 Jan. 2010. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.