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ESPN's Coronavirus Slate Stretches the Definition of Sports

ESPN's Coronavirus Slate Stretches the Definition of Sports

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Step aside, jocks. The misfits will take it from here.

On Sunday morning, viewers who tune in to ESPN2 won’t be greeted with a basketball game or the other usual programming. Instead, get ready for the 51st national stone-skipping competition, followed by the 2007 world sport stacking championship. (If you aren’t sure what that is, please enjoy the video below.) Next up is a battle to be the world’s best sign spinner, a brat-eating contest, the official Stupid Robot Fighting League, a cherry-pit-spitting competition and — I kid you not — professional arm-wrestling. Welcome to ESPN in the time of coronavirus.

With the National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and virtually every other sports league canceling or postponing their games for the foreseeable future because of the global pandemic, networks devoted to sports are having to get creative. And so ESPN2 is embracing its zany alter-ego, ESPN8: The Ocho, by airing past footage of seldom-seen sports. On Aug. 8 of each of the last three years, the college-focused ESPNU has transformed into “ESPN8,” a tribute to the imaginary network from the 2004 Ben Stiller comedy, “DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story.” But now, with a highly contagious, sometimes-fatal virus keeping everyone — even sports stars — indoors and secluded, The Ocho is arriving early this year. The wacky lineup comes to ESPN2 on Sunday, March 22, but don’t be surprised to see lots more dodgeball and marble racing in its future.

ESPN's Coronavirus Slate Stretches the Definition of Sports

This is truly the definition of making lemonade from lemons, and as a viewer, it’s kind of delightful. For ESPN and its parent, Walt Disney Co., it might even work temporarily. However, a protracted period without any live-sports programming puts a chunk of Disney’s all-important advertising revenue at risk at at time when the company’s theme parks, cruise lines and theatrical-film business also are taking a hit. It may even hasten the demise of cable TV. 

About $5.5 billion of Disney’s $11.3 billion of operating profit from the last 12 months was derived from its cable networks, with its namesake Disney Channel, Freeform (formerly ABC Family), ESPN and ESPN2 among the largest. (The broadcast division, where ABC sits, generated an additional $1.5 billion in operating income.) ESPN and ESPN2 each had 83 million subscribers at the end of its latest fiscal year, down from 86 million the year before and 100 million a decade ago.

Sports programming is unique in that the thrill is in watching games live as they are played, creating a captive audience for advertisers. The second a game ends and it switches over to commentary, the audience starts to dissipate and its value greatly diminishes. Thankfully for ESPN’s SportsCenter — which along with the “30 for 30” documentaries is helping to fill the programming gaps — legendary NFL quarterback Tom Brady created headlines this week by announcing that he’s leaving the New England Patriots for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. But commentators can only talk about Brady for so long. Meanwhile, the lower corner of the screen has been directing viewers to sign up for the ESPN+, Disney+ and Hulu streaming-TV bundle for $13 a month.

It’s certainly a good time for Disney to try to pick up streaming subscribers, but doing so is no replacement for the ad dollars and cable fees that come from its traditional networks. It will be several years before Disney’s direct-to-consumer strategy pays off. As consumers turn to on-demand services, live sports remains the single biggest reason to keep a high-priced cable-TV package — it’s the only appointment viewing anyone really needs. Sports are largely why cable packages even cost so much; ESPN charges nearly $8 a month per subscriber, while Discovery Inc.’s Discovery Channel costs less than 50 cents and HGTV, the home-renovation channel popular among women, charges 24 cents, according to Kagan, a media-research group within S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Without sports, more people may just cut the cord. That’s especially true as the near-shutdown of the country creates financial hardship for many Americans. Cherry-pit-spitting contests sound pretty entertaining, but they aren’t worth a $100-a-month cable bill. 

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Tara Lachapelle is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering the business of entertainment and telecommunications, as well as broader deals. She previously wrote an M&A column for Bloomberg News.

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