The Worldwide Leader in Sports is feeling some heat.
ESPN has lost 3.2 million American households in just over a year due to viewers cutting their cable service or downgrading to cheaper television packages, which don't include sports channels like ESPN, the Wall Street Journal is reporting. Delving deeper, according to Nielsen data, ESPN's reach into American homes has dropped by 7.2 percent since July 2011, from 100 million households to 92.9 million.
The loss in subscribers combined with the boom of ESPN's cost to show games—the Disney-owned sports company agreed to a renewal deal with the NBA last year, tripling from $485 million to about $1.47 billion—has the Worldwide Leader in Sports tightening its belt.
On Wednesday (July 8), ESPN announced that its parting ways with popular personality Keith Olbermann (pictured) and that followed the May firing of Bill Simmons. The Wall Street Journal says that ESPN big names such as radio host Colin Cowherd, host/reporter Michelle Beadle, NFL reporter Adam Schefter and Monday Night Football anchor Mike Tirico will likely face hard negotiations in the near future as well.
ESPN has also scrapped a grand plan of moving its popular Mike & Mike radio/television show from the company's Bristol, Conn., headquarters to the same ABC studio from which Good Morning America is broadcast from in New York City.
"We are constantly looking at the cost side of our business and calibrating that against our expectations for the future," ESPN Executive Vice President of Administration Ed Durso told the Journal. "Regardless of what the future holds, we're incredibly well-positioned to adapt."
ESPN even cut into its own four minutes of promotion time for ABC shows, selling three of those minutes to ads during this past NBA Finals.
Possibly the addition of direct-to-consumer products, which the company is reportedly developing amongst other strategies, will help boost revenue. Until then, the company will be cutting back.
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