Sports Media is Returning Home

For decades, any sports-loving kid tuned in to SportsCenter on ESPN before (and after school), catching the major headlines and waiting patiently for the anchors to talk about their team.

Considering the wild NBA trade deadline currently Woj Bombing its’ way to an explosive close, I couldn’t imagine having to sit and hope to receive intel on the latest Knicks rumors.

As the traditional media establishment has been utterly disrupted across industries, the sports media landscape has undergone perhaps the most intense change.

In 2021, ESPN reportedly lost 10% of its subscriber base, finishing the year with 75M remaining subscribers (compared with 100M+ the network boasted ~10 years ago).

This chart from Axios illustrates the declining revenue spread across the industry, limited not only to ESPN but also its competitors.

It’s clear that much of this lost audience can be attributed to cord-cutters as well as the growing trend of apathy towards sports among younger demographics.

According to a report by Morning Consult:

• 53% of Gen Zers identify as sports fans, compared to 63% of all adults and 69% of millennials.

• Gen Zers are half as likely as millennials to watch live sports regularly and twice as likely to never watch.

• Esports are more popular among Gen Z than MLB, NASCAR and the NHL, with 35% identifying as fans.

  

Though interest in sports overall may be declining, millions of fans aren’t simply disappearing at the same rate they’re canceling their cable packages. Instead, hyper-local, digital-first outlets have soaked up much of the attention, offering die-hard fans the ability to tune in to team-specific content and join a community.

Remember earlier how I mentioned waiting for ESPN to bring up a given fan’s favorite team?

As a Knicks fan, I tune in to outlets like Knicks Film School nearly daily. Not only is it a massive upgrade to be able to get hours of content for every game, but the localized nature of the programming provides me with a level of respect and understanding for the commentators — I know they’re fans, I know they’re tapped-in, and I know they have the same concerns and (god forbid) hopes for the team as I do.

As much as I adore Stephen A Smith (the most underpaid man in sports), the handful of minutes he spends covering the Knicks on ESPN each week (month?) will never stack up to the depth of coverage.

The shift from buttoned-up reporters projecting objectivity to honest fan-inspired content has been a long time coming.

Bill Simmons, a writer who influenced myself and everyone else within 10 years of my age, made a career out of it, starting way back with AOL Digital CIity Boston in the late ‘90s, before launching bostonsportsguy.com, the springboard that would allow him to hone his voice as an unabashedly biased columnist and bring him into the national spotlight.

Media companies like Barstool Sports, FanSided (labor issues aside for the moment), and even The Athletic, have leaned into the localized model over the years. It’s an interesting backslide to the days of the local newspaper, though without any of the paper, robotic editorial standards, and in large part, the pretense of objectivity (The Athletic does do excellent straight reporting).

Just like with everything else in our digital economy, we increasingly expect content catered specifically to our tastes, our needs, and our schedule.

It’s stupid to call it the future because it’s been going on for years, but as the old-school legacy brands meet their demise, it will be tough to imagine a world where outlets like Knicks Film School (or your team’s equivalent) don’t gain a significant chunk of the missing market share.