By Clay Travis
Nov 29, 2016 at 9:42a ET
Last month ESPN lost 621,000 subscribers according to Nielsen media estimates, which was the worst month in the company’s history. This month things weren’t much better – ESPN lost another 555,000 subscribers according to Nielsen media estimates, meaning that the worst month in the history of ESPN has now been followed up by the second worst month in ESPN history. ESPN has now lost a jawdropping 1.176 million subscribers in the past two months.
Putting that into perspective, that means nearly 20,000 people a day are leaving ESPN for each of the past two months.
If that annual average subscriber loss continued, ESPN would lose over seven million subscribers in the next 12 months. And at an absolute minimum, these 1.176 million lost subscribers in the past two months will lead to a yearly loss in revenue of over $100 million.
According to Nielsen ESPN now has 88.4 million cable and satellite subscribers, a precipitous decline from well over 100 million subscribers just a few years ago
Now, to be fair, ESPN fought Nielsen’s latest channel estimates last month and argued that those estimates failed to count the number of over-the-top subscribers the company has, but Nielsen reviewed their data and confirmed its findings, much to ESPN’s public dismay. Furthermore, there’s nothing preventing ESPN from revealing its subscriber data publicly. What’s more, ESPN cited Nielsen’s own subscriber estimates in its most recent 10k filing last week. If the subscriber numbers were that far off would you cite them in your own public releases for the Securities and Exchange Commission? That seems unlikely.
The rapid decline – and apparent escalation – in cable and satellite customers abandoning the bundle is the biggest story in sports, and there isn’t a close second. That’s why I’ve been writing about it for the past several years. Last month, in the wake of ESPN’s loss of 621,000 subscribers, I wrote the following:
According to SNL Kagan ESPN is on track to pay $7