Sports Cable Bubble Has to Pop Eventually

“In the late 1990s, ESPN was long past its cable upstart days, but it was still just as likely to broadcast a surfing event as it was baseball or football.

It needed a tentpole, though. And the way it found one helped it become one of the most powerful entities in the world of sports. It provided a glimpse of how the broadcasting of live events would underpin the television business for two decades, and make leagues, owners and players extraordinarily wealthy.

It also set the stage for a business that, today, could be at a tipping point.

But back to 1998. ESPN’s parent company had just been bought by Disney. Executives were considering making a play for a full season of live NFL rights, and a Sunday night package to complement Monday Night Football on Disney-owned ABC. It would cost close to US$9-billion over seven years, an extraordinary number in those days. Thanks, though, to an oddity in the way cable channels are distributed, ESPN thought it had figured out a way to make the numbers work.”

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