It has been a tale of two sports leagues this fall at ESPN. The NBA is up and the NFL is down in terms of ratings and audience. That development is leading to speculation about a move that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago:
What if the Worldwide Leader in Sports were to abandon NFL game rights when its eight-year "Monday Night Football" deal expires in 2021?
The NBA has been on fire for ESPN this season. The network says game viewership is up 18 percent through the first 30 games of the 2017-18 season.
As of Dec. 15, the NBA on ESPN was averaging 1.811 million viewers vs. 1.532 million during the comparable period last year. In the 15 years ESPN has televised the league, the only hotter start was the 2010-11 season after LeBron James jumped to the Heat from the Cavaliers and the "Big Three" of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh became national villains.
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The NFL, meanwhile, has been surrounded by turmoil.
For the second straight season, players have been protesting during the national anthem against racial injustice in the U.S., leading outraged fans to label the NFL un-American. With former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick seemingly blackballed from the league for starting the protests, there are also #NoKaepernickNoNFL TV viewers swearing off the games. The league is struggling with poor play, worse officiating and increased concern over dirty hits, as well.
All of that has taken a toll on ESPN and the NFL's other TV partners.
Through Week 15, overall average viewership of NFL games was off 9 percent from the same period last season, according to the New York Post .
Armed with a stronger game schedule than in past seasons, ESPN's "Monday Night Football" has been a bright spot among the various NFL TV windows, but it's still down 2 percent in viewers and ratings from last season. Through Week 15, "MNF" was averaging 10.721 million viewers and a 6.5 rating, down from 10.937 million viewers and a 6.6 rating during the same period last season.
Connor Schell, ESPN's new content czar, is a big supporter of the NBA. He and producer Kevin Wildes turned "The Jump" with Rachel Nichols into the NBA equivalent of "NFL Live": a fun, daily studio show that talks all things NBA.
ESPN pays $1.4 billion a year for TV rights to the NBA vs. $1.9 billion for the NFL, but ESPN gets exclusive coverage of the NBA Finals (which it shows on ABC). Despite paying the most annually of the NFL's TV partners, ESPN doesn't get the Super Bowl. The Big Game instead goes to CBS, NBC and Fox.
If you watch as much ESPN as I do, the attitude of the network's on-air talent has subtly shifted when it comes to the NBA vs. NFL.
The NBA, which keeps protests off the court, is the fun, cool kid on the block while the NFL receives mostly negative commentary for its feckless handling of protests, on-field violence and prevalence of CTE among brain-damaged former players.
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"SportsCenter" host Jemele Hill seemed to sum up the prevailing view of ESPN talkers when she compared pro basketball and pro football during a recent "What's Now" podcast by former NFL running back Arian Foster.
When she was growing up, Hill said, football was a "religion," but younger consumers just don't feel the same about the sport.
"It doesn't feel like younger kids connect with the game that way," she said.
Hill said younger kids tell her they "love" basketball and soccer.
"There's a coolness about the NBA that people love," Hill said. "Get in now. Where the NBA might be 20 years from now is astronomical. They're on the upside, big time."
Still, the NBA and other leagues would "kill" for the NFL's TV audiences, Hill noted. Anybody who underestimates the NFL's appeal should think twice.
The "No Fun League" has lost 20 percent of its average viewership since 2015, but it is making smart moves to lure back some of those viewers, such as letting players celebrate touchdowns and installing shorter commercial breaks on broadcasts. It's still the 800-pound gorilla, not just of sports but the entire TV business.
The real question, then, is not where the league is this year, but whether it will go the way of boxing and horse racing a few decades from now.
ESPN, meanwhile, is suffering from the double whammy of decreasing subscribers and rising sports rights fees, and some executives are asking why they should pay the most money for the worst game schedule.
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ESPN whisperer James Andrew Miller wrote a widely discussed story for The Hollywood Reporter in which he outlined how and why the network might drop the mighty NFL. He isn't saying ESPN will get out of the NFL business (the league has been the backbone of the network since 1987), but he does note the world is changing quickly.
With their deep pockets, tech giants such as Google, Facebook and Twitter could seize game rights to "MNF" and "Thursday Night Football," wrote Miller, author of "Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN." He said ESPN might be content to pay $300 million to $400 million for NFL highlights, then use the savings to buy less expensive sports rights.
"While it’s true that nothing drives a (subscriber) fee like the NFL, ESPN could go on a spending spree targeting CBS's college football deal with the SEC, a Big 12 deal, baseball postseason, rights to NHL hockey, (English Premier League) soccer and a whole buffet table of other properties that would prove beneficial in its negotiations with distributors who would want to lower their sub fees," Miller wrote.
Nobody's more plugged into the thinking of ESPN management than Miller. When he first wrote the piece, I thought it was a trial balloon by ESPN to put pressure on the NFL to give the network a Super Bowl, a more competitive game schedule, or both. Now, I'm not sure.
At one point, ESPN could do no wrong in the eyes of fans, parent company Disney or Wall Street. From its humble beginnings, it reached a broadcast network-like distribution of 100 million homes. In the past six years, however, ESPN has lost 13 million subscribers, and there's no telling how low its subscriber numbers will go as more consumers cut the cord and turn to streaming TV instead of traditional cable packages.
The network has laid off 550 staffers in just 26 months in response. On Monday, it lost network president John Skipper, who resigned to deal with what he termed "substance addiction."
If ESPN parent Disney's acquistion of most of 21st Century Fox's assets goes through as expected, ESPN will scoop up Fox Sports 22 owned and operated regional sports networks. These networks carry the games of 44 NBA, MLB and NHL teams, not to mention various college athletic programs. The crown jewel: YES Network in New York, which airs Yankees and Nets games.
An NFL-less ESPN built around the NBA, Major League Baseball, college football, college basketball, local sports and maybe a pickup like the NHL would be humbler, but still potent. And it might just be in the cards.
