By Michael Morales, Courier Sports Editor
Once upon a time ESPN was the “worldwide leader in sports” and its name associated only with sports. Believe it or not, ESPN used to be all about sports and only sports, not Kim Kardashian’s tweets or politics. With the launch of SportsCenter and ESPN 2, we can say that the company once had a monopoly on sports news. It would cast a shadow over every other network that would even come close to covering sports. With anchors who knew and were passionate about sports, and many dedicated channels, ESPN was our go to sports channel for 30 years.
But along the line of their dominance the anchors got less passionate about sports, the jokes stopped, and they seemed to forget that sports was a passion and not a job. I personally believe that once ESPN started associating celebrities and politics into their programming, the network took a turn for the worst. I stopped tuning into the channel as soon as they started discussing and reporting on politics. ESPN has no business venturing into the political field, they should instead leave that to CNN. The internet seemed like it was coming for ESPN’s head but they smoothly transitioned into a website providing sports statistics.
The future of this sports giant at this point is unsure but we can safely assume that it will soon meet its end. According to Nielsen data, ESPN has lost approximately 11,346,000 subscribers in the past year. This means that ESPN has lost almost a billion dollars of its revenue which has taken a heavy toll in their pockets. If this keeps up, ESPN will have no choice but to end its reign over sports news.