Right now you can’t watch ESPN without paying for cable TV, or satellite TV, or telco TV.
But that could change soon: The sports powerhouse has signed on to sell its programming as part of a Web TV service that Dish wants to sell this year. It’s also in discussions with several other services that want to do something similar.
And ESPN is mulling another digital change as well: It is considering selling some sports programming over the Web directly to consumers, just like Netflix does.
These are big moves for the most powerful programmer in pay TV. They are also tricky, because ESPN still plans on making almost all of its money from the pay-TV system — so it wants to try adding digital revenue without upsetting the lucrative business it already has.
How’s that going to work? ESPN President John Skipper sat down with us last week at our Code/Media New York event at the Steelcase WorkLife Center in Manhattan to sketch out his plans, and challenges. He’s a lively interview, and this ended up being a wide-ranging discussion. And now you can watch the whole thing:
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
Will you support Vox’s explanatory journalism?
Most news outlets make their money through advertising or subscriptions. But when it comes to what we’re trying to do at Vox, there are a couple of big issues with relying on ads and subscriptions to keep the lights on:
First, advertising dollars go up and down with the economy. We often only know a few months out what our advertising revenue will be, which makes it hard to plan ahead.
Second, we’re not in the subscriptions business. Vox is here to help everyone understand the complex issues shaping the world — not just the people who can afford to pay for a subscription. We believe that’s an important part of building a more equal society. And we can’t do that if we have a paywall.
So even though advertising is still our biggest source of revenue, we also seek grants and reader support. (And no matter how our work is funded, we have strict guidelines on editorial independence.)
If you also believe that everyone deserves access to trusted high-quality information, will you make a gift to Vox today? Any amount helps.
Yes, I'll give $5/month
Yes, I'll give $5/month
We accept credit card, Apple Pay, and
Google Pay. You can also contribute via