Sports Network Subscription Estimates Show Huge Drops

It’s estimated ESPN will have lost 500,000 households from April to May.

Ex-ESPN Reporter and Original "SportsCenter" Anchor Lou Palmer Dead at 83
The ESPN logo. (Mike Windle/Getty)
Getty Images for ESPN

With the start of the MLB season, the NBA and NHL playoffs, the NFL Draft and The Masters, April should have been a great month for most sports networks.

However, according to Nielsen cable coverage estimates, this month was actually pretty brutal.

There wasn’t a single sports network that saw an increase in estimated coverage from April to May and many of them saw pretty notable losses including ESPN (-500,000 homes), FS1 (-328,000), NBCSN (-544,000), TNT (-495,000), NFL Network (-842,000) and MLB Network (- 664,000).

“These are not out-of-season drops, but drops at a time while those networks have some of their best content,” according to Awful Announcing. “So there are certainly some things to worry about there.”

While the networks can afford losses like this for a month or two, they translate to huge losses over the course of a year which could be disastrous and lead to more cuts like we saw last year.

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