Cord Cutting: Sports Media’s biggest foe.
TV subscriptions are fast becoming a thing of the past.
The birth of sports streaming websites is causing millions of Americans to cut the cord on their cable subscriptions.
Listen, if you live in America, you most likely have a Netflix subscription, which means you probably do not watch programs via the television channels they originally air on.
Though, you may still find yourself paying for a cable ESPN subscription just for your daily, weekly, or season dose of sporting action.
Currently, ESPN has the highest monthly subscriber fee of any sports network, with $7.21. What if there was a way you could watch your favorite teams play for free? Well, there is, and thousands of people are hopping on that bandwagon.
Movie theater prices too expensive? Then you probably have watched a film online on a free website, and you can do the same thing for sports games.
A popular website for the everyday sports fan, is FirstRow Sports. Here, you can watch any sport spanning from college basketball to professional football.
Whether it be a weeknight MLB game, or the Super Bowl, fans can find any type of game at FirstRow Sports, and it’s free.
An option like FirstRow Sports is extremely beneficial to Dodgers, USC, or UCLA fans that happen to have DirecTV, which does not air games for any of these teams.
Have no fear DirecTV users and Los Angeles sports fans, FirstRow sports has all the National League West and Pac-12 action you could ever want.
FirstRow Sports is only one free-of-charge option that fans are dropping their ESPN subscriptions for.
During the 2016 cycle, due to a massive drain of subscribers, ESPN had a revenue drop of $52 million. In November alone, they lost 621,000 subscribers.
What does this mean for sports television?
It means that in the coming years, having a laptop may be more important for watching games than a flat screen TV.
Take Twitter’s integration of live streaming Thursday Night Football games for example.
During the 2016 NFL season, Twitter introduced a new way to watch America’s favorite sport, by combining television with social media. This was extremely smart, and here’s why.
Journalists are not the only ones who have their Twitter feed open while watching a football game, fans partake in this multitask exchange as well. Engaging with other NFL fans whether it be from your own team or a rival one, it adds something to the experience of watching the game from your home.
One of the reasons people like to watch a football game from the stadium, is the interaction with fellow supporters, well, Twitter provides that interaction without the bank breaking ticket prices.
Combining hashtags with trending topics, Twitter has made it easy throughout the years to keep up with the live action of the NFL. Now, they have taken it to the next level, by merging the broadcast with a user’s timeline.
One screen to rule them all.
This certainly is appealing to the millennials, whose generation is now the largest demographic in America, and the largest proponent of free streaming websites as the medium to view their desired content.
In October, Twitter’s Thursday Night Football streams had an audience of over three million. Twitter was only one medium that caused televised NFL viewership to go down by 1.4 million people.
Another way viewers are cord cutting is through the use of the Amazon Fire Stick.
With the Fire Stick, any user with an Amazon Prime membership can download sports channel apps such as ESPN or Fox Sports, onto their device supported TV. These channels air certain games free of charge, and without the burden of having a cable subscription.
This is a viable option for the occasional sports fan who may only want to watch one game a week, but on their personal living room jumbotron.
So, if you find yourself paying for cable television just to watch your favorite team play, you may want to consider cutting the cord and hoping online.
Dina Colunga is a writer whose words can be found at The Unprofessionals, The Coffeelicious, and Reign of Troy. Connect with her on Twitter @alwayscompete, and Instagram @dinatrojan.
