Chapter 19Current Trends and Future Possibilities
Around the middle of 2013, ESPN made two, significant announcements. First, the self-proclaimed Worldwide Leader in Sports stated it would lay off an estimated 400 employees. Around the same time, ESPN said it would discontinue its foray into three dimensional broadcasting (3D).
The layoffs came in the face of ever-increasing rights fees the network continues to pay in order to repel potential competition from the likes of CBS, NBC, and Fox, all of which have their own national sports networks.1 ESPN dropped its 3D service after finding, in its words, “limited viewer adoption of 3D services to the home.”2
Economics and technology are two of the most critical issues affecting the future of sports ...
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