ESPN Mass Layoffs including Most Hockey Personalities

[LawMan]

ESPN fired over 100 employees today including a lot of on air personalities. On the hockey side Scott Burnside and Pierre Lebrun were let go, I'm not sure if any hockey personalities survived.

Seems like ESPN is dumping hockey and the NHL all together. Also cutting a lot of personalities in all sports, including NFL.

http://www.nj.com/sports/index.ssf/2...ployees_r.html

[EdmontonCrunch]

Don't worry Burnside you'll get a job with a real network that actually gives a damn about hockey

[PenguinHunter]

I am glad that we moved our fantasy hockey league off of ESPn a couple years back. That is a lot of employees let go.

[rataylor22]

I blame the NHL, Owners, and Gary Bettman more than anyone. Contrary to popular belief, the NHL is not growing. It's stagnated or declining, and the Owners and Commissioner not understanding that the fans are their entire business is the reason why. Best sport, worst league.

[doulos]

Always feel bad for people losing their jobs. More cable cutters and other options (ie streaming) for watching sports is going to continue to hack away at that market.

Whoever invents a click and watch live sports Netflix type setup is going to be a rich person. Of course that's likely a long way away yet but it's the last holdout before cable tv really dies.

Hope these folks can find some other employment quickly.

[Pengwin7]

The interesting/key one at ESPN is John Buccigross - who has pretty much been the "face" of their hockey coverage for the past decade.
Bucci is also the only real hockey guy that ever gets to do general sports news coverage. Awesome personality - had that ESPN character of being able to fuse pop culture with sports.

But Bucci won't be "let go" because his contract is up in the summer and they need him (& probably Melrose, likely on contract) to continue on through the Cup coverage.
The vibe/rumouor... is that Bucci's days at ESPN are done and he won't be renewed in the summer.
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/04/espn...itter-response

As far as I know, guys like Burnside & LeBrun weren't really "local employees".
Most of their webcasts were done from the road.

In general, I think ESPN knows that no dedicated hockey fan chimes into ESPN for video highlights... so they don't need those guys.
Burnside & LeBrun are excellent writers, but here's the decision:

i) Pay those guys XXX,XXX dollars per year to write an article that is viewed by ESPN's casual hockey fan as a B+ article... or
ii) Pay some blogger(s) 20% of that amount to work from home and write articles that ESPN's casual hockey fans will say are C+ articles.

And this all started with the business model that ESPN learned from WSOP.
10-15 years ago, ESPN realized they could get ratings as good as hockey from televising POKER at 10% of the cost.
So... buh-bye bidding on hockey... hello poker coverage.

I think ESPN will still have internet coverage... decent internet coverage.
The articles will be a bit less. They'll all be contracted hockey writers not as polished as Burnside (a Windsor guy!) or LeBrun.
But... they'll be good enough.

And another big part of this is that the average TV consumer has finally... FINALLY... gotten smarter.
Many of us (such as myself) dumped their big AT&T or Comcast 200-channel package - of which ESPN gets $15 per month or so of.
And now many are just watching smaller non-ESPN packages.
Finally that trickles down to AT&T & Comcast... those probably negotiating lower amounts with ESPN which means ESPN has less revenue and therefore needs less salary.

And... here we are.
The world of business.
It came and got you ESPN.


[As a Pengwin Note: I started frequently visiting ESPN around 1997 or 1998 during university. My first online forum account was with ESPN back from 2001-2010, as "Pengwin7", when I used to join the comments section below articles. And that was mostly from the friendly vibe of Bucci articles. I was thrilled when they added LeBrun's work. But, by 2010, I think I was all Dobber and stopped going to ESPN.]

[hockeyrobot]

I didn't even know LeBrun was still affiliated with ESPN.

They haven't cared about the NHL for years. Surprised it took them this long.

[RizzeeDizzee]

The interesting/key one at ESPN is John Buccigross - who has pretty much been the "face" of their hockey coverage for the past decade.
Bucci is also the only real hockey guy that ever gets to do general sports news coverage. Awesome personality - had that ESPN character of being able to fuse pop culture with sports.

Maybe the face, but I know a mulletted ex-coach who'd argue that he's the "hair". I'm guessing he probably is safe - I mean, they have to keep somebody.

[Dobber]

Some great posts here

One thing I don't think was mentioned (didn't get a chance to read every post, just the first few):

How much is ESPN paying NFL/MLB/NBA for rights? Are we talking $1.5 billion combined per year? More? Less? If it was a "measly" $1.4 billion then they could keep these reporters (and add more). Does the blame go to the people negotiating the cost of coverage combined with the greed of the Big 4?

[Daydream Nation]

Some great posts here

One thing I don't think was mentioned (didn't get a chance to read every post, just the first few):

How much is ESPN paying NFL/MLB/NBA for rights? Are we talking $1.5 billion combined per year? More? Less? If it was a "measly" $1.4 billion then they could keep these reporters (and add more). Does the blame go to the people negotiating the cost of coverage combined with the greed of the Big 4?

I don't think there is anyone to blame as much as there are several contributing factors that led to this. Sport leagues negotiated the max deals they could. Cable channels increased their carriage fees and cable providers in turn increased their rates. Subscribers said the prices were too high so they have been cutting the cord. ESPN receives less revenue and reports major losses.

As was reported on Deadspin, these salaries are just a drop in the bucket compared to their sports contracts and the speculation is that the move was made symbolically for investors. Personally, I am pleased that the biggest reason for this is because of the decline in viewers. I really dislike ESPN and I hate that I have no choice but to send my $90 per year to have them on my package in order to watch the channels I do want. I am very interested to see what happens in the future. Leagues are not going to refund or renegotiate television contracts. Leagues have seen huge salary cap increases (except hockey) due to all this television money. Stay tuned....

[pmorrow]

Im curious to see where Burnside lands; I like his insight. Maybe just NHL Network. LeBrun likely just ups his workload with TSN/RDS.

[newfcollins]

How much is ESPN paying NFL/MLB/NBA for rights? Are we talking $1.5 billion combined per year? More? Less? If it was a "measly" $1.4 billion then they could keep these reporters (and add more). Does the blame go to the people negotiating the cost of coverage combined with the greed of the Big 4?

The NFL deal was $15.2 billion and was signed a few years back and goes until 2021. According to this Reuters article at the time of the deal, that equaled $1.9 billion a year.

This MLB article says ESPN paid $5.6 billion for eight years. That's $700 million a season.

This ESPN article says ESPN paid $2.66 billion per year for the NBA.

So that's a total of $5.26 billion a year for those three sports.

[Rylant]

Of the Big 4, the NHL is easily the least profitable. On a completely related note, it is also the least popular in the US. Is anybody genuinely surprised by this news?

Rylant

[pmorrow]

Of the Big 4, the NHL is easily the least profitable. On a completely related note, it is also the least popular in the US. Is anybody genuinely surprised by this news?

Rylant

In a way yes, because LeBrun is a top talent who they basically had in a part time position. But we don't know how much he was being paid or what kind of financial pressures ESPN is under. They really don't gain a ton from talking about the NHL since they barely show it, hence the layoffs.

[hockeyrobot]

Anyone know why ESPN still has these Insider articles that you have to pay for?? There is so much content online I just can't see anyone actually doing that.