Outkick the Coverage describes ESPN’s slow-motion seppuku:
The only sports fans with a large fan base in this country that skew liberal in their voting are NBA fans. And that’s because of black voters who, guess what, are actually more socially conservative and religious than many white voters. As business plans go ESPN going all in on liberal sports fans is the rough equivalent of Outkick saying that henceforth we will only write articles about hot girls in Saudi Arabia….
The first time I noticed ESPN’s new liberal slant was when the network decided to give an ESPY for courage to Caitlyn Jenner for making the decision to become a woman. Look, I’m all for people pursuing their own individual happiness, but there was nothing courageous about Jenner’s decision. To me true courage requires an individual risk either life or liberty. Jenner risked neither.
And, remarkably, just about everyone in sports media was afraid to point out how transparently about ratings this decision was. Hell, they even moved the ESPYS to ABC SO MORE PEOPLE COULD SEE HOW INCLUSIVE ESPN WAS.
It was a blatant attempt to gain viewers for the network.
And that was the jumping off point, the moment ESPN ceased to be about sports and became a mouthpiece of the farthest left reaches of the Democratic party. I’m all for political discussion, but when you ally yourself with one political party and your business ostensibly is to talk about sports, you lose viewers who see what you’re doing. That’s why I call ESPN MSESPN now, the network is desperate to prop up its ratings and has decided that becoming a shill for the left wing in the country is its best option. Sadly, this is just going to lose more viewers.
Not surprisingly, ESPN’s ratings are tanking. Ratings for opinion shows the Monday after the Super Bowl this year, a day that is generally one of the most viewed in the country, were down a whopping 33% on average for PTI, Around the Horn, SportsCenter and others.
Turns out that alienating a large segment of your audience is bad for business.
This is nothing more than basic SJW convergence in action. And the more that ESPN’s ratings tank, the more they will double-down, unless the SJWs are purged. Given that Disney is arguably the foremost SJW corporation, that would appear to be highly unlikely.