There’s no greater testament to the emotional premium of watching live sports as they happen than the fact that ESPN, the biggest sports media enterprise in human history, continues to operate at least somewhat like it did in the past even as the rest of television struggles to find its way forward. As other television networks flail and sweat, ESPN goes on showing games and padding them with advertisements, to highly profitable effect. It’s an efficient, diversified business that nets a ton of passive engagement and which can be maintained for comparatively little money; their streaming service, ESPN+, is profitable, for Christ's sake, and those things are never profitable!
This is why it seemed so strange, late last year, when ESPN’s corporate parent, Disney, reportedly looked into selling the network. A media conglomerate was once a series of diversified interests, operating on vertically integrated channels that afforded access to the places people consume media—movie theaters, broadcast networks, cable channels, retail outlets. These concerns made stuff, sold it or put ads in it or both, profited, and then held the money in the air while everyone cheered. Tech has altered this, as both a matter of distribution and one of return on investment.
