ESPN Can’t Afford Monday Night Football Any More
outkickthecoverage.comThis is going to be one of many reasons there might be a lockout in 2020 when it's CBA renewal time. This is going to trickle down to the players. NFL can't continue charging exorbitant access fees which means they will have to request a serious reduction in the salary cap (the owners aren't going to be willing to eat these losses).
I think this is great thing as the economics of large sports salaries have been artificially inflated by surreptitiously charging end users for things they might not want. As the internet continues to alter the landscape around content choice, traditional providers are going to have no choice but to push back on the networks which will, in turn, push back on the leagues which will, in turn, push back on high sports salaries. I wouldn't expect any of the limited sets of providers to accept any more price hikes from the sports networks. Sports costs have to come back down to earth as consumption specializes. It already has or will happen with other forms of content too.
Given how traumatic the sport and related CTEs are, I wonder if falling salaries will spell the end of football
I do not believe so as I believe the issues are orthogonal. The livelihood of the sport is primarily driven by consumption not production IMO. You lose eyeballs, you lose everything. You lose players, more will fill their place and while the quality may decline, it will not be noticeable since it applies evenly.
Everyone knows the NFL could reduce injuries even more, but not at the cost of eyeballs. In a purely capitalistic view, players are much more expendable/replaceable than viewers. As a side effect, players will have to accept the risk of being injured for less money than they are now. While a couple of high profile NFL players have retired due to CTE concerns, in general there are many humans willing to make that sacrifice for even a fraction of what players are paid today.
Let's say you take the NFL's revenue and it drops by 90% (as I think it will relatively quickly once "TV" ad rates start to come in line with online video -- oh yes, all these issues are related). So the salary range would have to shift to say, $2-3M a year for the top stars and about $200,000 for vets; with rookies making $50k-ish. Sure there would be endorsements, but it wouldn't be the ubiquitous stardom. You're just another Instagram influencer.
You do that, and you take the wind out of the sails of a sport quickly. You probably have a better chance of success playing fantasy football (you know, gambling) than you would getting rich as a football player.
The adpocalypse is happening right now. We've been warning of it for years. Brands are figuring out their campaigns on "traditional TV" don't return nearly as much as targeted campaigns on online video on a per-dollar basis. The bloodbath is just beginning.
I don't disagree with your assessment on the impact of a reduction in ad spend. Yet I don't agree that how much a player makes impacts the popularity of football. All you have to do is look at college football where the overwhelming majority of athletes are just getting a scholarship. Most fans support a jersey not the person in it.
The highest levels of popularity and fan support in college football are mostly focused on high-level play - i.e. the schools in P5 conferences. Are there rabid fans at lower levels of play? Sure, but it decreases. Far fewer people are lining up to watch North Dakota State play than to watch even lower tier P5 schools like Iowa or Ole Miss, despite NDSU winning five championships in the last six years at the FCS level.
If the salary at the highest levels crashed dramatically, the pool of players at every level would shrink accordingly. We would probably see an effect similar to what happened to boxing: the best of the best would still be very good, but the rank-and-file that make up the rest of the sport would be so terrible that most people would lose interest and stop watching. I suspect that fan interest would hold through some level of decrease in overall skill level, but that there is some point where people will just stop watching because the quality of play is so bad (and because of the constantly growing evidence regarding the long-term health implications, which, going back to the boxing example, was another piece of what knocked boxing off its cultural pedestal).
I think interest in football is waning because the sport is a lot less fun to watch now that we know those bone-crushing hits actually leave guys debilitated for life. And not just in the long-term; Aaron Hernandez should be a wake-up call for the risks of CTE among active players. A broken leg from a sport is one thing, but widespread (something like 95% of former players show signs of CTE) traumatic brain injury is another.
It's just not right to encourage people to do that, and I think a lot of fans are choosing to watch something else.
Edit: Also, basketball has better economics and a more international fan base, so it's probably safe. Baseball is probably fucked too, at least in the current incarnation of MLB. But the NFL is definitely fucked.
> but widespread (something like 95% of former players show signs of CTE) traumatic brain injury is another.
Has the popularity of boxing been impacted by this issue?
Boxing went from the most popular sport in the country to being a niche sport. A large part of that was a shrinking talent pool; parents who, in earlier times would have let their kids box prohibited them from doing so. Muhammad Ali's Parkinson's diagnosis was an eye-opener for a lot of people.
I'd argue that the largest factor in the decline of boxing has been the runaway success of MMA and companies like the UFC, Pride, etc...
Not to argue that point necessarily, but there's been only the one success of significance, the UFC. Pride went out of business 10 years ago and the organization founded to replace it, Dream, went out of business only a few years later. (Pride ended up as a UFC acquisition, as did the WEC, but both of them were foundering and were picked up for their rights - access to fighters and video libraries).
That's very true. I mentioned Pride because it is still easily brand-recognizable to folks who are only vaguely familiar with the sport and because it came from the early days of MMA where it helped propel the sport to the mainstream.
How much players make influence whether people aspire to be players at all; a tangible decline in quality of play will hurt the sport.
Also, if the funnel of advertising (and thus TV) money goes away, the visibility of the sport will drop, and visibility reinforces popularity.
Those salary caps are really weird. In 'socialist' Europe, we have no cap on football players pay, and the sky doesn't come down.
Neither does the US in sports like baseball. Nobody said salary caps are the problem, so it wouldn't be the cause of the sky falling. It's about the salary amount, not whether it's capped.
Salary caps are about how your society values parity in whichever sport it is applied to. Regardless of the salary cap argument, do expect this to affect soccer as well, though further into the future. Right now many of those salaries, bumps for league promotion, etc are based on similar revenue sharing based on TV deals. And as US soccer eyeballs have grown, US TV deals have just added dollars to the already existing and new TV deals in soccer. They are on the upswing at the moment (kinda), but as fans get fed up with these draconian viewership requirements they are going to have to fight for the same in-between viewers (i.e. ones that would watch, but don't have to at all costs) that US sports are vying for across new mediums.
I should clarify that it won't affect the top teams in these situations. Man U and Barca and what not will still be fine due to ancillary sales and their brand. Rather it will affect the vast majority of other teams. Some owners are willing to take a hit, but only so much and for so long (except the super rich ones for which their team is their play thing).
> Salary caps are about how your society values parity in whichever sport it is applied to.
It's a bit more complicated than that. In Europe you also usually have a relegation system. If I remember right, leagues are usually closed in the US?
I think the salary caps are for competitive parity, not for economic reasons. Don't watch European Football, but are the same teams good every year?
Mostly similar teams, but surprising rises and declines do happen. The relegation system is a huge part of the fun for people watching, too. (So two good teams from second league make it into first every year in eg the German football system.)
Hoffenheim's football team is an interesting example (http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/european/hoffenh...). They did have a rich guy backing them, though; but still came out of basically nowhere into the Bundesliga in a few short years. Though still:
> “Obviously we are not spending money like the big clubs in Germany so we are really focusing on our youth development, on our academy. There is a big number of players like Niklas Sule [sold to Bayern Munich this summer for £18m], [Jeremy] Toljan, [Nadiem] Amiri, [Philipp] Ochs who all came from our Under-17s and Under-19s. That's what we want to keep on doing: develop our own guys, but also sign players for less money who increase their market value. This is how we are working.”
I think it's worth noting that this site is run by Clay Travis, who generally seems to be an outspoken ESPN critic on political grounds. It's also worth noting that ESPN currently down to 87 million subscribers from a peak of about 100 million in 2011, so they haven't lost 30% of their subscriber base since adding MNF in 2006.
I think it's a bad assumption to think the NFL will demand more money when ratings and subscriptions are down.
ESPN just has to be the highest bidder. Someone has got to air the games.
>> Someone has got to air the games.
Really? Football has been played without network coverage. I could see a future whereby teams handled their own streaming, or where the NFL did it all through NFL.com. The days of "air" are quickly coming to an end. I'm a little surprised that Netflix, Google or even FB aren't bidding.
And if NFL owners want more people into the stadiums, curtailing broadcast coverage has been the traditional means. Ticket prices are already so high that it isn't inconceivable that they take it to the next level and market a game like a rock concert: be in the room or miss out.
NFL's financial viability depends on the combined, pooled TV revenues. If each team is reduced to parceling out its own TV rights, smaller-market teams simply won't survive. You would see revenue disparities worse than in baseball right now (compare the Dodgers' TV contract with that of the A's or Brewers or DBacks... or, before this season, Houston).I could see a future whereby teams handled their own streamingAmazon currently streams Thursday Night Football
So does Twitter I believe....
> Someone has got to air the games.
Does someone? Sure, professional football has been very popular for many decades, but there's nothing about the order of the universe which states that it will remain so forever. We don't have chariot races, or gladiators, or bear-baiting — maybe someday we won't have professional football either.
The NFL's life expectancy is now less than 20 years. Young people aren't playing the game, because their parents don't want their brains to get all smashed up. Active participation in tackle football among teenagers fell from 9% to 7% in just 5 years from 2011-2016. The talent pool will dry up. The game will be less interesting. The fan base will die off.
I don't think playing the game is very important in the US. If playing the game as a youth affected your viewing habits as an adult then soccer should be the most popular sport in the US. Basketball should far eclipse football. As long as they have enough younger players to sustain they should be fine.
Its more about the availability of gladiators than the sports history of people in the stands.
What happens if the highest bidder can't pay the NFL enough to make it worthwhile?
I keep seeing pictures of half-empty stands behind kneeling football players, and ultimately if the NFL destroys its value by alienating too many fans with politics, there's no reason the entire business won't or shouldn't collapse.
As for not paying the NFL enough to make it worthwhile:
Someone will pick up the rights to show the games, or the league will offer their own service, or the games won't be played on Mondays/Thursdays and will go back to just being a Sunday sport.
Regarding losing their audience and destroying their value:
I stopped following the NFL not because of politics (the kneeling thing hadn't yet started), but because their product was no longer worth my time. Thirty+ years as a fan, watching nearly every single game the local team played and I turned it off a couple years ago. It should not take 3+ hours for 60 minutes of "play", the bulk of which involves no action. It became so overloaded with commercials that it hit the point I was no longer interested. For a short while there was hope, they had the "game in 60" replays on the NFL network. That could have been amazing. Unfortunately, they screwed that up too, showing "all the action" in the first half (good!), then a shortened version of the halftime show (why?), then "all the action" in the third quarter (good!), and then they'd jump to the end of the fourth quarter (wtf?). Why did we need a halftime show when the whole thing a) is being condensed down to an hour, b) is a replay, and c) they sacrifice showing comebacks in order to bring us talking heads?
I think they've been losing their audience for a while; the politics is just the latest (and possibly biggest) factor in their decline. If they turn things around, great. If not, I won't feel sorry for them.
> I think they've been losing their audience for a while; the politics is just the latest (and possibly biggest) factor in their decline
Yeah, politics has been an issue, but you are correct, this isn't their first time they've offended viewers. Some people are ticked about the money grab around stadiums, the rule change to protect the QB, the concussion coverup, the various sex scandals locally (e.g. Vikings boat trip), wife beating, and (a really big factor) cannot afford to go to the games anymore. There has been a long line of things that are whittling away the fans. Never mind the problem of replacing fans who died with new young fans when entertainment options are vast.
NFL is not the only sport having problems. They are just the biggest in the US, and are showing the largest number loss. The general decline of ESPN, with all of the reasons to stop watching them, is also a factor. If you don't go home and watch Sports Center then maybe you won't be fired up for the NFL either.
At the end of the day, every decision is going to offend someone, just make sure the offended don't outnumber the people you attract to the sport.
I completely agree with you on the commercial part, it has gotten ridiculous. If it was not for the NFL Red Zone channel, I think I would have given up also.
I'm always a little shocked when people admit outrage over kneeling players but don't seem at all concerned that the sport endangers the players' wellbeing. What do you think contributes to this empathy gap?
IMO, Money. People see kneeling as overpaid players throwing tantrums. They see the brain issues as the risk they take for being paid a lot.
In the case of many, many people I have met in the Midwest: the answer is racism. These people for some reason can't seem to grasp the simple fact that players are protesting the fact that black people are being shot and killed for either petty crimes or no crimes at all. You certainly don't have to agree with their protest, but not being able to empathize reflects much poorly on you than it does them.
Here we have a glaring example of the issue. You use feelings instead of data to make your point, the problem is your anecdotal assertions are not backed up by reality. 90% of those killed by police were armed.
So far this year 15 African Americans have been killed while unarmed to 21 White Americans and the numbers are similar for the previous years where data is available
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
[ Edited Below Rate Limited Reply ]
It is about Ratios WillyOnWheels except police aren't killing a bunch of people for no apparent reason, so ratios will never be one to one based on racial data alone.
More than 90% of police homicide victims were armed, the vast majority of them were during the commission of a crime.
Do we want to go over violent crime stats and how that relates to the likelihood you will be killed by police.
It is your half-assed attempt to apply normative statistics to a non-normative issue that shines a light upon your ignorance and all who parrot the same statement without ever delving into the data
Of course the numbers are irrefutable, so down vote away
It's about ratios.
There are about 220 million White Americans. Your data claims 392 White Americans have been killed police in 2017 so far.
There are about 35 million Black Americans. Your data claims 190 Black Americans have been killed by police in 2017 so far.
If Black Americans were killed by police hypothetically at the same rate as White Americans, 62 Black Americans would be dead.
Do you see the huge disparity there?
It seems pretty consistent with murder victim data. Even though Chicago is 32% black and 43% white, the vast vast majority of murder victims are black and occur in mostly black neighborhoods. I would think that police interactions with crime would follow this trend too.
What you analysis fails to factor in is the number of crimes committed by each. In that regard blacks commit far more crimes then whites.
Or Blacks get charged far more than whites, or that Blacks are policed more heavily, or that it has to do with poverty more than skin color, etc.
The issue is that the data can't be conclusive unless you have an issue where you took two groups of people, gave them the same economic starting point, gave them the same systemic disadvantage, same opportunities and then could make a determination as to whether or not it has anything to do with culture.
Or you could easily look into the fact that economically there is a long history of repressing people of color and that systemic collection of repressions them still exist leading to the exact outcome expected, but still blame those people for "not picking themselves up by their bootstraps". It's as though you haven't seen Trading Places.
Empathy is a privilege of the wealthy. NFL is primarily consumed by people working three shifts desperately struggling to keep their life together.
I cannot fault people on the bottom not being particularly concerned about someone making millions. As a matter of fact lots of NFL players see their sport as a way out of the trailer park. Do you think the NFL players are stupid?
Let us have some empathy for the people who live in the underclass of society.
It might have something to do with the fact that only 6% of Police Shootings involved an unarmed individual, and every year more white people are killed by police than African Americans. People would be more empathetic to the players supposed grievance if statistics backed them up
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shoo...
This doesn't actually address my question. Kneeling, right or wrong, is a small expression of speech. CTEs endanger all players. The priorities here should be apparent.
But the players aren't kneeling for CTE, they're kneeling for a supposed grievance which is not reflected in statistical reality. I don't think anyone understands your question, it's more like an uniformed statement with a question mark at the end
Most stadium deals NFL teams have made over the past decade gives the team revenue from all events in the stadium instead just the NFL games. Owners who have been able to get cities and states to agree to these deals can insert other events on the days the team would have played should the sport collapse. The team as a legal entity would live on as an entertainment services provider. Even if the replacement event isn't as popular as the NFL once was, it along with all the other events hosted at the stadium likely would keep a profit stream flowing to the team owner.
Unlike indoor arenas, it doesn't look like this is much of a revenue stream for most football stadiums. For instance, I checked Arrowhead Stadium (Chiefs) has 2 non-football events scheduled in the next year. Heinz Field (Steelers) has 1. Despite being in Nashville, Nissan Stadium (Titans) has 3.
Actually if they are smart the NFL capitalises on the current political climate.
Think about it: an NFL team sponsored by the alt right vs. one funded by Ben&Jerry's.
There would have to be a pretty massive drop off for that to be a problem. The biggest costs are player/staff salaries and stadiums.
They can just keep the salary cap low and stop paying for new stadiums.
Umm no. NFL took in 15 Billion in 2015, 2/3 of the revenue came from TV, new stadiums over the last 20 years have totaled only $15 Billion of which almost half was financed by tax payers[0].
NFL will not weather well a continued hit to ratings, which were down 8% last year and dropping again this year
[0]https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19smEPxvpHQE3pByhDDPb...
curious - are there any reports/#'s out there that indicate attendance is lower than normal? +correlation w/ kneeling players?
The vast majority of NFL tickets are sold before the start of the season so teams are still claiming sellouts, which while technically correct, gives an impression that isn't reflected in actual people in the seats. I'm not sure how the NFL counts attendance but in NCAA football each school decides on what methodology to use. Some don't count hotdog vendors, some count every person inside the stadium, some just estimate the crowd without bothering with an actual count. It wouldn't surprise me if some pro teams massaged their numbers to appear larger than the actual number of fans who show up.
> It wouldn't surprise me if some pro teams massaged their numbers to appear larger than the actual number of fans who show up.
Without any substantiating evidence the opposite wouldn't surprise me either.
Please provide backing evidence that demonstrates the counts are maliciously inflated, at an increased rate, which masks lower turnout.
I have no evidence that if wouldn't surprise me other than actually writing out that it wouldn't surprise me. You'll simply have to take my word that I wouldn't be surprised.
You can look at the raw stats yourself here[0].
I did some quick calculation here, and it looks like attendance is not lower, in fact, it's slightly higher. 2016 average attendance was 66,586, while this year's average attendance so far is 68,925.
(This doesn't account for lower-attended games towards the end of the season for poor-performing teams; end of the season games often don't sell out for such teams, and these stats may be skewed because we haven't reached the end of the season yet. If I were to guess, by year's end attendance will be slightly lower for 2017.)
What is down is ratings. That is well-documented[1].
[0]: http://www.espn.com/nfl/attendance/_/year/2016
[1]: http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/20/media/nfl-tv-ratings-week-2/...
Those official attendance figures count tickets issued, not how many fans actually go through the turnstiles. (Teams refuse to release those counts to the public).
You can see massive amounts of empty seats in 4 or 5 NFL stadiums right now. Some cities have extremely loyal fan bases regardless of record (e.g. Green Bay, Pittsburgh), but you can see many seats going completely unsold in Levi's Stadium (49ers).
In fact, Pittsburgh was the reference standard that the 49ers (for one) used as a comparison in selling licenses for their building ("see how WELL those licenses are selling! Don't miss out!").
I've yet to find any. If you look at attendance for the last decade there seems to be no indication that it is actually declining.
Nope.
The NFL has struggled finding a good home for Thursday Night Football. MNF could easily turn into another network wandering nomad.
Is that true? My impression was always that it was a valuable enough property that lots of companies wanted in on the action, but I admit that's not grounded in sources.
Ah so that's why Amazon Prime was able to land TNF.
> But can ESPN exist as a network without NFL games?
Yes. It broadcasts < 20 NFL games per year. This is not a lot of airtime for a 24h sports network. It does spend a considerable amount of time talking about NFL, but that can continue whether it broadcasts their games or not. It has a 3-hour lead-in show on Sunday morning that gets sizable ratings while broadcasting zero games that day. Nobody subscribes to ESPN/cable just for MNF.
In contrast, ESPN broadcasts dozens of college football games per year and spends probably an equal amount of time - or more - discussing those. It spends about $1.4b per year in total on those TV rights which have lucrative advertising and cable subscriber value. That's in addition to all of the other sports ESPN broadcasts.
ESPN will bid less for MNF because they can't afford it any more but mostly because the ratings don't fully justify the current cost. The overall success of ESPN doesn't hinge solely on whether or not they broadcast any NFL games, it's based on how sensible the price is for the rights they own. They have plenty of other content to fill airtime that people watch and will pay a reasonable subscriber price for, even if that's not quite as much as they extract now from cable providers.
My thoughts exactly. Their problem is that cable TV as a whole has increasingly viable substitute goods. But there's no reason ESPN can't play that same game. I imagine it's only a matter of time before they put together streaming packages they sell direct to consumer. But they'll ride the value revenue till the wheels fall off first.
The problem is ESPN was able to capture an outsized amount of revenue due to cable TV providers bundling it with other channels, so you had large amounts of people paying for it but not consuming it.
Cord cutters are upending the model, requiring ESPN to swim on its own without subsidies; my personal opinion is that there aren’t enough sports fans to support it except as an over the top app similar to what HBO GO is trying to do.
Yeah, I agree with you that the gravy train is ending. But I think we mistake the ability for a business to exist at its peak or grow continually for its long-term viability. Look at the record companies. We're nearing two decades since the MP3 revolution, and most of the companies are still around in some form. ESPN, too, will have to adapt to a new post-bundle reality. But I see no real threat to their overall status as The Worldwide Leader In Sports. I'm not shedding any tears for them. They simply have to innovate.
Sears is still around too, but just barely. These companies that have been passed by innovation/disruption can exist in zombie form for a long time until they finally die. See: Tower Records [+]
[+] http://www.npr.org/2009/12/29/121975854/2006-and-the-death-o...
My point is simply that it's ESPN's underlying business model that is drying up, but not its core asset of mindshare within the sports world, which remains extremely strong. I'd argue that Monday Night Football is more or less irrelevant from this perspective. They'll drop it to give themselves more runway to figure out what's next.
At the end of the day, I don't really care much whether ESPN stagnates like Sears or reinvents like Apple. But I think they live or die from a position of strength, present storm clouds aside.
I would like to see MNF go back to an over-the-air network.
MNF has a long tradition before moving to ESPN. There are lots of fans who don't have a pay tv package that have been missing out on MNF.
That's an assumption that the NFL (or any sports league for that matter) do things that are beneficial to fans as opposed to beneficial to the bottom line of owners.
I can name a hundred things leagues have done to dilute and harm their respective games in order to increase profits.
Long time NFL GamePass subscriber here... no commercials, watch any game I want when I want - it's a completely superior experience to cable / OTA. I get that the NFL wants to maximize its revenue by selling rights, but they could likely provide their own real-time streaming service and every football fan on the planet would be happy to pay for it.
Yes, but nobody else would. Lots of the people paying for ESPN don't do so by choice, they do so because it comes as part of their cable package whether they watch it or not (this was me pre-cord-cutting).
Gamepass is $75 right now.
Back of the envelope, every viewer of MNF would need to pay $200 just to keep MNF and one wildcard game. More to get Sunday, Thursday, the playoffs and the Superbowl. Easily $300 - $400 per viewer a year.
That's a hard sell.
> it's a completely superior experience to cable / OTA
Can't watch ALL games live right? That's hardly completely superior. IMO, NFL would make less money on direct sales than they do when they charge networks which charge all cable subscribers (even via retransmission fees for those of us who can't get OTA) AND charge advertisers. That double dip is going to net more money than a specialized service for NFL fans.
> Can't watch ALL games live right? That's hardly completely superior.
You can't on television, either.
True. You also can't even watch your local game live either IIRC. I should have made that clear...it is NOT completely superior.
I'm with you on commercials, but I don't believe NFL GamePass includes live games? I'm big on fantasy, so live games are important.
I pay about $30 to Sling TV just for Redzone. I've never watched any of the other channels that come with it. When the regular season ends I just cancel Sling.
I'd be happy handing over the $150/season or so directly to the NFL. Unfortunately, I'm probably worth more to advertisers just because of that.
Look friends, all I'm saying is, the NFL has other options. In its current form (IE: non-live except for pre-season) I get that the customer base is small. BUT, if ESPN or other parties drop the ball, the NFL could monetize their games through a direct-to-consumer model, IE: just because the games aren't live today doesn't mean they couldn't be in the future. Would I pay $200/year for every NFL game sans commercials? Heck yes.
ESPN's downward spiral perpetuated when their talk show hosts started pushing their politic agenda and a liberal bias (Not saying a liberal bias is wrong, but many people get turned off by it). Sports should be an escape from the daily political circus and a time to relax and enjoy entertainment. FS1 is quickly becoming the destination for many sports fans and ESPN will continue to lose viewers if they don't change.
It's no mystery why ESPN is going down.
They placed their emphasis on things other than sports. Sports fans will pay for sports, not politics.
One option that other TV rights offerings have taken up is to split the package into tiered offerings.
That would allow the NFL to maintain ESPN as potentially the top tier while introducing new suitors with lower tiers and maintaining their revenue in aggregate.
The losers in this scenario are the fans: forced to purchase several subscriptions if they want to watch every game.
Once the NFL became political, a lot of hardcore fans stopped using it as an escape from the madness ever present in the news and social media. Seeing falling revenues doesn't surprise me.
The irony of my comment is I'm making plans to watch KC vs Denver... and it's Monday.
>>Once the NFL became political
The numbers have been decreasing for the past 6 years. It has nothing to do with NFL becoming political.
http://www.businessinsider.com/espn-losing-subscribers-not-r...
You're talking about two different things. He's talking about the NFL and you're talking about ESPN. Definitely the politics has hurt the NFL, though there's a lot of disagreement over just how much, but football is only a small part of ESPN's offerings.
I'd be shocked if politics haven't hurt ESPN, too, but the effect is probably completely swamped by changes in viewing habits and a reduction in Disney's clout with cable companies.
Monday Night Football matchups are usually unimportant and/or lobsided.
2 Billion? That's a lot of brain injuries.