ESPN charges distributors a monthly fee of $7.21 per subscriber, and another 90 cents for ESPN2, according to SNL Kagan, an offering of S&P Global Market Intelligence. The cost for ESPN is up more than 120 percent from 2007, when it was $3.26 per subscriber.
To put that number into perspective, as Sherman writes, it’s more than double from where ESPN was nine years ago. Furthermore, it’s up over a full dollar from the summer of 2014 ($6.04 per subscriber per month) and up another 17 cents ($7.04) from the estimates by Dave Warner at What U Pay 4 Sports from earlier this summer.
What do these increases mean? It’s a profitable, yet dangerous game of chicken for ESPN. On one hand, it means that they continue to increase their cable and satellite revenue that will see ESPN be almost impossible to catch for the next generation or more. If we assume FS1 is still around the $1.00 per subscriber per month mark, that means ESPN is ahead in that department by approximately $6.7 billion (yes, billion with a “b”) in revenue.
