I'm sure it couldn't have anything to do with going full tilt left... The ESPY award for Jenner was disgusting.
Perhaps indirectly. The big issue here is cord-cutting. ESPN has long built itself on the bundle model—get onto the basic cable package, then force every cable subscriber to pay $6+ per month for it (plus an extra $1 for ESPN2), even if they don't watch it. Then, they can use that money to pay ridiculously high rights fees to colleges and pro sports leagues to lock them into long-term contracts, keep them out of the hands of their competitors and off the free airwaves. So, if they have a crappy product surrounding all those sports that people want to watch, that's too bad—because if they want to watch those sporting events like the College Football Playoff, they're only allowed to do it on ESPN.
That model is starting to crumble. For one, in the worst-case scenario, people can find radio broadcasts and/or follow along as people tweet about it on Twitter. Then you have increased competition: hockey is certainly not languishing away without ESPN; it's as strong as ever with NBC as its single partner, and with the Internet now, there are literally hundreds of options for its bread-and-butter product, college sports—and even as ESPN tries to corner as many as they can, they can't possibly cover them all. The rise of Netflix as a major content producer will likely be the biggest dent: consider many of the most talked-about shows on "TV" now.
House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Fuller House, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Stranger Things—all are Netflix shows you won't find on traditional TV. When the Netflix subscription becomes the primary source of entertainment for a household, that leaves TV channels like ESPN, who only operate through cable companies and not direct to the consumer, out of the loop.
