The big ESPN layoffs that everyone knew were coming finally arrived today, and the culling has been as brutal as anyone could have expected. Though the final number isn’t in yet, various reports have around 100 people losing their jobs, and many of the people who have been fired so far aren’t just long-time, front-facing employees, but those who, like Jayson Stark and Jane McManus, represent what ESPN is at its best: wired, experienced, deeply knowledgable, enthusiastic.
The impetus behind these layoffs is not mysterious (and has nothing to do with the network’s purportedly liberal politics). ESPN has been hemorrhaging subscribers for some time now as a result of cord-cutting, which hurts them much more than other networks given that they charge vastly higher carriage fees. With ESPN having to pay billions of dollars to sports leagues for the right to broadcast the must-see live events that allow it to charge those fees, the network is uniquely ill-equipped to deal with the sudden decline in revenue that comes with the loss of 10 million subscribers over the course of three years.
