Once the ‘casting’ is set into place, it still looks pretty complex until context is put with the comparisons. The big banks took a concept created by Lewis Ranieri called Mortgage Backed Securities and bundled hundreds of them together to create packages to sell. ESPN took either content and bundled them together with hundreds of channels to create cable packages. Diving deeper into each of the packages lets starts with the cable bubble. Cable packages combine hundreds of channels, many of which are only cents compared to monthly subscriber fee of $7.04 for ESPN (Whatyoupayforsports). Since ESPN is packaged with hundreds of different ‘filler’ channels, many consumers don’t even watch ESPN, which inflates the annual revenue to over 7 billion …show more content…
Currently, the Nielsen Ratings are going down each year for ESPN. While the CEO Disney, Bob Iger has insisted “We are very bullish about our cable business, and we are very bullish about ESPN, the bundle is not going away. Not only is it not going away, it is going to continue to grow” many people, including leagues, are beginning to get worried. This is where the cable packages are helping some shows get better numbers. “One positive result of the cable bundle has been a tremendous amount of money rolling into television programming and the flourishing of great shows that wouldn’t necessarily work if ten million or more people had to watch”(Is ESPN a giant bubble...). If it networks turned into over the top services, many shows on ESPN and FS1 would be cancelled because their numbers would be even worse. The problem with going over the top is the price. While many networks would look to make the most out of it, “only 12 percent of cable subscribers in a recent surveys say they’d pay more than $20 per month for a stand-alone sports bundle, if such a thing were separately available” (The Sports Bubble Is About to Pop). The key will be finding what the correct price is for the