Kerby Anderson

Last month I talked about the economic woes of ESPN, when the network laid off 100 people. There are economic reasons, but the more important are the political reasons. ESPN executives and on-air talent came to the wrong conclusion about bringing political discussions into the network. It didn’t improve ESPN’s ratings. It made them worse.

Clay Travis explained that, “Middle America wants to pop a beer and listen to sports talk, they don’t want to be lectured about why Caitlyn Jenner is a hero, Michael Sam in the new Jackie Robinson of sports, and Colin Kaepernick is the Rosa Parks of football.”

A recent survey validates his conclusions. “The study aggregated 43 different media markets to see the political leanings of ESPN consumers in those markets.” The study found that Republicans were fleeing ESPN in droves. In the last year, the ESPN audience became 5 percent less Republican and ESPN 2 actually became 10 percent less Republican.

The biggest partisan shift happened on ESPN News, whose audience became 36 percent less Republican.
When the study came out, Clay Travis said the results did not surprise him. Instead, “they will put to rest the liberal sports media arguments that ESPN’s politics are having no impact on viewership. ESPN’s ratings are down substantially in the past year and a big reason why is the network’s liberal political slant on sports stories.”

This study provided the needed documentation for what many already assumed to be true. ESPN has been chasing off lots of viewers who merely wanted to watch their favorite sports teams and get some interesting sports commentary. They didn’t turn on the channel to get more of what is already available on other cable channels. It wasn’t a smart move to turn ESPN into MSNBC with sports added. They wanted to watch sports not be lectured about left-wing ideology.