ESPN: Everywhere Sports Profit Network

ESPN’s revenues are growing at 9 percent a year, with a projected $8.2 billion in revenue in 2012, according to research firm SNL Kagan. Head count has doubled in the last seven years to 7,000 employees worldwide. ESPN earns one out of every four dollars earned by cable stations in America.

According to SNL Kagan, ESPN charges its cable affiliates an average $5.13 per month for each of its 100 million subscribers (the industry average is about 20¢ per subscriber) while also taking in $2 billion a year in advertising revenue. Its projected 2013 revenue of close to $9 billion dwarfs cable players like Liberty Media (LMCA) and Tribune and puts it on par with traditional broadcast networks like CBS (CBS). The company’s president, John Skipper, attributes ESPN’s dominance to geography, a high tolerance for risk, and a culture of “build, build, build. There comes a time when a lot of businesses become calcified, but we never stop building.” ESPN is now bigger than “The Total Sports Network.” It’s more than an entertainment empire. The decentralization of media and the disruptive influence of technology—ubiquitous screens, plentiful bandwidth, and generous digital storage making it possible to watch anything, anywhere, anytime—have made big-ticket sports the only events that still regularly attract a mass global audience. No outlet owns the rights to more of those properties—including the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, major-conference college football, all four Grand Slam tennis championships, Major League Soccer, Nascar, and golf’s U.S. Open, British Open, and the Masters—than ESPN. The company broadcasts more than half of all the live sports seen in the U.S. Through dozens of ESPN-branded TV, Web, and mobile platforms, it also shapes the ways in which leagues, teams, and athletes are packaged, promoted, marketed, and consumed by the public.

In a real sense, ESPN no longer covers sports. It controls sports.