Why the future of live sports is in ESPN's hands

It's the most common retort to cord-cutters, the first word of caution to anyone looking to get rid of their cable subscription: live sports.

You'll spend a lot of time in bars, I tell people, because without a cable subscription watching games becomes virtually impossible. There's still a lot of truth to the statement — live sports are the least-supported thing most cable-cancellers might want — but there's a surprisingly large amount of content out there available without a cable subscription. Of course, when you add up the costs of getting the games you want, you're probably better off just getting cable again, but the idea that you can only watch sports on your television is quickly becoming antiquated. The restricting factor for all live sports is TV deals. Every league makes millions or billions of dollars from ESPN, TBS, NBC, and countless other networks that want a monopoly over the broadcasts of their sports. In our diffuse media world, where everything is available whenever we want it, live sports are one of only a few things that qualify as "appointment viewing." That kind of engaged, current audience is incredibly valuable to advertisers, and networks aren't keen on sharing that attention with league-provided streaming services.

As long as TV remains the biggest source of leagues' revenue in the US (and that won't change anytime soon), broadcast companies will control how and where games are broadcast. That's why it won't be the NHL, or MLB, or NFL that take the steps necessary to make live sports a true streaming reality — it'll be ESPN.