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>WOR: “There is a giant news story coming from CNBC about Disney CEO Bob Iger attempting to make deals to give the NBA, NFL and Major League Baseball minority owner stakes in ESPN.
>“The idea to me seems to be that ESPN wants to get out of the spiraling rights games by offering the key content producers points in the company with the assurance that they will stay on ESPN.
>“As we constantly talk about, the television business is rapidly changing and as more and more people no longer get cable, and cable carriage fees and advertising declines with them, the stations will no longer have the money to pay as much for programming.
>“This spells potential disaster for every sport, as well as WWE, AEW and UFC, in attempts to continually get more money each negotiation period.
>“The bottom hasn’t fallen out yet, and may not, but it feels to me this is the most dangerous challenge to this system that has served sports so well and made WWE and UFC into giant companies.”
>“The idea to me seems to be that ESPN wants to get out of the spiraling rights games by offering the key content producers points in the company with the assurance that they will stay on ESPN.
>“As we constantly talk about, the television business is rapidly changing and as more and more people no longer get cable, and cable carriage fees and advertising declines with them, the stations will no longer have the money to pay as much for programming.
>“This spells potential disaster for every sport, as well as WWE, AEW and UFC, in attempts to continually get more money each negotiation period.
>“The bottom hasn’t fallen out yet, and may not, but it feels to me this is the most dangerous challenge to this system that has served sports so well and made WWE and UFC into giant companies.”
