ESPN not losing younger viewers in digital tide, says network exec

As ESPN loses subscribers with consumers opting to cut the cord from cable and satellite service, the sentiment that younger viewers are steering away from the network in favor of newer digital options continues to grow.

That’s a narrative which executives at ESPN take issue with, as could be expected. John Kosner, ESPN’s general manager for digital and print media, didn’t much care for comments Bleacher Report CEO Dave Finocchio made in an interview with Business Insider last month.

Here’s what Finocchio said about younger consumers seeking different outlets than SportsCenter for news and features:

“Today, what a 60-year-old man expects out of sports — which is probably still the local newspaper and SportsCenter on ESPN — is really different than what the 16-year-old expects. Which is probably behind-the-scenes, authentic views into an athlete’s life on Snapchat, plus using Team Stream to get news and content, plus using Instagram to get really cool social stuff to share with friends. I think ESPN has had a hard time. It’s tough to cater to both audiences and I think they’ve gotten stuck in the middle a little on that.”

Oooh, that got Kosner’s dander up. What he particularly disagreed with was the idea that ESPN has been slow to embrace digital media and give young consumers what they’re looking for. For example, one of the outlets Finocchio highlighted was Snapchat. Kosner countered by pointing out that ESPN’s Snapchat Discover channel is thriving,

College GameDay live story on @Snapchat. Some of our best work pic.twitter.com/jFnbhI332n

— John Kosner (Kosner Media) (@JKosner) September 3, 2016

According to Kosner, ESPN gets 18 million unique viewers on that Snapchat channel per month, averaging 2.3 million per day. With those numbers, ESPN has the third-most watched channel on Snapchat Discover.

Then there are the digital platforms ESPN already had in place, such as the WatchESPN streaming channel and the WatchESPN app. Kosner points to comScore numbers of 30.6 million viewers across the network’s digital outlets during July in the key demographic of adults aged 18 to 34, which far exceeds the competition. (Yahoo Sports-NBC drew 17.1 million in the same period.) That audience figures to improve once ESPN’s developing over-the-top service is available for consumers.

Rather than those digital options cutting into traditional TV viewership for shows like SportsCenter, Kosner asserts that they actually draw younger viewers to that programming. According to him, SportsCenter‘s audience has a younger composition on late-night TV than shows like The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live.

But are younger viewers tuning into SportsCenter when they can get scores and highlights on social media? That still looms as an issue for ESPN, despite Kosner’s protests to the contrary. He could be right about products like Snapchat serving as a gateway for a different audience, and if ESPN is able to stamp its brand into younger viewers’ consciousness, perhaps they’ll gravitate to some of its more traditional offerings (which figure to increasingly include streaming in years to come) as they get older and consume TV and sports differently.

[Business Insider]