ESPN+ Gravestone
By Ben Koo on

As we and many other digital outlets are well aware, producing ad-supported written content is a tough business. At the same time, sending potential readers to a paywall that does not convert into a subscription is a major annoyance for potential readers and one that limits the reach of your written content. To paywall or not to paywall has been one of the biggest dilemmas to navigate for modern-day media companies.

For the millions of sports fans who have landed on an ESPN article but ran into a paywall which they either did not have a subscription for or potentially struggled to remember a password to access, Awful Announcing has learned ESPN has strategically moved away from paywalling new written content and is seeing most formally paywalled content now free from their former confines. An early clue on this strategic change came in an ESPN Fantasy Football press release earlier this month.

“For the first time ever, all ESPN Fantasy Football articles will be available to all fans, providing everyone with complete access to all the best content on ESPN.com“

So what prompted the change?

Lost in the shuffle of what has been one of ESPN’s busiest months in recent memory is that its premium add-on service, ESPN+, seems to be on a countdown. Back in 2020, when ESPN was all in on ESPN+ and throwing whatever it could under that service’s offerings, ESPN opted to move previously free written content on its website behind a paywall requiring an ESPN+ subscription. At the time, the ESPN+ subscriber base was mostly UFC fans who wanted access to pay-per-view events as well as customers who subscribed in a large bundle with Disney+ and Hulu.

ESPN+ had only around 10 million subscribers when the decision was made. In the months after the change, that number moved to 12 million subscribers. We were told at the time that many individual writers were not in favor of this move, as several had forgone opportunities at other outlets that had paywalls in favor of ESPN because their content would be accessible to more people, and that their followers would continue to be able to access their content for free. Writers and readers may not have enjoyed the change, but hey, that Disney stock may have inched up a quarter of a point!

Corporate priorities, however, change, and what’s largely understood now is that ESPN+ at some point in time is going to go away. Our Sean Keeley wrote a great article on this last year in which he posited that the future of ESPN+ as its own product may get wound down if the UFC moved away from ESPN, which was announced earlier this month and will take effect in 2026. Additionally, ESPN has done away with putting one Monday Night Football game exclusively on ESPN+, which is another key clue that the service is no longer a priority for the company. Former landing pages for information on ESPN+ have recently been replaced, instead redirecting people to landing pages about ESPN’s new flagship app.

As you can see below, ESPN+ subscribers’ numbers have started to come down, and when the UFC leaves the service at the end of this year, this trend is inevitably going to accelerate at a much faster pace.

ESPN sees its future in its just-released DTC offering. ESPN+ as an additional product just doesn’t make sense, especially with the UFC departing. It has caused and continues to cause significant brand and product confusion, as a substantial number of subscribers believed they were getting access to all of ESPN’s content at the time of signup, which wasn’t possible until earlier this week with ESPN’s DTC offering.

ESPN has made it clear that the DTC product is by far the biggest priority and bellwether for its future. ESPN+ is essentially on a countdown clock with its UFC deal and existing deals counting down toward zero, at which point it will likely just be folded into the main ESPN product.  It’s quite possible that ESPN is already negotiating with content partners like the SEC, ACC, Ivy League, and, as well as countless niche sports that exist on the service, these rights bought for ESPN+ will move to the main ESPN app (something that would improve viewership).

Long story short: ESPN moved to paywalled written content because it wanted to move the needle on subscribers to ESPN+. Now that the service is almost assuredly going away, written content and sports programming that were meant to reinforce the ESPN+ offering are finding their way back over that annoying paywall. For sports fans who hate getting out their credit cards or being annoyed seeing a renewal that they forgot about for something they barely use, it’s a welcome change.

About Ben Koo

Owner and editor of @AwfulAnnouncing. Recovering Silicon Valley startup guy. Fan of Buckeyes, A's, dogs, naps, tacos. and the old AOL dialup sounds

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