09-06-2023, 06:01 PM
(08-06-2023, 11:03 PM)Rdd Wrote: The ESPN brand will be still be seen, on various US sports coverage across a number of channels, including ESPN Monday Night Football on Sky.True, the only “loss” last time was ESPN Classic, and even then BT’s deal with ESPN included the rights to much of it, so the content was sometimes seen on various BT Sport channels as filler.
I’m more worried about the content, which was mostly college sports, MLB as noted came separately. It’s very niche and it worked well having a designated home, be that NASN, ESPN America, BT Sport ESPN, and finally BT Sport 4 (I know in recent times BT had spread it a bit more around their four channels). Most of it probably won’t be picked up by any other broadcaster. Maybe the college football stuff might, even then I can’t see that anyone else would give it the breadth of coverage we got with BT and it’s predecessors.
You can’t really compare with the loss of ESPN Classic though, that was almost entirely archive stuff, aside from some fairly rare use as overspill.
Actual new live sport, as you say, didn’t air on ESPN Classic so it mattered much less that archive content wasn’t routinely aired as it had such a niche appeal.