ESPN+ cannot carry the team

As a writer, as well as a believer in the power of good journalism, I would never attempt to tear apart someone else's material nor I would knowingly attempt to discredit anyone's credentials. However, in the interest of fairness and honesty, I will at times offer a rebuttal to someone's op-ed piece that simply seems to fall flat while attempting to be persuasive. In all honesty, I would expect someone to do the same for me.

In the interest of respect, I will not link the article nor name the author or publication, but the summary of the article is that ESPN+ is an essential and worthwhile investment for those who love sports and are cutting the cord on cable. The problem is that the author did not make an argument even close to sufficient to make the point that it is essential for sports enthusiasts; the entirety of their argument centered around the fact that more soccer would be available for everyone. While this is great for soccer fans (which I consider myself at times), it does not even remotely make a strong case for ESPN+ because there really is no good argument for ESPN+ currently.

IMAGE: ESPNMediaZone

If you are not a sports fan, or do not watch ESPN, you may have no idea what ESPN+ even means. Basically, it is a standalone streaming service from ESPN (Disney) that offers (for $5 a month) various sports programming that is not carried on the main ESPN family of programs. Those sports will basically range from soccer to various college sports to some MLB regional broadcasts that are not blacked out. Like WatchESPN, the additional service offered to ESPN cable subscribers, you say? Not even close because while WatchESPN has all of the programming on ESPN networks as well as additional programming such as ESPNU, ESPN+ currently only gets the programming that will not be featured on any of the ESPN networks. Also, if you like any programming such as SportsCenter, Get Up!, or Golic and Wingo, forget about it because those are only on "regular" ESPN.

Thankfully, Disney had the sense to make it clear this was simply a complementary service to ESPN and not designed to stand on its own; I just wish the author of the article had had the sense to make sure people understood that (full disclosure, they hastily put that in the last paragraph of the article). For those who love all sports and watch them 24/7, ESPN+ could be a good use of $5 a month as it will get you access to the equivalent of ESPN8. However, for those of us who love sports other than soccer and archived streams of games long-since-passed, ESPN+ is certainly not yet ready to be our end-all-be-all of sports entertainment and may never be that. Pretending that it is, and even making the case that it is based on a specific preference, will lead to a lot of cord-cutters unsatisfied...that is until they launch a new studio show featuring Cotton McKnight and Pepper Brooks.