Its not the viewers the sports leagues value ESPN for. Its the money ESPN pays them for the right to broadcast to their viewers. That's why the NFL Network is a step-child network that can't maximize its value as the NFL can't make more from it that they can selling to ESPN, Fox, CBS and NBC
What? No. The cable companies pay ESPN for the privilege of carrying them. It's a revenue share, that's why ESPN is a part of basic packages: cable companies using their billing base to increase the cable company's profit margin on the extortionate amounts they kickback to the network. You think ESPN doesn't use sports agent techniques in their business development department?
I agree with you about the quality of non-game broadcasts on ESPN, but I think this is sort of exactly why it's not more profitable for leagues to sell directly to consumers. The major networks pay a price for broadcast rights that is greater than what they make in just advertising during those events because they use the NFL/MLB/etc to prop up the rest of their programming.
...and when the major networks can no longer afford those fees, the prices will drop. It's a market, and if ESPN loses a ton of money at the same time as every other purchaser does, the leagues are going to have to change their fee models or find themselves with no coverage.
Well yeah, forcing every cable customer to subsidize your multi-channel mandatory presence in basic packages is going to be "more profitable" to ESPN than becoming a selection that has to compete for optional package selection. I don't think the advantage of this arrangement for ESPN is any question to anybody.
Some leagues (MLB, NBA, NHL) are getting better, though, at providing direct access to the consumers.
Getting people to pay to subscribe to you is a whole different beast from chasing ratings among an audience that pays for you either way.
ESPN may get ratings doing endless Tim Tebow stories, but I posit that the viewers that generate those ratings aren't the same people the network could successfully convert into subscribers. Fluff crap may get people to stop while flipping channels, but nobody is going to be directly subscribing to get it.
I'm a sports fan, yet like many other sports fans, I consider ESPN to be borderline unwatchable. The only thing I care to watch are actual game broadcasts. And what happens when wider direct distribution means that the sports world no longer needs ESPN's cable reach to get to viewers?