ESPN's sports coverage has come a long way the last 20 years or so. Sports coverage was great back then; it was mainly about the sports. Nowadays, the coverage is dictated by greed and money. The coverage is based on what will make them the most money, not caring about the real Sports fans. Their goal is to reel in the casual fan since there are more casual fans than Sports fans; they will try to pass it off as trying to gain more fans when really they're turning off real sports fans and trying to gain more casual fans. How are they doing that? Here's an example:
ESPN has bought the broadcasting rights to the following sports:
NBA, WNBA, TENNIS, Softball, NCAA sports
When NBA is in season, SportsCenter will lead off with what most fans care about, NBA highlights. Then what they'll do is show you 1-2 games then switch to another sport... and what do you know? It's a sport they own the broadcasting rights to! Then they'll come back to NBA for 1-2 games.. then switch again! WTF!?!? How do they not know this is the f'in most annoying thing to do to sports fans? Their intent is to try to bring in more fans to watch their other crap that we don't care about.. and get this... they'll force you to watch ads before they get you to the stuff you really care about!! So f this.. I decided to read about the sports instead of them waste my time on crap I don't care about..and you know what? They're trying to waste my time there too now! All these freakin' ads just to get to the content I care about. Just b/c they bought the rights to these sports, they think they have the right to dictate how we watch it and based off how much they paid for the rights, they decide how many ads they need to show to extract the value they think they deserve or owed.. it's not the sports fans fault that they paid whatever price they paid. In the end, it's the sports fans that end up paying. And that's the point I want to get across to anyone watching sports. Don't let these people ruin sports for you. On top of that, all these sports talk shows and SportsCenter on ESPN, sports is not their main objective: it's to make money. They will generate stupid topics to try to create interest vs focusing on the sports itself. If it's not something interesting with one of the sports they own the broadcasting rights to, they will backburner it in place of a sport they own the rights to. How deceptive is that to the casual sports fan? They're trying to get the casual sports fan to think that the main thing going on in sports is WNBA right now when it's MLB, as an example (July 2025). And guess what? They're no longer involved with MLB since they decided to give it up: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/43943678/espn-mlb-end-broadcast-partnership-2025-season. No offense to WNBA BTW; it's just right now, MLB is the bigger story, not WNBA. WNBA is still growing though..and good for them. This is also why I don't think ESPN should be allowed to get into gambling (ESPN Bet); they should do sports coverage or offer gambling. They shouldn't do both; there's too many times I've watched SportsCenter and these freakin' anchors have no idea how to read the lines yet they have Stephen A or Mike Greenberg doing ads about parlaying and betting... how douchebag-ish is that? How do we know they aren't adjusting the ads or coverage some way to even out their bets to eat the juice and make certain profit?
Here's an example: Say you have Lakers vs Golden State. Whatever the line is, say the sharp action is betting Lakers heavy. They don't have to disclose their betting action or handles to the public. How do we know they won't get Joe Fortenbaugh to start saying: "I like Golden Satae tonight at this line.." to drive more action to GS. Why would they do that? If they even out the money bet on both sides, they guarantee a win b/c they eat all the juice! If the money evens out on both sides at around say $10,000, at standard 10% juice to lay a bet, they make roughly $1,000. I would not trust or expect ESPN to look out for the bettor or sports fan. They clearly care only about making money (ESPN is under Disney, BTW; if we know anything about Disney, Mickey and Minnie only care about money peeps!).
One of the best things about sports is that it's unpredictable, based on competition. Athletes that like to prove something against another person or team. What's happening now is these new owners and media are trying to extract max value b/c they paid whatever price they paid for their franchises (most of these owners are non sports fans so they could care less about the sport; it's about what they can get out of it b/c most of these owners are businesspeople). Now comes the greed; in attempting to extract max value, they've screwed over sports fans, in their attempt to draw in more casual fans. They're attempting to control or fix the outcomes, to produce the desired outcome (more exciting games and endings). Here's an example: NBA recently changed the timeout rules; they allotted 6 timeouts now. Now it's 6 supposedly 30 sec timeouts + media timeouts(under 6:00 minute timeouts in 1st and 3rd) + these stupid nonsense challenges that take forever sometimes. Guess what this gives them time to do: shovel all these ads about Ozempic or other medications or health products. Nothing sports related. We should be asking this: with all these unnecessary stoppages to show ads, is it leading to some of these injuries we're seeing? sports itself should be interesting enough to draw people in; if it's not, then generate content to get people involved. Quit all these nonsense stories and background to draw in the casual fan; it ruins it for true sports fans. And stop these nonsense metrics around clutch stats, most pts final 5 mins with score within 5 BS; it's a poor gimmick to draw in unsuspecting or casual sports fans. Most of these games don't end up within 5 at the end and most of these games aren't within 5 the last 5 mins; this is why I don't understand why the NBA doesn't do flex scheduling like NFL (allow the national broadcast games to be swapped out for better game, you know, for the sports fan to watch and enjoy). I watched so many games last year where the national broadcast games on TNT and ESPN were attempting to make us watch games where Wembanyam or Luka or Curry or Durant weren't playing due to load management or rest management. So why would they want us to watch? Because they dont give a crap about the sports fan; only concerned with making money off a game no one cares to watch but the wanna make sound so exciting. Only gamblers and their team's fans are watching.