Finally listened to that ESPN talk.
nikkas just talking to be talking.
First off, fukk Samson. He's a classic smart dumb motherfukker that constantly thinks he's the smartest person in the room, despite clearly not being such. Him trying to argue with Skipper that baseball would be have even remotely the same viewership as the NFL if they only played 17 games on a limited set of days is absolutely fukking preposterous. It's taking one element of the NFL's success, and assuming that that's the entire story. Never mind that he's having the argument with one of maybe three people that has seen the data and has the experience to not say it as a general statement.
That said, Skipper's arguments that if you can spend $100 billion, or even $1 trillion to raise your market cap to $4 trillion you do it, and/or owe it to your shareholders to try is an argument that really only works in a vacuum. Even if they went small, and just bought ESPN, they either need to restructure and spin off parts of the company, or accept that they're taking on a fukk ton of operating costs for stuff that no one at Apple has any real crossover experience with. For example, ESPN is the majority owner (more on that later) of ESPN Events, which actually organizes and promotes something like 17 of the end of year bowl games. And they mostly do it because as organizer of the games, they basically get to sell the right to the game back to themselves. Does Apple want to keep in that business, along with all that means? Do they want to spin it off and risk the spinoff company collapsing, and fukking up their end of year TV inventory? Do they sell ESPN's majority stake to Hearst so they have 100%, and then work on negotiating new deals to keep the rights to those bowls? There are a ton of other decisions like that they would need to make. On top of all of that, Disney doesn't even have full ownership of ESPN. They've got 80%, and Hearst has the other 20%. That complicates any sale.
Even the argument that Disney should listen to any offers really doesn't make sense past listening, because you're obligated to. Part of the reason a lot of industry people have soured so much on Disney recently is that for all of the talk of all these smaller companies blowing up the entertainment industry by going direct to consumer, and all the other buzzwords people like to use, it's fukking DISNEY of all companies that is the closest to pulling it off. While a lot of the internet focused on the MCU implications of the Fox purchase, that was really just a bonus for them. You could argue it was more about Hulu. They're positioning themselves so that cable and movie theaters are just ancillary forms of revenue for them. Getting rid of ESPN puts a giant hole in that plan for them. So, if they were to sell anything, they would likely approach it as an all or nothing deal, which even with the money they have, starts to become unattractive for Apple. They gonna pay a trillion dollars to be responsible for all the Disney resorts? The Apple shareholders that matter probably ain't getting jiggy with that shyt. And likewise, with Disney shareholders, there's probably real concern over what their shares translate to in relation to Apple's structure and dividends.
That's some of the most reckless shyt I've heard in my life.