I got thinking about ESPN Insider and the value of premium sports writing content on the world wide web. I was truly disheartened by the introduction of ESPN insider which stole my favorite columnists and hid them behind a veil of fees and a bloated sense of self-worth.
It was right after the turn of the century and many teenage sports fanatics had been hooked by the in-depth stories of Peter Gammons and the detailed scouting reports of Buster Olney. ESPN chose to limit public access to their "premium content" thus driving penniless teens such as myself to free alternatives, and for this I am thankful. Through websites such as www.prosportsdaily.com I was able to quench my thirst for the baseball/basketball rumor mill while also gaining exposure to undervalued columnists working for local newspapers.
Before twitter.com, Peter Abraham put lohud.com/ on the sports writing map with the hugely successful Yankees blog, yankees.lhblogs.com/. Mr. Abraham is one of the reasons I wanted to work in sports and had any interest in sports writing whatsoever. Luckily his talent was recognized and he took a job with the Boston Globe in 2009. His yankees blog is still the top result on Google for yankees blogs and his departure to Boston was covered extensively in the blogosphere including here.
Now to get back to the point, there are many websites with excellent baseball content such as fangraphs.com. Fangraphs has excellent, thought provoking analysis, but without the star power that ESPN brings to the table. Fangraphs was able to develop their fan following by providing free content and generating revenue through advertising.
ESPN must have determined that the revenue generated through ESPN insider subscriptions was more valuable than the extra traffic generated through a website which was based completely on free content. What they did not take into consideration was the negative effect it might have on their fanbase/followers. In my opinion, ESPN insider portrayed ESPN as money-driven capitalists, a perception which drove followers to find alternatives, which they might not have know existed.
The worst aspect of ESPN.com insider is the expectations it created for itself as premium content. The ESPN rumor mill, once a gold mine of relevant sports info, has transformed into a diluted mess of phony nonsense, churned-out to satisfy the expectations of paying subscribers.
What is the next step for ESPN insider? Once a columnist has built a significant fanbase, is it time to move him to premium content? I fear my beloved Bill Simmons might be next. (Just realized that my 3 favorite columnists are all Red Sox loving freaks. Oh well, good writing is good writing.)
ESPN.com once inspired a child-like excitement for sports and set the benchmark for the value of good sports coverage. ESPN.com insider instead makes the public question the value of $2.50 a month, and how much garbage it can buy.
