ESPN Layoffs for Thanksgiving

ESPN announces Thanksgiving layoffs as the sports media giant continues to address problems with declining customer subscriptions and finances. As cord-cutting continues to grow, the fast-changing landscape of home entertainment is certainly impacting ESPN viewership and subscription rates.

With 4,000 US employees and 8,000 employees worldwide, ESPN follows-through on their pre-Thanksgiving announcement to layoff an additional 100+ employees. Recent ESPN layoffs now total over 550 employees, with 300 laid off in 2015, 100 laid off in April of 2017, and another 150 laid off on November 29, 2017.

The NY Times (nytimes.com) Reports “ESPN Is Laying Off 150 More Employees”:

ESPN announced Wednesday that it was laying off 150 people, about 2 percent of the sports broadcasting juggernaut’s 8,000 employees. Unlike a round of cuts earlier this year in which ESPN laid off about 100 people, this one was not expected to include prominent on-air personalities.  Read the full article…ESPN Is Laying Off 150 More Employees.

This is only the most recent round of layoffs for ESPN. ESPN has been struggling with customer losses and threats from streaming content marketed directly to consumers – Netflix, Hulu, Sling TV. ESPN is locked into long-term TV deals with both sport leagues and cable networks, which has made it difficult for ESPN to quickly shift away from cable and satellite TV, to direct to consumer streaming media platforms.

Meanwhile, ESPN customer losses grow.

Read more about ESPN Layoffs… More ESPN Layoffs After Thanksgiving

Read more about ESPN Subscriber Loss… ESPN Customer Loss Grows