After ESPN?s Fall Out With $65 Billion Media Giant Results in Travesty, Is Charles Barkley?s Prophecy Coming True?

After being acquired by Disney in 1996, ESPN has stayed at the pinnacle of sports entertainment for decades. Their availability and accessibility to the public made them an international brand. But years after being in the spotlight, the Disney-owned network has finally started seeing its dark times.

Charles Barkley has always been vocal about his thoughts on ESPN. The Philadelphia 76ers legend is not sure about finishing his contract with Inside?the NBA.?But he is sure of one thing, and that’s never working for ESPN.

The curtain is falling on ESPN

It’s been no surprise that ESPN has been facing the short end of mass cable cutting across the nation. After removing over 20 on-air reporters, the overall subscriptions for ESPN are estimated to fall to the 50 million range within the next decade. Charles Barkley recently?mentioned his opinion on the future of ESPN. But before getting to that, let’s look at what happened to ESPN.

In a recent article from Front Office Sport, they disclosed the reason why the 2nd largest cable carrier in the USA removed Disney and all branches of it from their network. Charter Spectrum removed nineteen Disney channels, which included ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU. Over 14.7 million people lost access to watching ESPN and all sports activities shared by the network.

CEO of Charter, Chris Winfrey, shared with Wall Street analysts that “we are either moving forward with a new collaborative video model or we?re moving on.” This definitely shows that the issue is graver than it seems, and that Charter might fully stop all association with Disney.

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Disney is trying for an equity-based deal for ESPN, where it’s hoping that they allow another organization to invest in ESPN and come in as a new shareholder. This has caused friction with Charter, and the channels have been pulled off Spectrum since August 31st.

Charles Barkley’s thoughts on the landscape of the NBA

Charles Barkley has been working as an analyst for TNT for over two decades now. In a recent episode of SI with Jimmy Traina, Barkley gave his thoughts on the future of NBA rights. Barkley has guaranteed that he will definitely work for two more years in his 10-year contract.

Beyond that, there are many moving parts that will decide the future of the NBA. The TV rights agreements will be up for all major channels like Warner Bros Discovery, and Disney. According to Charles, this will make both Turner and ESPN “nervous.”

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He knows that Amazon and Apple are eyeing getting rights to the NBA. He knows that when the time comes for the bid, it will be a hard bargain. Barkley has said that his future as an analyst will be uncertain if he cannot have Ernie Johnson with him if another company does in fact get the rights to the NBA.

Do you think the time for ESPN is up? Maybe it’s time for Amazon or Apple to finally be fully invested in the NBA and increase their sports catalog.