Over the past several years ESPN has lost over 13 million cable and satellite subscribers. Given that each subscriber pays ESPN in the neighborhood of $7 a month for the network, that’s over a billion dollars a year in lost revenue that will never be recouped. And those losses aren’t stopping. Indeed, every single day in 2017 ESPN is losing 10,000 subscribers or more.

That’s why I projected that ESPN is on pace to start losing money by 2021.

At the same time that ESPN has been hemorrhaging subscribers, the network has also been paying incredible sums of money for live sports rights. In fact, ESPN will pay out $7.3 billion for sports rights in 2017, that’s more than any company in America will pay for media content.