2016 has been a great year for cord cutters, and now we are just finding out how great it has been. From new services to a flood of new channels joining Sling TV and PlayStation Vue, the good news for cord cutters keeps coming.
We now have a look at just how many people have ditched traditional pay TV. According to a public filing from Disney, ESPN has lost 2 million subscribers in 2016. Yet not all the news is bad as roughly 90 million still subscribed to ESPN’s sports programming during 2016; however, this does mark a continued slide from the 100 million reported just five years ago.
Although we are unsure how many canceled pay TV or just downgraded, you have to downgrade to a very low TV plan to find one without ESPN in the lineup.
That suggests 2 million Americans canceled cable TV or downgraded to a locals-only plan. This is only just speculation. What we can confirm is that 2 million fewer people are paying for ESPN than a year ago at this time.
Hard numbers are difficult to come by; however, it is estimated that there are between 20 million cord cutters on the high end and 15 million cord cutters on the low end. (We define cord cutters as anyone who pays to stream their video content online rather than subscribe to traditional pay TV.)
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