Ch. 5 - Developing a Global Vision

ESPN is establishing a global vision through many means.  ESPN's newest service they're trying to push hard to their target market is "watch ESPN app".  Of course, ESPN's primary market is domestic in America; however, ESPN is pushing for global recognition via a Nokia app.  ESPN's mission statement is to serve sports fans wherever they are consuming sports.  Therefore, in order to successfully fulfill their statement they must extend their service worldwide.  Their new Nokia App which is supposed to launch in 2012, will be available in 190 countries.  With the ESPN Hub, sport fans can access sports news, scores and stats from their mobile devices.  Also the app will include ESPN analysis and video clips for select sports and uses the device's GPS to find local sports information and can be personalized for users to set their favorite sports and teams.  For ESPN, growing their business, especially their mobile business is a priority, and will allow ESPN to create a bigger global market.
This is a video from Lauren Johnson, ESPN's editorial assistant on Mobile Marketing about the launch of their Nokia app.


Lauren Johnson on ESPN's Nokia app


More about ESPN's international mobile market is:

• Available in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German and Japanese on every major mobile operating system. 
• ESPN Mobile offers content via: mobile web, mobile messaging, mobile operator deck and applications on smart phones including iPhone, iPad, RIM, Android and Nokia.

ESPN's global business in a nutshell:

• TV: 46 networks in over 200 countries with 16 languages available(Cantonese, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Malay, Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Turkish).
• Radio: Broadcasting in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Bahamas.  ESPN radio offers live events, sports news, information and sports talk.
• Online:  ESPNsoccernet.com, ESPNCricinfo.com, ESPNScrum.com (English /Spanish),ESPNF1.com (English, French, Japanese), ESPNdeportes.com (Spanish), ESPN.co.uk,ESPN.com.br (Portuguese), ESPNSTAR.com (27 ESPN STAR Sports territories in Asia),ESPNSTAR.com.cn (China), ESPNSTAR.com.hk (Hong Kong), ESPNSTAR.com.tw (Taiwan),ESPN.com.au (Australia), TSN.ca (English / Canada), and RDS.ca (French / Canada).

Since 1998, ESPN's global vision has grown to:

• (12) HD services, from 0
• (1) 3D network, from 0
• (48) international television networks, from 20
• (13) international SportsCenter editions, from 0
• (18) websites, from 1
• (7,000) employees worldwide, from 1,900

In a whole, ESPN in my opinion has a good grasp on their global vision.  However, that's never enough.  ESPN continues to be innovative and push the envelope for their global market, with such ideas as their new Nokia app, ESPN seems to be fulfilling their mission statement, worldwide!

Market Environment - LIN, LIN, LIN no matter what!

All we do is Lin, Lin, Lin no matter what...
ESPN is currently selling the LIN-SANITY hard.  The Asian-American demographic is growing more and more with anticipation of Lin's next game.  ESPN's target audience being young males ages 18-49.  While ESPN has incredible success reaching their targeted market, specifically in the New York region due to the New York Giants winning Superbowl 46 in a remarkable 6 game winning streak in the playoffs.  However, now theres Jeremy Lin with the New York Knicks leading the Knicks on a winning streak, first in forever.  Jeremy Lin of the Asian-American demographic is the spark the Knicks have been missing in the point guard position.  ESPN is cover the Lin-Sanity hard in a effort to reach a new target market before now, wasn't a popular or easily reached demographic.  While playing ever update about Jeremy Lin, more and more Asian-Americans, male and female, continue to watch the Lin-Sanity hype.  This is a great example of ESPN's smart use of the market environment by adapting and reacting to positive change in the market, especially with a hard to reach demographic as Asian-Americans, in sports.

You best believe I'm all about LIN-SANITY.  I'll be tuning in to follow the Knicks and the LINANTOR!  Before this, I wouldn't even watch the Knicks.  Even more proof that this new Jeremy Lin hype is reaching ESPN's target market with a fury.  Who knows, the Knicks might win a championship, to top off a great year for New York City!

Ch. 4 - The Market Environment

ESPN's best market environment currently is ESPN New York. The target market for ESPN is to zero in on young men, primarily men from 18 to 49. ESPN has been growing considerably fast among all it's viewers especially young men. The demographics of young men (18-49) is the toughest demographic to reach but it's what makes ESPN's sweet spot. ESPN does so well with their targeted market that other companies such as, Rolling Rock, Audi and Nextel are just a few of the consistent advertisers using ESPN for newer forms of rich media which allows them to effectively deliver their brands message to their core audience. Like I've stated before, ESPN's media awareness is 97% thus making ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and ESPN.com an extremely effective platform for other struggling companies to reach the tough 18-49 year old men demographic. ESPN's ability to promote to sport affiliations has been exceptional which allows ESPN to provide extensive reach to the male demographic.

A look at ESPN:

• Number of subscribers = 89.5 million homes
• Median viewer age = 38.2 years old
• Average primetime viewers = 1,550,000 people
• Average total-day viewers = 760,000 people
• Average primetime 18-49(age demographic) = 680,000 people
• Average total-day viewers 18-49(age demographic) = 419,000 people
• Target audience = MEN 18-49

The picture below shows ESPN's 2012 Planning Guide which illustrates all the sports events/seasons ESPN will be covering.  This ties into ESPN's market environment because durning all these events, their target audience will surely be tuning in.  Therefore, you should be able to grasp how well ESPN covers any and all sports that any 18-49 year old male might be into.  Once again, a premier platform for other companies to use to reach the male 18-49 year old demographic.



I will also attach the URL to ESPN's entire 2012 planning guide, on this link you can see ESPN's 2012 planning guide for all their networks.  A full view of all the sport medians ESPN will be covering which allows them to impact their targeted market.
ESPN's 2012 Planning Guide

Ch. 3 - Ethics and Social Responsibility

Ethics are the moral principles or values that generally govern the conduct of an individual or group.  In ESPN's case ethics is a huge issue for the fact that ESPN's sole job is to report sport news.  It's difficult for ESPN because the sport broadcasters rely on humor while analyzing a play or game.  Because ESPN has such a huge variety of followers it becomes difficult to abide by everyone's moral principles or values.  Many annoucers have been critized due to some of their comments, in some cases, ESPN's hand was forced to fire some annoucers because their comment "crossed the line" and violated people's morals.  Worse off for ESPN, prior to June 2011, the company had no Code of Ethics or Code of Conduct for their employees to follow.  This stranded their employees in a trial and error "danger zone" where they're forced to discover by error.  One such incident, in June 2008, and ESPN employee, Jemele Hill, publically made a comment about the NBA finals saying "Rooting for the Celtics is like calling Hitler a victim"  You can see the ethical dilemma there. 

It is common knowledge that a written Code of Ethics establishes a guidelines or set of rules to follow, which seems to be necassary to establish boundries for comments that can or can not be said over a global broadcasting network.  Guidelines suggested to ESPN after that specific incident were the following;

• Do not presume that what is ancient history to you is ancient history to the next person; the wound of World War II may be as fresh to others as 9/11 is to you.
• A good generalization is hard to find, especially when applied to cultures, races, genders and nations.
• Analogies are likely to be imperfect; extreme analogies are likely to be extremely imperfect.

To date, after countless hours of research, I still couldn't find any written Code of Conduct or Code of Ethics.  For a global empire such as ESPN to not have written guidelines is absurd!  Get with the program already ESPN!

Social responsibility is a businessman's concern for society's welfare.  Furthermore, the newest theory in social responsibility is sustainability, which is the idea that a social responsibile company will out perform their peers by focusing on the world's problems and viewing them as opportunities to build profits and help the world at the same time.  ESPN takes social responsibility to heart.  I don't need to state that ESPN makes their profit, and makes it well.  Because of their highly profitable success, it allows the company to focus more on the world's problem or current rave.  I believe we all can agree todays social ill is, Going Green!  ESPN as a company takes many steps to being green.  I'm going to paste from their website their position on sustainability and going green.

"It’s our fishing sanctuary, our local soccer pitch, our makeshift dirt bike track – but in the end, the Earth needs just as much attention as the things we enjoy in life. ESPN is proud to do its part to promote and resurrect a greener world. From our virtually waste-free, carbon neutral 2009 ESPY ceremony to our eco-friendly corporate offices, we put heart and soul into being environmentally responsible.
Here are just a few of our environmental initiatives:

• Compostable to-go containers, cutlery & napkins in cafeteria
• LEED compliance for all new construction & renovations
• Recycling of light bulbs, batteries, construction debris, and used cooking oil
• Donation or recycling of old office furniture   
• Reduced environmental impact & energy conservation at events
• Virtually waste-free 2008 ESPY Awards ceremony
• Virtually waste-free & carbon-neutral 2009 ESPY Awards ceremony
• Disney (parent company of ABC/ESPN) ranks #34 in Newsweek's Green Rankings of the S&P 500"

Here is a link to ESPN's social responsibility position:
Social Responsibility Outreach
and
Corporate Sustainability

Ch. 2 - Strategic Planning for a Competitive Advantage

ESPN is the superstar of the sports broadcasting world.  Among being the leading cable channel for sports broadcasting, it reaches over 97 million US homes with their abundance of channels.  Including, ESPN, ESPN2(sports events and news) and ESPN Classic(historical sports footage).  ESPN also creates original programming for TV and radio and lends content for ESPN.com(which is operated by Disney Online), arguably one of the most popular sports websites on the internet.  ESPN's international operations extend the ESPN brand to another 190 countries world wide. Due to these reasons ESPN popularity makes them a force to be reckoned with, establishing celebrity status!

To reach this status, ESPN had worked tirelessly to extend its power and influence the sports and entertainment network.  It holds broadcasting contracts with Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), National Football League (NFL), NASCAR, Major League Soccer (MLS), Major League Lacrosse, Arena Football League and many college sports conferences.

ESPN took over Monday Night Football, other than the playoffs and Superbowl, the NFL's most prestigious event from ABC in 2006.  ABC lost roughly $150 million dollars a year on the venerable program.  ESPN pays the NFL $1.1 billion dollars a year(for eight years) to the NFL to broadcast Monday Night Football.  ABC also turned over its sports programming network(ABC Sports) to ESPN, which now airs all its games under the ESPN banner.  These are just the "tip of the ice berg" to ESPN's strategic planning to keep a competitive advantage over their industry of sports programming.

All of ESPN's products and operations consist of;

• ESPN (sporting events and news channel)
• ESPN Classic (archival sports footabe channel)
• ESPN Deportes (Spanish-language sports network)
• ESPN Enterprises (new business venture development)
• ESPN HD (high-definition channel)
• ESPN International
• ESPN On Demand (video on demand programming)
• ESPN Radio
• ESPN The Magazine (print magazine)
• ESPN2 (sporting events and news channel)
• ESPN2HD (high-definition channel)
• ESPNEWS (24-hour sports news channel)
• ESPNU (college sports)
• ESPYs (annual award show)

This covers the brand of ESPN, take notice of how the company completely covers all aspects of sports and all medians used to reach any and all sport fans.  They leave no stone unturned, a vital component for ESPN's competitive advantage.  

To go a little further into detail, ESPN's top competitors in the sports programming network are, CBS, Fox Entertainment and NBC.  Quite frankly, none of these competitors even remotely come close to covering all the medians that ESPN covers for the sports world.  Again, a huge reason for ESPN's competitive's edge.

In conclusion, the monopoly known as ESPN, strategic planning for competitive advantage is to simply to cover ALL medians possible in the sporting world.  A hostile take over my eyes!  Try to compete with that CBS, Fox and NBC.

I'd like to give a special thanks to Hoovers who provided a detailed company profile report on ESPN, which can be found here;
Hoover's ESPN profile report

The Birth of a Powerhouse

ESPN as whole basically redefined the sports industry or rather the market.  Prior to ESPN there wasn't a major sports network which relayed the sporting world the updates.  ESPN's mission statement is as follows; "To serve sports fans wherever sports are watched, listened to, discussed, debated, read about or played."

 The reason ESPN completely revamped the sports fan market was because prior to ESPN, there really wasn't a sports network that did discuss, debate or replay epic events in sports.  This is crucial because you might have missed your sports because you couldn't get to the radio or TV, at that time period.  Furthermore, there was other sports networks such as NBC, ABC, CBS sports, however, all the sports networks were so bland and distasteful, ESPN itself.  This is why almost every sports fan I know doesn't even think about watching another sports network, due to the fact of ESPN's innovative aspect in sports programming.  ESPN for more than 30 plus years has been, as we say, "pushing the envelop".  Thus, one of the main reasons ESPN is the power house, almost even monopoly for, as I call it the sports fan market.  Few numbers to be aware of; Awareness of ESPN(97%), #1 media brand in sports, Fourth leading name in sports(behind NFL, Nike and the NBA, no othe sports market is in the top 10).  I'd say monopoly fits, but whose complaining?!

For those of you interested, I'll supply you with a little brief history of ESPN, maybe you'll learn something new about our most beloved favorite sports network.  Interesting little fact, ESPN used to go by ESP, the name that was used to incorporate the company, however, changed to ESPN prior to the companies launch.  ESPN, standing for Entertaining and Sports Programming Network was incorporated in June 14, 1978 for only a fee of $91 dollars!  So unreal compared to the fact ESPN profits over $600 million and last evaluation their net worth was around 7 billion dollars!  The creators, Bill and Scott Rasmussen with help from Ed Eagan came up with the idea of creating a monthly cable show that covers Connecticut's sports.  They founders still hadn't found a source to broadcast their network on, but went to Radio Corporation of America, which made ESPN one of the first programs launched via SATCOM(satellite communication) in America.  Broadcasting via SATCOM was a huge accomplishment back then because it allowed them to broadcast ESPN to the whole country! The beginning of their innovative lead in the industry.  Finally, ESPN going through a ton of diversity, finally launched their 24/7 sports broadcasting network September 7, 1979.