ESPN accounts for a huge percentage of most monthly cable bill cost. I never watch live sports, nor do a pretty good percentage of cable subscribers. Just cutting ESPN could reduce cable bills by a third to a half in a lot of markets. This is why ESPN is suffering financially as cord cutting increases.
The cost for ESPN is something like $8-$9 per month so a lot but not the overwhelming cost of a cable TV bill. I also think you overestimate the number of people willing to totally give up being able to watch sports. I know I watch very little but I hesitate to totally cut the cord.
In some markets, ESPN and other sports channels accounts for as much as $20 per month of the standard cable bill, and those costs are rising. [1]
And I don't think I'm overestimating the number of people willing to give up paying for sports on cable. It's somewhere between 57% and 80% of cable subscribers. [2]
That's a giant subsidy for an entertainment industry based on watching adults play children's games. Of course, if you're a sportsman, you won't see it that way, but if you're not, it may create a different reaction.
[2] "This is the heart of the Sports Cable Bubble: Tens of millions of pay television viewers spending what Thompson estimates is at least $100 a year on sports programming they have no intention of ever watching, pumping billions into games enjoyed by others, enriching networks, leagues, teams and athletes all the while. (The exact number of non-sports fans is difficult to peg: A recent Harris Interactive poll found that 43 percent of Americans won't cancel cable and satellite television simply because of live sports, which also suggests that the majority of the country could be perfectly happy not paying for ESPN; industry analyst David Bank told Bloomberg Businessweek that 80 percent of basic-cable customers would decline to pay for sports if given a choice; Forbes writer Alan McGlade figures that no more than 10 million homes are regular ESPN viewers, about 10 percent of the total pay TV market.)" --from http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/53498716/
Note though that ESPN != watching live sports. A lot of, especially local team, games are on regular network channels. And it's their local team games that most relatively casual sports watchers really care about.
I actually don't watch much sports at all. But I hesitate to give up all access to real-time television. (I can't get anything OTA.)
