Clay Travis: ESPN vs Charter could be end of the table bundle ... and televised sports as we know it

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By OutKick's Clay Travis

In the summer of 2014, the cable and satellite bundle peaked. One hundred million households were subscribed to ESPN, the most successful channel in the history of cable, and the apex of the greatest business in the history of media had been reached.

But no one knew it.

Cable, satellite, and media executives were all blissfully unaware of what was coming. Fox Sports FS1 had launched the prior year — yours truly appeared on the very first show in the history of the network, a 2013 college football preview show. In the summer of 2014 the SEC Network would make its debut. The SEC Network was, in fact, the single most successful cable and satellite channel debut in the history of the cable industry. With the launch of the SEC Network, ESPN, the channel’s owner, stood at the pinnacle of its power, the company seemed indestructible, a gold plated money minting machine.

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Los Angeles, California. Walt Disney Co. has pulled channels including ESPN and ABC from the Charter Spectrum cable TV service over a fees dispute. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Billions of dollars in profits flowed off ESPN each year, enabling all of Disney to flourish. It was the crown jewel of the company, a profit spigot, the Titanic of the cable fleet.

But an iceberg loomed ahead.

And almost no one saw it coming.

The era of cable and satellite cord cutting began in the fall of 2014.

Quietly, at first.

So quietly, in fact, that most at ESPN and in the cable industry refused to acknowledge what was occurring. A few million here, a few million there, slowly a trickle turning into a stream and then the