Here's the thing that everyone needs to keep in perspective about the value of sports: the reason why ESPN is able to charge $7 per sub in the first place is because of the dominant amount of live sports rights that they have in the stable. It's popular in the peanut gallery to state that ESPN supposedly paid "too much" for its current NFL and NBA contracts, but those are the types of properties (along with MLB and power conference college sports) that will allow ESPN to survive in whatever format is most profitable in 5 or 10 years from now.
Why? It's because sports combine two characteristics that don't exist in any other type of entertainment platform today: they're (a) watched live, meaning that sports are effectively the only programs on TV or anywhere else where people actually see commercials en masse as opposed to skipping them on DVRs or online and (b) exclusive, meaning that I *have* to watch ESPN (or another applicable rights holder) to see the game that I want, whereas virtually every other type of program can be accessed through multiple platforms at any time (whether on linear TV, streaming services like Netflix, Hulu or Amazon Prime or other over-the-top services).
The other factor is that there's still brand certainty in sports on TV (similar to the top movie franchises like Star Wars, Marvel, etc.). Even the most popular scripted shows on TV like Game of Thrones and Walking Dead have limited shelf lives. HBO is going to have to find new hits 5 years from now or else its value proposition goes down, which is easier said than done in an industry where there's no formula for creating hits. For however much the NFL or NBA rights might cost, those properties are virtually guaranteed to continue to draw ratings 5 or 10 years from now in a way that you couldn't even say for the biggest hits on TV.
So, contrary to popular belief, the expensive sports contracts aren't albatrosses for ESPN. Instead, those sports contracts pretty much make ESPN the only cable network that actually has options long-term since they have content that's live and exclusive in a way that can be sold in a variety of formats while still selling commercials. Everyone else has programming that is non-exclusive and can be watched 24/7 without commercials, so they're all commodities. People really need to look at the long game -- sports are really the only TV programming that's actually worth anything anymore (which is why ESPN was able to charge $7 per sub in the first place). The current cord cutting is certainly painful to Disney, but that's because ESPN was delivering *insane* profits for so many years (dwarfing the profits of any other Disney entity by a landslide) that the entire company was dependent on that gravy train (so they're all spooked that it has slowed down).
