ESPN announced Wednesday that it is laying off approximately 150 employees, the network’s third round of job cuts over the past two-plus years. Faced with a declining subscriber base and increasing sports-rights costs, ESPN laid off around 300 employees — many of them working behind the scenes — in October 2015. Then, in April, the network cut roughly 100 jobs, with the reductions coming from ESPN’s stable of on-air talent and online journalists. The round of layoffs announced Wednesday will affect employees “in studio production, digital content, and technology and they generally reflect decisions to do less in certain instances and redirect resources,” ESPN President John Skipper announced in a memo to network employees. The 150 layoffs is a larger number than expected by most observers, but it still reflects a small fraction of the network’s reported 8,000 employees.

Source: thestar November 29, 2017 18:00 UTC