ESPN has been the biggest spender in television entertainment for several years now. With an average of $7.3 billion budgeted every year, they continually outspend other networks by a large margin. Buying the rights to things like Monday Night Football and NBA and MLB games, it makes sense that the network has to spend big to maintain rights to this programming. Live sports are expensive, and ESPN is, at least now, the leader in sports broadcasting. But as far as budgets go, Netflix is catching up fast, and will almost certainly surpass ESPN in 2018.
