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I don't know if you are aware of this, but the ESPN headquarters are on the East Coast and I don't think they will be relocating anytime soon. Their location might have something to do with their focus or "bias". Seriously though, if you have ever lived in a particular area of the country, you know that the people there focus primarily on local teams and local markets. For the most part, they don't really care as much about what is going on in other parts of the country, which is actually fairly understandable. ESPN is also about making money, and money comes from advertisers. Those advertisers want to reach the highest amount of viewers, and the East Coast has the highest numbers of citizens who might be watching sports on television. The ESPN conglomerate is not an altruistic organization that wants all sports fans everywhere to feel loved and included. They will follow the money, as all companies do to a certain extent.

Some of the bias has to do with timetables, schedules, and the basic reality of sleeping. The reality of life is that when a basketball or baseball game starts at 10:00 PM on the East Coast and you live in Connecticut, you aren't going to watch very much of it. If you think about it, West Coast games end somewhere in the 1:00 AM to 1:30 AM time slot on the East Coast. As a West Coast person, I lament the East Coast bias, but I wouldn't be staying up that late either. Therefore, ESPN basically operates on an "out-of-sight-out-of-mind" methodology. They can certainly watch highlights from the night before, but watching highlights is nothing like watching a whole game and observing the little idiosyncrasies of player movement and game flow.

Overall, I think ESPN has an East Coast bias, but most of it is not intentional or particularly vicious in nature. In other words, there isn't a conspiracy to shut out the West Coast. As I mentioned above, they are a business and they want to make money. They will operate in such a way that they reach the highest number of customers possible in order to maximize advertising revenue. We love our sports, but we love our capitalism more.

Learn more about this author, Todd Pheifer.
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