I think it’s a combination of the actual cameras and whatever video compression they use to broadcast. Pretty sure they still are on 720p lol. Meanwhile Prime and NBC are 1080p minimum with 4K also available 

It looks particularly bad tonight for some reason, at least for me on youtube tv

They cut costs by having lower bitrates than places like Amazon Prime who bump up the bitrate.

Many companies who do this think that the average fan won’t “notice” the quality difference so why not save money?

Yes the color & motion is terrible

Galveston’s beach is clearer than this

technically ESPN and Fox are upscaled from 720p/i, or at least used to be

The og El Cheapo runs ESPN

ESPN is stuck in the prehistoric ages and caps at 720p.

NBC and Prime are both available at 1080p HDR

I don’t know how they are, but it annoys me any time they have a game and I have to adjust my screen so many times throughout a game

I swear ESPN did a game in 360p recently. They cut production to the bone

So I worked at Fox Sports in this area for a long time. ESPN’s problem has always been their broadcast compression. The way to input their camera and sound footage, bring it all together, compress it, and then send it out to relay. The NFL Network has the EXACT same issue. If you notice Fox Sports always has super clean and crispy broadcasting and its because of all the systems behind the scenes developed to do so. David Hill the president of Fox Sports at the time was obsessed with presentation and Fox invested insane amounts of money on this, especially with NASCAR. Won Fox and the production team I worked for multiple Emmys.

its because it is, its stupid

I thought my eyes were going bad lol.

ESPN uses 720p cameras in 2026, not even joking. They’re too cheap to upgrade their infrastructure.

Technology just isn’t there yet unfortunately

Picture Quality is mostly the same to my untrained eye.

Audio Quality is where I become a snob. NBC needs to be sanctioned for how they nerf MSG crowd.

ESPN probably hasn’t spent money on Last Gen equipement. They have become extremely complacient and don’t really care about presenting a good looking product.

Shits fucking pathetic

And their Roku app seems to update every other day for me. So I’ll try to just turn on a game and I have to wait for the app to update. Somehow streamers have made things worse than broadcast days.

Yeah, these are the only games I can watch and they look fucking terrible on my 4k TV. But my brother’s tv, it looks fine. No idea why.

I blame Doris

The right TV can also improve the picture quality.

The games picture quality are almost as good as stations that broadcast 4K on my LG G4 83”.

The biggest discrepancy is actually the sound. Some channels broadcast in Dolby Atmos or better, others seem to be stereo.

Streaming through the ESPN website on my computer with my TV provider linked looks absolutely horrible compared to Prime (color and resolution). Yet ESPN on my TV looks just as good as Prime. Really think they should no longer exist as a network when they can’t provide decent web streaming. TNT was/is still horrible on the web, glad they no longer have NBA.

It’s absolutely atrocious I hate it

I hate going from Prime to ESPN, the quality is so ass

ESPNS everything is worse than everyone else. The app sucks and their broadcast is trash

ESPN is low resolution and low bit rate streaming. Seriously bad. Much prefer Amazon Primes streaming of games. The Olympics were streamed in 4k in Australia and it kind of hurts to know how good basketball can look.

Lakers Spectrum Sportsnet broadcast quality is so shit. But they paid more than 3 Billion for local exclusive rights so we’re stuck. Meanwhile when they get on Amazon, the picture is crazy sharp.

Yeah ESPN is somehow still at 720p in the year of our Lord 2026

I used their app because I arrived home after the game started. It lagged. It froze. It was filled with unskippable ads lasting 3 minutes at times. At one point, an ad wouldn’t load so I had to start over. During one of the freezes I restarted and clicked start from the beginning and it took me to live.

Their app is so bad in comparison to Peacock and Prime. ESPN blows.

Towards the end of the game, it froze again and just wouldn’t resume playing. I literally never finished the game that I was highly invested in.

That was all on 300 mbps internet, and I tested because I assumed there was no way it could be that bad if there wasn’t something wrong with my internet. Nope. Everything was fine. It was just ESPN. They suck. The sooner we are done with them the better.

catering to so many boomers still refusing to get 4k tvs

Try watching in the ESPN app I find it has the best experience compared to your tv provider or other streaming app

Noticeably worse than Prime and NBC?! Are we watching the same games??

I always see people say this but I just don’t see it.

ESPN/ABC/NBC all look about the same to me

Prime is the one that looks bad