Insider Scam

Okay - ESPN has once again managed to tick me off.

How you may ask?

Let me introduce you to the ESPN.com Insider.

ESPN.com has this club that gives members access to more articles and more features. The catch though, is that you have to pay to join this club. Not just register, not just give your e-mail address but pay.

$39.95.

Why should I have to pay 40 bucks in order to read articles that are going to be free in a couple of days? That's absolutely ridiculous.

SI.com has a similar feature to this in it's EXTRA program. The nice thing about SI's though, is that it's free if you're a subscriber to the magazine. It's also technically free if you borrow a magazine from a friend and enter their subscription number. But SI.com's EXTRA info doesn't take up basically half of their site. Most of SI's stuff is available for free - like it should be.

ESPN.com, on the other hand, has almost every interesting feature or rumor locked down under the INSIDER program. In the past, there would be a little "in" next to articles that INSIDERs only could access but they've stopped making that a consistent feature. It seems that now almost anything on the front page of ESPN.com is unavailable to the viewing public.

Personally, I have never heard of anyone who has forked over the 40 to gain INSIDER access. I have though, heard many complaints about this program.

So c'mon, ESPN - stop alienating your faithful following and let us in. We'd really like to read what you have out there.

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