Soccer team still getting more and more income each season. So yea I think this news just applies to America.

Fair enough. I'll be the first to admit that even as someone who doesn't consider themselves a "typical" gung-ho American I still fall subject to an American style heliocentrism. As a sign of peace:

The World Cup is 246x bigger than the Super Bowl - Matador Network

By no means do I concede all the way though. America's population/economic numbers mean a lot in the context of e-sports. If it's most popular sport is in fact on a downtrend, and it is still the biggest country for videogame sales then we do in fact have an extremely significant portion of the world that is ripe for transition. That's not a joke.

I think ESPNs budget (and hence the prices at which they acquire sports licenses) was just heavily inflated due to the cable monopolies, which they got a big cut from.
Now that more and more people are using alternatives to cable ESPN is getting less money aswell.

Lots of factors.

For one, the rise of the "big three" in the US was the results of people not having much choice. That's changing by the day. Not only are other sports and activities available to watch but you can now watch pretty much watch anything from around the globe.

Also, I really hate when people use the word "dying" when numbers decline. More likely, it's just normalizing to a new baseline.

I also don't believe rule changes have much to do with anything. Those have always happened. All the big sports have slowly changed over time. People complain but they still watch. If being softer turned people off that much then Competitive Flopping (Soccer) would play to empty stadiums.

Many sports also seem to be foolishly fighting against the migration of many people away from cable/dish to internet viewing. Look at how popular the Olympics were when they actually got streaming functional. Where do I watch American Football? Yeah, I watch an illegal stream from the UK, which is the same place I watch the WWE.

Good point

One thing that is greatly damaging sports in the USA is their absolutly stupid TV deals. Millions of people are going to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, PlayStation Vue, and Sling TV like services. In many markets local sports are only avilable through a local cable provider, or local channels. In most cases the local channels and regional sports channels have refused to get on board with any of the streaming services, and most people can not get over the air TV for local channels. Due to this, less and less people are watching, but local networks continue to drive blindly into the ground.

There are obviously many other factors as well. But, I think that stubborness to refuse service to local consumers is the key factor to driving people away from sports. Get all local channels on Vue, Sling, Direct TV Now, and the rest of the cheaper, and better TV services, and the numbers will be a lot better.

We all saw in the Switch reveal trailer that people are more willing to quit watching/engaging in physical sports, and stop dead in their tracks to play video game sports. It's over.