For the first time in YouTube’s history, the site is no longer just a free video platform.

With the introduction of YouTube Red, the video-sharing website now has a paid-subscription service that allows users to watch videos without ads, save videos offline and gain access to other features. For YouTubers, Red means they have to agree to put their videos on both the free part of the site and the subscription part of it, but receive zero ad money for videos available on Red.

It’s a move that likely has company offices celebrating, but ultimately hurts the site’s users and video contributors.

As ESPN showed by pulling all of its videos off the site last week, the consequences of YouTube’s decision to flex its previously unused muscles is already being seen.

Although some criticism of YouTube’s decision is valid, we all knew this was coming. I mean, did anyone really think a “free video platform” would survive in capitalistic America? No way. Despite the open-sourced mindset of the Internet, and Google in particular, this wasn’t going to last forever. Quite frankly, it’s amazing that it lasted as long as it did. Now the fun is over, and companies like ESPN have to adjust.

But the Worldwide Leader in Sports’ decision to pull its content does not come without repercussions. ESPN had more than one million subscribers on its main channel that are now out of luck. This isn’t to mention the various other channels that are associated with the company.

As of Oct. 3, only one channel remains when typing in ESPN on YouTube. That channel is First Take, a show that relies almost exclusively on viral videos of its talking heads arguing with one another for popularity.

ESPN is still hosting all the video it would have put on YouTube on its site, but that isn’t necessarily a good thing for the company. The video player on ESPN.com is as functional as a broken down Ford Pinto. Half the time, it makes you wait 3 minutes to show a 30-second video and the other half, it shows you two ads in a row and then doesn’t even play the video.

Yes, that actually happened to me. I don’t want to watch videos on ESPN’s site, and I doubt I am the only one.

YouTube’s user base is so large that its unlikely that the videos on ESPN.com will ever come close to the amount of views that they would get on YouTube. That’s a damn shame for the people who put in hours of work and deserve to have their videos seen just like a creator at any other network.

The third loser in this situation is us. Not just “us” as in sports fans, but us as consumers. Even if ESPN is a sports-specific channel, the loss of any content producer from a site that used to be free and open lessens the user experience.

Whether or not ESPN’s move is followed by other companies remains to be seen. There are few creators, if any, out there with the kind of funding and reach ESPN has. Independent YouTubers who aren’t supported by Disney really have no choice other than to keep posting on the site.

That’s the sad reality of the situation. Although, it’s important to note that YouTube is making it easier on creators by paying them during Red’s one-month free trial. That may not sound like much, but it’s a gesture that may alleviate resentment among content producers.

While YouTube has every right to do what it did and so does ESPN, in the end, these changes make a lot more losers than winners.

Paul Sarconi is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at pjsarcon@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @paulsarconi.

Published on November 4, 2015 at 12:04 am