I in no way will ever try to state that they are the same. They are not known for sports, they don't follow sporting events with national sport news shows 24x7. Their quality of broadcast, their commentators, etc are no where near the class of ESPN. And they don't carry national news shows dedicated to sports. If you want great sports 24x7 you already know where to find it on ESPN/2.

But I do have to defend the fact that their distribution numbers are equal (99m - 100m each). I wasn't aware of that myself until someone mentioned games being on there and it having a large distribution (I hadn't even heard of it before then). I didn't just take their word for it I did the research myself and confirmed the distribution numbers.

Same can be said about TruTV that carried a bunch of the games for the NCAA tournament last year. Distribution is very high - but known for sports they are not.