“ESPN has no reason to have any fear as long as it keeps innovating,” Mr. Shapiro said.

Yet ESPN does not appear to have a revolutionary advance that is capable of altering the industry the way the network did when it went on the air in September 1979.

Even as ESPN moves forward, the landscape it pioneered is rapidly changing. It recently announced cuts of up to 400 jobs, yet it will hire as needed, especially in growth areas. Although the revived à la carte legislation has an uphill battle to passage, it underscores a persistent concern with the rising costs of ESPN and other sports networks.

Beyond established cable rivals like NBCSN and CBS Sports Network, ESPN has a new and bold competitor in Fox Sports 1, which has a strong portfolio of rights. Mr. Skipper has made several early moves to strike back at Fox, hiring the political and sports statistician Nate Silver from The New York Times and bringing back Keith Olbermann to host a nightly show on ESPN2.

Meanwhile, companies like Google, Sony and Intel are planning virtual cable services that would be delivered on the Internet. They could lure consumers from traditional pay television as low-cost alternatives to traditional pay TV while also competing for major sports properties when ESPN’s contracts eventually expire. Mr. Skipper said he would make deals with these upstarts, but only on ESPN’s terms: they must take all of ESPN’s offerings, not just the ones they want.

With the rise of new competition come questions about the fate of existing customers.

Consumers are fleeing pay TV at a quickening pace: 898,000 in the past year, nearly twice the number in the previous year, the analyst Craig Moffett said. And in the past two years, ESPN has lost more than one million subscribers.

What’s more, ESPN ratings plunged 32 percent in the quarter that ended in June.

Mr. Skipper’s task — very different from that of predecessors who built ESPN into a powerhouse — is to negotiate a deeply uncertain future.

“It’s a high-class problem,” he said.

Brad Adgate, senior vice president for research at Horizon Media, said the triple play of decreased cable customers, fewer ESPN subscribers and lower ratings was a “worrisome trend,” but he suggested that ESPN was hurt in the last quarter by reduced interest in the N.B.A. playoffs. “This is not a perfect storm,” Mr. Adgate said. “A lot of big media companies are envious of the model Disney has. Every earnings report, ESPN is always there, a very solid part of their revenue.”