How do I get WatchESPN to work?

Solution 1:

They require Adobe's Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to be installed to view secured content (i.e DRM encumbered). The solution to install HAL is:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mjblenner/ppa-hal
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install hal

Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2255621

More information can be found here:

https://launchpad.net/~mjblenner/+archive/ubuntu/ppa-hal

A few are still complaining it isn't working while others state that it works for them and that it works for other sites that they had previous issues with. Make sure to follow the directions carefully - if you have any questions then feel free to ask. Ensure that you have ad blocking software or script blocking software disabled for the site in question as well. If this resolves your problem then please be sure to mark it as solved to let others better find the solution.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the project appears to still be active but doesn't have a lot of resources. Their most recent package was July 3rd of this year.

Solution 2:

The instructions about installing HAL and using flashplugin-installer worked for me on one computer (in 15.10), but not on another (also in 15.10). After deleting ~/.mozilla/ a few times, I finally came upon this arch wiki entry about Flash DRM which mentioned that the Adobe flash plugin keeps a cache of files that may cause some trouble. It suggests:

rm -rf ~/.adobe/Flash_Player/{NativeCache,AssetCache,APSPrivateData2}

I was a bit less careful and just removed the entire ~/.adobe/ directory, at which point I was able to get espn3 working.