ESPN

Sports, politics, sex, SpongeBob: There’s nothing ESPN’s biggest star won’t argue about — as long as you keep listening.

The recently retired Jason Kelce is headed to ESPN to be part of its Monday Night Football pregame show, sources briefed on the move told The Athletic. Kelce, who just retired after what is considered a Hall of Fame career with the Philadelphia Eagles, was sought after by multiple networks, but is slated to land on ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown.

The college basketball season may be over, but Caitlin Clark helped lead ESPN to one more audience record before going pro. The Iowa Hawkeyes superstar was the No. 1 pick in the WNBA Draft on Monday, and 2.45 million viewers tuned in to ESPN to watch her be selected by the Indiana Fever, according to Nielsen. This is a record-smashing audience for the WNBA draft, marking the first time that the event has ever tallied over a million viewers. The former record holder was the 2004 draft, which this year’s beat by 304%. Pictured: Clark with WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert (Adam Hunger/AP).

The Ultimate Fighting Championship, whose 300th numbered pay-per-view fight card was last weekend, was once effectively banned on television because of its violence.

The Indiana Fever, which will most likely draft Clark with the No. 1 pick on Monday, appear on Disney networks eight times this season.

South Carolina defeated Iowa in front of a record-breaking national audience on Sunday. The NCAA Women’s Championship delivered 18.7M viewers across ABC and ESPN, which marks an 89% increase in viewership year-over-year. Not only is that the most-watched women’s college basketball game on record, the matchup is also the second most-watched non-Olympic women’s sporting event ever on U.S. television. It comes in behind only the 2015 Women’s World Cup Final, according to Nielsen data. Pictured: South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley cuts down the net after her team’s 87-75 victory. (Morry Gash/AP)

Whether it’s players’ and coaches’ wireless mics or BOLT6 LIDAR, technology pulls viewers in.

ESPN‘s planned streaming product will be part of the Disney bundle when it launches in 2025. CEO Bob Iger said during recorded remarks at Disney’s annual shareholder meeting that the stand-alone ESPN streamer will be available through Disney+ for subscribers who bundle their Disney streaming services. He compared the ESPN integration into Disney+ to that of Hulu, which formally launched a week ago.

Last year’s NCAA women’s basketball championship set an all-time ratings record for a women’s game on ESPN. A rematch of that game — albeit two rounds earlier in the tournament — on Monday night drew an even bigger crowd. Iowa’s 94-87 victory over LSU averaged 12.3 million viewers for ESPN, the largest TV audience ever for a women’s basketball game in the United States. The previous record was set more than 40 years ago, when CBS’ broadcast of the 1983 title game — featuring USC legend Cheryl Miller — drew 11.83 million people. LSU’s 102-85 win in last year’s championship game was the previous ESPN record, drawing 9.9 million viewers across ABC and ESPN2.

Fierce media rivals like ESPN and Fox Sports aren’t often eager to see the other do well. But the competitors may be cheering one another this weekend. Fox and ESPN will this weekend each broadcast two games from the new — depending on how one looks at it — UFL, a league that has been built out of the former USFL and its rival, the XFL.

ESPN is planning another Monday Night Football pregame shake-up, according to executives with knowledge of the network’s plans. A year after a complete makeover of the set under the stewardship of Scott Van Pelt, Robert Griffin III’s spot is in jeopardy, while the network is aggressively pursuing retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce for Monday nights. (Matt Rourke/AP)

As the viewing landscape continues to get more complex in the streaming era, ESPN is aiming to streamline things for sports fans by integrating video feeds from regional sports networks into its main app and website. Starting this week, subscribers to NESN, which carries Boston sports teams including the Red Sox, Bruins and Celtics, will be able to tune into games via ESPN’s app or on ESPN.com. In May, timed to the start of the WNBA season, Washington, D.C.’s Monumental Sports Network will also be integrated. SportsNet Pittsburgh, which is operated by NESN, is also part of the ESPN agreement, though its coverage will be added down the line.

Disney’s ESPN is at a crossroads. For more than 40 years, the world’s largest all-sports network has grown annual revenue by increasing cable subscription fees. ESPN first charged pay-TV distributors less than $1 per month per subscriber in the 1980s. In 2023, ESPN’s monthly carriage fee was $9.42 per subscriber, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. That business model is eroding.

Financial terms were not announced Tuesday, but as previously reported the new six-year agreement will pay the CFP and participating conferences $1.3 billion annually. An agreement in principle between the CFP and ESPN was reached weeks ago, but first the college conferences that participate in the playoff had to sign a deal to continue their partnership for another six years. That agreement and a new revenue-sharing plan was finalized last week.

Cable TV’s collapse is forcing the Disney property out of its comfort zone, from hiring risky talent to a streaming gambit that ticked off the NFL.

The former Apple and Hulu Executive is tapped to lead the new joint venture from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Mortensen announced in 2016 that he he had been diagnosed with throat cancer. Even while undergoing treatment, he was the first to confirm the retirement of Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning.

Less than a month after Nick Saban retired from his post at Alabama, ESPN announced Wednesday the legendary football coach will be joining the network’s College GameDay cast as an analyst. He will also contribute to the company’s NFL Draft coverage and make appearances on SEC Network. (Kyusung Gong/AP)

Professional sports leagues including the National Football League and National Basketball Association were kept in the dark about the new sports-centric streaming service being launched by Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery, people familiar with the matter said. The companies involved in the effort are media partners of both leagues. Pro basketball and football programming will be among the significant drivers of the new service.

ESPN faces an existential crisis as it seeks to secure a streaming future while the cable TV bundle is in terminal decline. Its solution: Ask sports leagues if they want to buy a stake in the network. Among a bevy of conflict of interest questions, the “worldwide leader in sports” being partially owned by a major professional sports league would shatter any wall between business and editorial.

Cable’s most highly rated national sports channel is seeking an exemption from federal rules that require the provision of narrated audio descriptions to assist millions in the TV audience who are blind or visually impaired. Disney-owned ESPN — the home of the iconic Sports Center, NFL games and the College Football Playoffs — filed for the exemption today with the FCC. In recent weeks, Fox News and MNBC have filed for identical three-year exemptions.

Walt Disney Co. and the National Football League are said to be in earnest talks, according to two people familiar with the matter, that could have the league take a stake in ESPN while putting its NFL Media unit, which the sports body has been trying to monetize in better fashion, under the media company’s control. Such a move would further align Disney with the NFL, making it difficult for the company to lose valuable sports rights to show top-rated football games, and could put such NFL assets as the NFL Network and RedZone under Disney’s aegis.

“Some members of our team were clearly wrong in submitting certain names that may go back to 1997 in Emmy categories where they were not eligible for recognition or statuettes,” the network said in a statement Thursday. As a result, ESPN personalities like Kirk Herbstreit, Lee Corso and Desmond Howard on College GameDay were given awards they were not entitled to. There was no evidence that any on-air winners knew what happened.

Since at least 2010, ESPN inserted fake names in Emmy entries, then took the awards won by some of those imaginary individuals, had them re-engraved and gave them to on-air personalities. There is no evidence that the on-air individuals were aware the Emmys given to them were improperly obtained.

For decades, the biggest star at ESPN was ESPN. That’s changing as it transitions from cable dominance to a much less certain streaming future.

Rodgers returned to ESPN’s The Pat McAfee Show on Tuesday for his weekly appearance and addressed comments he made the week before that appeared to suggest Kimmel’s name might appear on a list of associates of Jeffrey Epstein, a millionaire accused of sex trafficking involving underage victims before he died by suicide. “Any type of name calling is ridiculous and I’m not calling him (a pedophile), and neither should you,” Rodgers said on the show Tuesday.

Kevin Negandhi may not be the most controversial sports host at ESPN — no one’s heard him slam executives on air or suggest he needs a higher salary — but he is making a name for himself as one of the show-iest. There may be no format or program that Negandhi cannot handle. He may get the chance to try his hand at a few more things in months to come. ESPN has extended Negandhi’s contract so that he will celebrate more than 20 years at the Disney sports-media giant under his next term.

The NCAA and ESPN today announced a $920 million, eight-year agreement that will give the cable network exclusive rights to 40 championships, including the Division I women’s basketball tournament, an event growing in popularity that the association has been accused of undervaluing in the past. Pictured: Iowa guard Caitlin Clark (r) celebrates in front of Michigan State guard Moira Joiner after her three-point basket won the game on Jan. 2. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)

Dwayne Johnson and Dany Garcia on Sunday unveiled plans for the United Football League, the new spring pro football league born from the merger of the XFL and USFL. During an appearance Sunday morning on Fox’s NFL on Fox, the pair said the UFL‘s debut season will begin March 30, 2024, with a game between the Arlington Renegades and Birmingham Stallions, the previous champions from each league. More details are expected soon regarding teams and markets. A promo logo suggests games will be played on ABC, ESPN, Fox and FS1.

A 32-year veteran of ESPN, Krulewitz will assume his new role as senior VP of communications Dec. 31, and will jointly report to ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro and Walt Disney Co. chief communications officer Kristina Schake. He succeeds Chris LaPlaca, who is retiring at the end of the year after 43 years with ESPN, making him the longest-tenured behind the scenes employee in the channel’s history.