ESPN

The conflict echoes the media giant’s First Amendment fight against Ron DeSantis over the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Pat McAfee built a cult following as a sports personality with a hit radio program, a college football analyst role and a spot on the WWE broadcast team from time to time. Earlier this month, McAfee announced he will walk away from his massive FanDuel deal to join ESPN. McAfee is taking his entire team to ESPN, and the popular show will be featured on ESPN and ESPN+ as well as the network’s YouTube channel. However, the move is apparently not sitting well with everyone associated with Bristol, Conn., sports and entertainment enterprise. Disney is in the midst of massive cost-cutting measures with more layoffs expected to hit ESPN as well as other arms of the company.

Earnings from traditional TV have fallen sharply after helping to offset Disney+ losses in recent years.

ESPN is laying the groundwork to sell its channel directly to cable cord-cutters as a subscription-streaming service in coming years, according to people familiar with the matter, a shift with profound implications for the company and the broader television business. Executives at ESPN and its parent, Disney, for years have said it was inevitable that the sports TV channel would one day be available as a stand-alone streaming service. Now, as consumers increasingly cut the cable-TV cord, the company is actively preparing for that shift under a project with the internal code name “Flagship,” the people said. The company has set no firm timeline for the change.

TNT and ESPN dominated the primetime ratings chart for the second straight week on the strength of its NBA and NHL Playoffs coverage.

Trying to forecast when ESPN will go entirely online is one of the great guessing games of the media industry.

ESPN will begin layoffs early next week as part of parent company Disney’s cost cutting efforts, according to people familiar with the matter. Cuts will include some on-air talent and management, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. The number of layoffs at ESPN is unclear and the decision process is still fluid.

ESPN’s latest round of layoffs will have “no sacred cows,” meaning everybody from top on-air people to big-time executives are being scrutinized with the cuts expected to be finalized in the next four to six weeks. The moves are a part of layoffs that Disney’s CEO Bob Iger announced were coming across all of the company’s units. Last month, Iger said that 7,000 jobs would be eliminated across the board.

This year’s tournament, running March 15 to April 2 and running exclusively on ESPN platforms, has 15 broadcast sponsors and nearly 100 advertisers across various categories, including Aflac, Great Clips, Intuit QuickBooks, OOFOS, Under Armour and U.S. Army.

ESPN has talked with major sports leagues and media partners about launching a feature that would link users directly to where a live sporting event is streaming, sources said. The media partners haven’t yet been determined, and there’s no timeline on when such a feature would launch. It could involve global streaming services and direct-to-consumer regional sports network products, and would aim to make ESPN the TV guide of live sports.

ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro handed oversight of content and newsgathering to Burke Magnus as president of content, supervising studio shows, live events, newsgathering, investigative journalism, original content/ESPN Films, talent, audio, digital, and social media. Meanwhile, Rosalyn Durant, a Disney veteran who has been overseeing Disney facilities in its parks division, will return to ESPN as EVP of programming and acquisitions, the ESPN position that negotiates for the rights that keep a significant chunk of live sports on Disney’s media portfolio.

From analytics to incisive commentary, ESPN analyst Mina Kimes is shaping the future of NFL coverage.

While the weekly TV series is sunsetting, the Saturday morning news program will continue as a digital series (including on ESPN’s YouTube channel), and with branded segments on ESPN’s flagship studio show SportsCenter seven days per week. Jeremy Schaap, the anchor of OTL since 2020, will continue to lead the segments.

The opening round of the NFL playoffs drew a slightly smaller — though still huge — TV audience than it did a year ago. The six games of the wild-card round averaged about 28.4 million viewers, a 4% decline from 2022’s opening round (29.65 million). Three of the telecasts topped 30 million viewers, led by the 33.21 million for Fox’s Sunday telecast of the New York Giants’ win over the Minnesota Vikings. That contest, however, was off by about 20% from the same window last year, when 41.5 million people watched the San Francisco 49ers beat the Dallas Cowboys — the biggest audience for a wild-card game since 2015.

Two former ESPN employees have sued the network and its parent company, Walt Disney, over their terminations in 2021 after refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine. In a complaint filed in a Connecticut court on Wednesday, former ESPN reporter Allison Williams (above) and longtime producer Beth Faber alleged that the company made “no serious attempt” to accommodate their COVID-19 exemption requests.

James J. Allegro, executive VP and CFO of ESPN from 1990 to 1995 died New Years Eve in St. Augustine, Fla. Before joining ESPN, Allegro held a variety of senior finance and operations posts at Capital Cities/ABC, which was acquired by The Walt Disney Co. Allegro helped create ESPN2, The ESPYs, and ESPN Radio, extending the ESPN brand.

The NFL showdown between the Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills, which was postponed in the first quarter after Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest and collapsed on the field, was the most-watched Monday Night Football telecast in ESPN history, averaging 23.8 million viewers, according to preliminary ratings. Nielsen said Wednesday that the broadcast had an average of 23,788,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 from approximately 8:30 to 10:09 p.m.

“Sports is important. And suddenly it’s not.” Those were the salient words of SportsCenter host Scott Van Pelt Monday night after Damar Hamlin suddenly collapsed on the field during the high stakes Bills-Bengals game. Within moments, Van Pelt knew that the injury was very different than those normally sustained on the football field.

The NFL announced just over an hour after the injury to Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin that the game would not resume. When or if the teams would return to the field was not immediately clear. Hamlin collapsed on the field, was administered CPR and then taken to a hospital, where the NFL said Monday night that he was in critical condition. Above, the Buffalo Bills players praying for teammate Damar Hamlin. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)

ESPN is bringing back its familiar “This Is SportsCenter” campaign with a new spot airing Friday during the Capital One Orange Bowl. The new spot, dubbed “Orange Slices,” features Megan Rapinoe, Becky Saurerbrunn and Sophia Smith of the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team, SportsCenter anchor Nicole Briscoe and Syracuse University mascot Otto the Orange. ESPN said this is the first “This is SportsCenter” promo since 2019 and more commercials in the campaign will air in 2023.

“We think Bob Iger is returning to Disney to make big changes. Spinning [off] ESPN/ABC is the best path forward, and we see it as a reasonably probable late-’23 event.” Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall opened a Tuesday report on The Walt Disney Co., led again by Iger as CEO, with a big call that is certain to cause debate.

The deal, worth more than $2 billion that will keep the conference’s media rights in place through the 2030-31 college sports seasons, people familiar with the deal say.

Under the new deal that runs through the 2025 season, at least 16 races will be on ABC or ESPN and all race weekends will include live coverage of practice and qualifying.

ESPN dropped the puck Tuesday on its 2022 National Hockey League regular season schedule, its second campaign as part of a seven-year deal with the league signed in 2021. The network’s 103 NHL games will feature more linear TV exposure for the league on ESPN and ABC, as well as less overlap of games throughout the season, according to ESPN officials. The sports network will look to improve on the 616,000 viewers it averaged last season for live NHL regular-season telecasts on ESPN and ABC.

Walt Disney Co.’s ESPN is nearing a large new partnership with sports-betting firm DraftKings Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. The agreement would pave the way for the media giant to capitalize on the growing wave of legalized sports betting, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the talks are private. The structure and details of the partnership couldn’t be immediately learned.

The end of September brought in the expiration of another carriage deal with no agreement in place to renew it. At midnight on Sept. 30, the Disney-owned television stations that carry ABC programming as well as cable networks ESPN, FX Networks, Nat Geo, Freeform and Disney Channel, are no longer available on Dish and Sling TV. The news comes just a couple of days after the Game Show Network was restored on Dish and Sling TV after it too went dark over a carriage dispute. The disruption also comes as ABC is launching the new seasons of its series at the start of the broadcast season,

The drama between Walt Disney and Comcast. Their rivalry adds intrigue to the desire of Disney boss Bob Chapek to acquire the rest of streaming service Hulu from the cable operator sooner rather than later. Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts is in position to let his counterpart squirm, but there’s a neat solution to help settle the score: ESPN.

NFL ratings are booming in just about every timeslot this season, and Monday Night Football is no exception. It kicked off on September 12 and drew 19.8 million total viewers, its biggest audience since 2009. Now, the Disney franchise is mixing things up with an eye toward opening up even more advertising opportunities. Two games will air at overlapping times tonight on ABC and ESPN, a twist on the back-to-back doubleheaders that aired for more than a decade in Week 1 on ESPN.

At a time when the Walt Disney Co. is looking for ways to stream ESPN directly to consumers, a new survey reinforces the notion that cable subscribers feel they “must have” the sports network. Beta Research said that 78% of network viewers called ESPN a “must-have network.” Also ranking high in the study were Food Network and History.

Activist investor Dan Loeb signaled Sunday morning on Twitter that he is backing off his push to persuade Walt Disney Co. to spin off its popular sports television network ESPN. The change of heart comes after Disney CEO Bob Chapek said in media interviews at this weekend’s D23 Expo event — an annual gathering of Disney fans where the company announces new shows and films — that he has plans for ESPN to be a big growth engine and a large part of the company’s entertainment offerings.

Serena Williams’ final U.S. Open match last Friday was a grand slam for ESPN. The third-round faceoff, in which Williams lost to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovich 7-5, 6-7, 6-1, was the most-watched tennis telecast in ESPN’s 43-year history. An average of 4.6 million viewers (P2+) tuned in to watch the match held at Arthur Ashe Stadium in New York, which likely signaled the end of Williams’ storied 25-year career. That bested the previous record of 3.9 million for the 2012 Wimbledon Men’s Championship, when Roger Federer defeated Andy Murray, in ESPN’s first year with exclusivity and first-ball-to-last-ball coverage from London.

ESPN averaged first-day record of 1.7 million viewers for PrimeTime at the U.S. Open (7 p.m. – 12:03 a.m. ET) on Monday, an increase of 279% over last year and up 40% over the previous high in 2019.

As marketer interest in other TV programming declines, demand for pro football continues its upward trajectory and has had a knock-on effect for other leagues like the NBA and NHL.