ESPN is a world of conflicts

ESPN, the “worldwide leader in sports,” continues to receive criticism in light of rising concerns about reduced ethical standards, conflict of interest and biases linked to media rights deals, which brings a wide collection of sports programming and a profit that other outlets fail to match.

Layoffs are rampant in the modern journalism industry, and ESPN has been subject to the same detriment.

The reality is that ESPN makes a living by producing entertainment, not journalism. Yet the two are inherently intertwined in the network’s business operations, which has presented some ethical challenges in the past and continues to be noteworthy today.

Does ESPN’s reliance on entertainment and media rights naturally undermine its ethical credibility? Or is ESPN just trying to survive in a fiercely competitive media environment?

Kelly McBride, Poynter Institute senior vice president and former ESPN ombudsman reporter, believes that ESPN has always had an advantageous business model.

“ESPN never had to do journalism in order to be financially successful,” McBride said. “They did journalism to enhance their brand.”

ESPN has been competing with NBC, Fox and CBS in the television industry since its inception in 1979, while sharpening its toolkit against the likes of Sports Illustrated to present itself as an alpha in the journalism industry.

Now ESPN battles with the same competitors, but the field is expanding rapidly.

Travis Vogan, professor of journalism and American studies at the University of Iowa, sees a parallel between the dominating culture surrounding information and how media companies react.

“Things shift and the media shifts along with it,” Vogan said.

Social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok make information easier to distribute and more accessible.

Shawn Klein, associate professor of philosophy at Arizona State University and an expert in sports ethics, sees the current state of media as a budding revolution.

“It's gone from a nice steady stream to a tsunami in terms of the amount of information that you can have at your fingertips within a matter of seconds,” Klein said. “I think you could probably compare it to the invention of the printing press, where there was all of a sudden the availability of information, and it became widespread in a cheap way.”

ESPN is not only competing with networks now, it is looking to maintain relevance amidst the explosion of private sports shows, podcasts, and websites that inherently allow for creative freedom and authenticity.

Brian Moritz, associate professor of sports journalism at St. Bonaventure University, sees ESPN as a legacy media company that is adapting to the content-creation explosion, while being on the frontlines of these trends when they arise.

“I don't really see ESPN as an early adopter right now,” Moritz said. “When you're a big organization like that, there's no real incentive and there's no way to beat the innovation.They kind of do things just as they hit a tipping point and then bring those innovations to the larger audiences.”

In May 2023, ESPN paid for the licensing of the “Pat McAfee Show,” which is in the midst of a five-year run at an $85 million price tag. The show began on DAZN and then migrated to YouTube in 2020.

The show features a collection of former athletes like McAfee himself, former Green Bay Packers linebacker AJ Hawk and former Colts cornerback Darius Butler. Together with other chosen internet personalities and guest appearances from top sports figures, the McAfee show gained its own unique audience that ESPN wanted to tap into.

This was the first time ESPN bought the licensing to an outside property and did not gain some creative control over the show.

Richard Deitsch, senior writer at The Athletic, views ESPN as a business that is operating the way it always has.

“I don't see it as some kind of dramatic shift. I just see it as ESPN doing business in 2024,” Deitsch said.

ESPN went through company-wide layoffs in 2020, which were the biggest mass firings in its history, and the message from ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro was that the layoffs were due to a “tremendous disruption in how fans consume sports.”

ESPN laid off 10% of its staff that year.

Just over a month after the “Pat McAfee Show” was picked up by ESPN, the network issued its second major round of layoffs in less than three years, which took jobs from well-known and well-acclaimed on-air personalities.

Some saw the move as a way of generating the money needed to pay for the McAfee show, which is an acquisition that has a creative flexibility not seen before in ESPN’s premium television lineup.

“They've always hired former athletes as talent and had a completely different set of ethical standards for them,” McBride said.

McAfee is both a contractor and an employee of ESPN, as he appears on NFL and college football shows for the network.

The rhetoric from the hosts and guests on the McAfee show and the appearance of certain sports figures have always been a point of controversy, which has not changed since its acquisition – whether it’s Aaron Rodgers spreading conspiracies about the Covid-19 vaccine, or saying that Jimmy Kimmell would appear on convicted criminal Jeffrey Epstein’s list of clients, or even McAfee throwing shots at ESPN executive Norby Williamson, calling him a “rat” during a broadcast.

ESPN handled all of these issues internally.

“If [ESPN] wants that audience, that financial audience, that advertising audience, and also that continued kind of cachet in the sports media world that they've had for a very long time, then I think that ESPN's in a tough spot of how much do you go along with, versus how much do you change a guy who very clearly has no reason to change because he's that popular,” Moritz said.

Pundits like McAfee seem to have an expansive leeway because of their audience, allowing them to get away with untraditional behavior.

The Rise of Punditry

There are stark parallels between political news and sports news. There is a large following behind many opinionated talk show hosts and members, many who would be labeled as pundits.

Jim Brady, former ESPN ombudsman and CEO of Spirited Media, notes that publications aren’t trusted as much as they used to be, while pundits are being looked to more.

“If you look at Substack, you could get an awful lot of people now following individuals,” Brady said.

It is fair to question what a pundit actually constitutes. Many experts have varying opinions about what the word should actually mean.

Mike McDevitt, professor of journalism and media studies at University of Colorado Boulder, labels a pundit as “someone who offers commentary in the media on a particular subject area.”

Where it used to be common to find more hard news than commentary before the 21st century, now that reality has flipped upside down.

Fox News has been the top-rated cable network for eight years –- the channel airs the top-five most-watched daily shows in the United States –- The Five, Jesse Watters Primetime, The Ingraham Angle, Hannity, and Special Report with Bret Baier.

These shows are commentary-heavy and often controversial. The common denominator is that people are watching these shows more than others and all but one is hosted by a single person.

“People are less interested in sitting down watching a SportsCenter show when they can listen to their favorite podcasts or a band of guys like in the 'Pat McAfee Show’ where they kind of just talk about random stuff,” Klein said. “It's not so structured. It's further away from traditional journalism.”

Based on McDevitt’s definition of a pundit, there are an endless amount of them in the media sphere right now, and the number continues to increase.

Everyday people are gravitating towards these opinionated “experts.”

“I don't think there's conceptually any reason to think that you can't be objective and strive for objectivity in your news reporting and still be entertaining,” Klein said. “There's that tension there, making sure that you can maintain that objectivity while still being entertaining.”

Stephen A. Smith has been the undisputed face of ESPN ever since the highly controversial Skip Bayless left the company in 2016. Smith was already gaining superstar status after his appointment as the full-time co-host of “First Take” in 2012.

“First Take” is a show riddled with hot takes, speculation and melodrama, yet it does have a journalistic pulse, incorporating famous national reporters and sports analysts.

“SportsCenter” provides a good dose of journalism, but you can find an increasing amount of commentary and entertainment segments to keep viewers engaged.

“Get Up,” a rising early-morning show in ESPN’s flagship lineup, is like a mix of “First Take” and “SportsCenter.”

“Around The Horn” and “Pardon the Interruption” both present the prominent news topics of the day, but commentary is provided as well.

In what really started in the 1980s with the proliferation of cable news across America, the fight for viewership and the 24-hour news cycle meant that media companies needed to fill air time.

That airtime is being dominated by commentary and entertainment now.

“There is that balance between trying to serve the interest of creating a valuable news product.

But then also making sure that people buy it.” Klein said.

ESPN was the first to blend sports and entertainment together, and the industry has changed since then. The network really shifted in the 1990s as technology started to expand, and Disney came around at the perfect time.

Disney acquired ABC and consequently ESPN in 1996. ESPN had been focusing on using journalism to prioritize and filter sports news by importance since John Walsh took over the managing editor role in 1988. Walsh was largely responsible for recruiting top sports journalists to appear as regulars on television.

Then Paul Allen, Mike Slade and ESPN VP Dick Glover decided to collaborate on a website called ESPNETSportsZone.com that would later become ESPN.com. The website launched during the 1995 Final Four in Seattle, which is the stomping grounds for Allen’s Microsoft company.

Before the website, ESPN Radio started in 1992.

The ESPN Magazine was first published in 1998.

The 1990s represented a shift for ESPN and was the beginning of the brand using entertainment, journalism and sports media rights to prop itself up as the standard hub for sports. The final decade of the 20th century was when ESPN truly expanded in sheer content production and started becoming what it is today.

Commercial Priorities and Divided Loyalties

ESPN investing more airtime and money into pundits is a business decision, along with the collection of media rights and even a potential stake realignment in the future.

Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, which is the parent company of ESPN, has been shopping for equity partners in sports leagues. This brings into question the already complicated ethical dilemma ESPN faces right now with media rights deals, and also makes observers wonder if that conflict intensifies if an equity deal is reached.

Vogan believes the conflict of interest is already high with media rights.

“In a way, that partnership already gives you a kind of equity in that company,” Vogan said.

Vogan sees a danger in equity deals which could further the promotion of the NFL and league storylines by ESPN.

The NFL is the most profitable sports league in the U.S.

There is skepticism about the NFL or any league potentially having some sway over ESPN’s journalism department.

“If the NFL has part ownership of [ESPN}, I mean, that's the game. That's it,” Moritz said. “That threatens the whole idea of ‘I work for an independent organization, a journalism organization that covers the NFL, that covers these teams, that covers these stories, good stories, bad stories, horrific stories, fun stories, all of the stories in between.’

ESPN has always had a “firewall” between its journalism and entertainment departments, but the question is not only what particular sports leagues don’t get covered, but also what stories are brushed over, especially if the NFL, NBA, NHL or any other sports league buys a piece of ESPN.

“[ESPN] suggests that there's this wall between what they do as far as covering sports and what they do as far as journalism goes – but there are these moments of rupture that force us to question that,” Vogan said.

ESPN has been criticized over the years for conflicts of interest that stem from these realities.

When a media company pays a sports league for the right to televise their games, they are in business with each other. They have mutual interests. The question then becomes can an ESPN cover the NFL or the NBA objectively. The network has shown that it can and it does still pursue a plethora of investigative stories, but there are troubling instances of biases towards the leagues it partners with.

In 2013, PBS Frontline released the “League of Denial” documentary, which was a broad investigation on how the NFL handled its concussion and brain injury issue, something that the NFL has tried to deny and cover up many times in the past.

ESPN was supposed to take part in the investigation and to provide editorial input, but the network pulled out, citing its “lack of editorial input” and New York Times reported that the NFL applied pressure to ESPN regarding its involvement in the documentary.

“ESPN chose its partnership with the NFL over its loyalty to its audience when it pulled its brand off of that,” McBride said. “They'll talk a very good game, but they will choose the money over the more noble loyalty of the little guy or the truth or the audience or even the players. And they're very comfortable doing that.”

That incident was similar to the NFL pressuring ESPN into canceling its hit show “Playmakers” in 2004 after only one season. The NFL didn’t appreciate the portrayal of the athletes within the fictional television series.

The co-writer in the NYT article, James Andrew Miller, mentioned that ESPN has shown a reluctance to report on stories that might hurt its bottom line and that the network has flagged sports leagues about unfavorable stories before they come out, citing ESPN waiting two days before reporting on Ben Roethlisberger’s sexual assault accusation, or slow reporting on the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed that anonymous sources within ESPN in 2015 believed that the NFL gave ESPN a bad Monday Night Football lineup in retaliation for Bill Simmons and Keith Olbermann’s critical comments on Roger Goodell regarding concussions.

In recent news via The Athletic, Phil Orlins, ESPN’s vice president of production for Major League Baseball, was quoted saying that MLB officials “have not been heavy-handed” with the network. Orlins also admitted to forewarning the MLB about “delicate” subjects that could bring major exposure to the league, but insisted that these warnings did not change the reporting. Orlins explained that the business relationship comes with respect for the partner, and making sure the other is not blindsided by information that may arise.

There is a hidden power that these revenue-generating leagues have over ESPN, which wants to avoid losing media rights.

“They can't afford to lose the next bidding war,” McBride said. “The NFL can choose to give the rights to somebody else even if ESPN is offering more money. The NFL can hurt ESPN in so many ways.”

ESPN also has a massive incentive to cover the sports they pay for with fervor, which is why the NHL was seldomly covered before the acquisition of its media rights in 2021. That means

that some sports go without coverage or receive inconsequential amounts of attention.

“I think real transparency on all of that would be good,” Brady said. “I still wish ESPN did like Texas Tribune and some sites do, which is at the end of every story, they'll say ‘these are the conflicts.”

ESPN has a dedicated journalism department with investigative reporters which has produced a great number of stories that strike at the heart of what journalism is intended to do. There continues to be tremendous journalism produced by ESPN.

Moritz and Deitsch say that ESPN takes journalism seriously and it does show through the tremendous writers the publication employs. It has been understood to have a firewall between the entertainment and journalism operations to uphold the integrity of the newsroom. ESPN has a longstanding credibility and sense of reliability that was built over time.

“They care about news standards and more than any other rights holder of sports, are serious about that,” Deitsch said.

Despite the emphasis on journalistic integrity at ESPN, it's hard not to wonder how previous examples of league interference and current economic relations may affect its business operations as a reporting entity.

The Once Taboo Interest

Reaching 38 states in America, legalized sports gambling makes any reporting a journalist conducts potentially actionable.

Statistics and injury reports have always fed the gambling industry important information that serves as a pillar of setting odds and a reference point for gamblers.

“Legal, accessible gambling really does change how people relate to sports news and sports journalism,” Moritz said.

Much like any other news organization, ESPN contributes to the success and popularity of the gaming industry, especially with sponsorships and licensing deals birthing ESPN BET.

“They try and get their audience to sign up for that app and the audience can get like $100 free money to start their gambling addiction. You know, it's like a crack dealer,” McBride said.

ESPN now has a hand in gambling addiction and gambling proliferation. It also has reporters and insiders who, despite there being that “firewall,” could circumvent regulations in order to place bets on information that they generate or gather from the inside.

Not only can journalists move betting lines and influence how gamblers make wagers, they can also potentially use the information they gather to their advantage. Legalized gambling provides an avenue for corruption.

Enforcing and tracking good use of gambling regulations is an issue to monitor as these industries morph and develop through legalities.

The firewall and a new presence of regulatory bodies to detect gambling violations from players, sports staff and journalists is supposed to prevent wrongdoings, but the possibility of defiance is still there. This brings into question how effective the firewall and regulatory bodies are.

“It's not like insider trading where there's a record of the trades that happen,” McBride said. “I can't imagine they're delusional if they think they're keeping that under control.”

The latest scandal is the Shohei Ohtani interpreter situation, in which Ohtani’s former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, was found to be in massive debt after making a flurry of bets with international bookmakers while using money that he allegedly stole from Ohtani’s bank account.

Mizuhara allegedly stole $16 million.

This is just one of many gambling scandals over the years.

Where gambling used to be an ethical line that no one even dared to cross, now it is another part of ESPN’s reality.

Deitsch believes these types of conflicts of interest have been baked in.

“I feel like any of us who have any kind of partnerships with the gambling companies are

probably in some ways complicit there. At the same time, adults are adults and this is legal,” Deitsch said.

The New Media Age

Gambling is the latest avenue of revenue generation that ESPN is driving through, and it serves the network well economically.

Drawing on the increased prominence of punditry in sports media, the fragmentation of information provided by the internet and social media creates an extensive, multilateral content-creation environment that leads to increasingly intense fandom.

This builds community on a global scale.

“I don't need to read a single article about the Buffalo Bills from an independent journalist to know what's going on with the team,” Moritz said. “If people weren't looking for this kind of community, it wouldn't exist.”

You can go online, find the stories or topics you want to listen to or read about, and stay in that environment as much as you want. The battle for public attention among legacy media companies is intensified in this space, which means that adaptability is imperative for survival.

“ESPN has the luxury of having a really recognizable brand that I think is still kind of shorthand for sports media in U.S. culture,” Vogan said. “But I don't think that ESPN is on the front wave of what's happening in sports media.”

Information is more accessible to fans than ever before, meaning they could be less inclined to get their sports information from ESPN, Fox Sports, or any other legacy media.

Klein mentions that as sports continue to grow, it becomes increasingly hard for one central news organization like ESPN to cover everything fairly and equally, which only contributes to the dispersing of news and media sources.

“People are hiring names and those names are moving from place to place now, and people try to recruit those names because they have a large following on Twitter or they have a huge podcast,” Brady said.

This creates an environment where ESPN has to compete with an unquantifiable number of people for attention.

ESPN was an early adopter of sports and entertainment, and now that synergy has spread outward. Cord-cutting and financial pressures have led to realignment and even the elimination of certain divisions of journalism within ESPN.

ESPN understands that conflict of interest has been an issue in the past and continues to be, but business often seems to precede ethical considerations.

McBride recalls a time she spoke with former ESPN President John Skipper. He joked with her about ESPN being “the biggest walking conflict of interest on Earth.”

That self awareness explains it all.