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Launching a new direct-to-consumer service this week and inking a recent deal to control NFL Media, ESPN continues evolving as the dominant force in sports media

On August 5, giving ESPN control of NFL Media in exchange for a 10% stake in the sports network and media corporation. The next day, ESPN announced the deal with .

There had been rumors for several years that Disney was looking to offload its sports network due to rising sports media rights expenses and challenges from streaming platforms. and internet providers including Comcast and Verizon were mentioned as potential partners.

The network, , ultimately turned its attention to partnering with a sports organization, moving forward with the NFL over other leagues, including the National Basketball Association.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the��Critical Sports Studies��program director in the CU ������ý������Department of Ethnic Studies.

Over the last year and a half, ESPN took down its “for sale” sign and dug in its heels—first partnering with Penn Entertainment and lending its name to the betting app which launched in November 2023. A year later, ESPN enabled users to link their ESPN Bet account with ESPN+, allowing users to

In February 2024, ESPN announced a joint venture with Fox Sports and TNT Sports, a streaming service known as Venu Sports. Venu was ultimately abandoned after FuboTV, a sports streaming service, filed an antitrust lawsuit. Disney eventually bought 70% of .

In July 2024, ESPN renewed its partnership with the NBA, joining Amazon and NBC as broadcasters of the basketball league. In November, , the popular show that had aired on TNT since 1989 and featured commentators Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith.

In May, ESPN, officially signaling that its cable network would no longer be the center of its media empire. ESPN leaders turned their attention to streaming at a time when Apple, Google and Amazon have been attempting to leverage sports to increase their influence in the digital media environment. Shortly after the NFL deal, they announced a partnership to after Venu was abandoned.

A legacy of innovation

ESPN and the American Broadcasting Company have been at the forefront of innovation in sportscasting, their legacies inextricably linked when ABC purchased ESPN in 1984.

ABC launched as a radio network in 1943 when Edward Noble, the owner of Life Savers, purchased the Blue Network from NBC after the FCC recommended that RCA sell either its Red or Blue Network to promote competition in broadcasting.�� ABC was thought of as the behind the much larger NBC and CBS, so ABC took some programming risks to compete with the other two networks, including airing taped counterprogramming on radio in 1948 when the other networks refused to air pre-taped shows.ABC aired the 1948 NFL championship and began airing NFL regular season games in 1953. The sports production company Sports Programs, Inc., founded by TV executive and producer Edward Scherick, approached ABC about airing a weekly Saturday baseball game during the 1953 season titled” In 1955, CBS purchased the program after first balking at it two years earlier.

In 1954, ABC agreed to provide funding for , Disneyland, which was later renamed the Wonderful World of Disney, forging a relationship that continues today with ABC as a subsidiary of the media giant. The network continued to think outside the box for programming, nationally broadcasting a local Philadelphia music and dance show, Bandstand (renamed American Bandstand), . ABC also gained audiences by airing westerns—shows like The Lone Ranger and Davy Crockett, the latter of which aired as a serial on .

The early 1960s were a turning point for ABC as the network continued to work with partners and think outside the box for programming. In February 1960, it purchased Sports Programs, Inc. which became ABC Sports with Scherick heading up the new sports division. In June 1960, ABC purchased the rights to air American Football League games as the upstart league launched to compete with the NFL. The deal became a template for future sports media rights deals as the revenue was shared with all franchises in the AFL; the NFL followed suit in 1961. This led to the that allowed leagues to bargain collectively on behalf of their teams, rather than a piecemeal set of deals for individual teams and with the league for championships and all-star games. Before the act, it was against antitrust laws to pool rights contracts in sports.

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Drag racer Don Nicholson gives an interview to Wide World of Sports in 1966. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Three months after the AFL deal, ABC Sports broadcasted college football for the first time—a matchup between the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia played at Alabama. As ABC prepared for the game, a young production assistant, Roone Arledge, sent a memo to Scherick outlining strategies to attract casual fans to their sports broadcasts and grow female audiences for sports. and Arledge continued to help ABC leverage sports to compete with NBC and CBS

��Two weeks after the first college football broadcast, ABC took a chance and aired the first regularly scheduled primetime animated program, debuting The Flintstones on Sept. 30. In early 1961, ABC signed a deal with the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) to air track and field and other amateur events. Although there was not a huge demand for track and field coverage, Scherick and Arledge felt that people enjoyed watching games, and ABC could edit the broadcast to make it more entertaining. Since the track and field results were not widely known, they could also delay broadcast until the scheduled airtime on the weekend.

The deal with the AAU became the foundation for the program , which debuted in April 1961, drawing audiences that embraced the drama of It was a direct competitor to The CBS Sports Spectacular, which debuted in 1960 and featured events like NASCAR races and boxing matches.

ABC’s Wide World of Sports was a forum to test new sports programming, including college basketball, when ABC aired the NCAA Championship the day after it was played on March 24, 1962. Also in 1962, the anthology series featured events from the Professional Bowlers Association along with the Daytona 500. Two years later, the NBA was featured on Wide World of Sports��as Arledge continued to seek engaging live sports programming. After a 1964 fly fishing segment on Wide World of Sports with broadcaster Curt Gowdy and fisherman Joe Brooks, Arledge created the anthology program in 1965, an unscripted program featuring athletes and celebrities participating in outdoor sports.

Arledge recognized that diehard sports fans would watch their favorite sports regardless of the production elements, but casual fans were attracted to the narratives and human interest featured in Wide World of Sports and other programming from ABC Sports, which continues to be the template for sports broadcasting today. After watching videotape of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, could contribute to this storytelling and explain the game to casual viewers. Although instant replay debuted in the United States during the , Arledge would soon leverage the technology to show the intricacies of football, helping casual audiences better understand the game and contributing to football’s rise as the most popular sport in the United States.

In 1964, Arledge first broadcast the Winter Olympic Games, obtaining the contract from CBS. ABC first broadcast the Summer Games in 1968 and would continue to broadcast the Summer Games for the next 20 years, with Wide World of Sports airing many of the qualifying events for both the Summer and Winter games. These broadcasts included Tommie Smith and John Carlos protesting during the medal ceremony after they won gold and bronze, respectively in the 200 meter race and the . The latter event led to a closer relationship between sports and journalism, and was a turning point for Arledge who would become the first executive to oversee both a network sports and news division where he created .

NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle had been looking for a way to air NFL games in primetime but was banned from Friday and Saturday night airtime since the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 protected Friday high school games and Saturday college football games from being overshadowed by NFL broadcasts. Between 1966 and 1969, CBS and NBC experimented with Monday night broadcasts of the NFL and AFL respectively. With the upcoming merger between the leagues and ABC’s weak Monday primetime schedule, ABC agreed to air a .

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Arledge continued to take chances—with varied results—including , which suffered from a limited choice of games during baseball’s travel days. In 1976, ABC began broadcasting the North American Soccer League as soccer exploded in popularity when Pele began playing in the league in 1975. , but interest in the league began declining the following year.

Finding a home on cable

Among the first ESPN anchors were Robin Roberts (left), Chris Berman (center) and Tom Jackson (right). (Photo: ESPN Images)

After being fired as communications director for the New England Whalers hockey team, Bill Rasmussen, his son Scott and Ed Eagan, an eye doctor and insurance agent, looked to create a regional sports network in Connecticut. When they discovered it would be cheaper to launch a national cable network over satellite, they established the on Sept. 7, 1979, supported by an investment from Getty Oil, which obtained 85% of the network and an advertising deal with Anheuser-Busch. Many felt there was not enough sports programming to fill 24 hours a day, but the network began airing sports and events that bigger broadcast networks thought were too niche, including the early rounds of the —launching what is now known as March Madness—and the l.

In 1981, hosted by Howard Cosell, debuted and brought hard-hitting sports journalism, which previously had been exclusive to print journalism, to television. Although the show was not highly rated, it was one of the first on television to investigate issues like drugs and violence in sports. In 1983, the program produced a 30-minute documentary previewing the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, which was critical of the Olympics’ impact and was one of the first to question the long-term feasibility of the games despite the fact that ABC had .

After Texaco bought Getty Oil in 1984, the company sold its , which further legitimized the cable network as a sports broadcaster. ABC had previously purchased 15% of the network before buying the remaining 85% from Texaco then selling a 20% stake to Nabisco. ESPN was able to leverage ABC’s position as a broadcast network to expand its media rights. Later that year, the Supreme Court ruled in that the NCAA’s control of college football broadcast rights was an unfair restriction on competition. ABC and ESPN quickly signed a deal with the College Football Association, which represented many of the top programs outside of the Big 10 and Pac 10.

Also that fall, the was passed, establishing national regulation of cable and helping calm tensions between municipalities wanting to protect local media and cable providers. The act helped facilitate an expansive growth of cable, making ESPN and other cable networks available in municipalities that had previously blocked or limited cable service. In 1987, , which further cemented ESPN as a legitimate competitor to the broadcast networks.

By the 1990s, ESPN became synonymous with sports coverage at a time when media ownership was being deregulated. In 1990, as the chain newspaper owner looked to expand its business into cable television. Soon after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 passed, Disney bought ABC and all its subsidiaries, including ESPN. In 1997, the athletic complex opened near Disney World, and adding to its sports portfolio that included the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and planning to create an ESPN West. Ultimately, Disney abandoned those plans, selling both teams by 2005. ESPN did open a Los Angeles studio near the Staples Center in 2009, but the network is consolidating its operations back to Bristol, Connecticut, and announced the closure of both its

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Monday Night Football aired for the first time on ESPN in 2006. (Photo: ESPN Images)

In 2006, ABC Sports officially merged with ESPN, with the latter taking over sports coverage from its sister network. Later that year, aired for the first time on the cable network. The NFL wanted to shift the marquee primetime game from Monday to Sunday, but Disney wanted to maintain their highly rated Sunday lineup, so they moved Monday Night Football to ESPN and .

Growth and criticism

ESPN’s growth has not come without criticism, including the cost to cable providers and consumers, which is more than three times higher than its closest national competitor, TNT, due to increasing rights fees and production costs. Cable companies pay over $9 dollars per subscriber to carry ESPN, In spite of these prices, increasing media rights and cable cutting have led to budget crunches that have led to several rounds of layoffs, including , leading to accusations that the network was moving away from sports journalism to focus more on promoting the leagues it covers.

ESPN on the production of League of Denial,��which investigated traumatic brain injuries in the NFL and how the league hid their prevalence and long-term impact. ESPN’s exit from the investigation was reportedly due to pressure from the NFL. The network’s relationship with and investment in the league, which now includes NFL Media and the league obtaining 10% of the network, has increased concerns over a lack of critical coverage of the league—including issues like violence against women, public funding of NFL stadiums and accusations of racism by team owners including Jerry Jones, who owns the . Some journalistic organizations like Poynter have claimed that promotion of Disney properties like Disney+ and content like Pixar and Marvel films on SportsCenter and other programs undermines the

ESPN has weathered this criticism and has positioned itself for the future as the top sports media company in the world. It has broadcasting rights for almost any sport imaginable and a strengthened relationship with the NFL, the most valuable sports league in the world, as it launches its direct-to-consumer service on Aug. 21 and partners with Fox for a new bundled service that will launch on Oct.2. It is a new era not just for sports media, but television as a whole as one of the last holdouts of traditional cable transitions to digital streaming.

Jared Bahir Browsh��is an assistant teaching professor of��critical sports studies��in the CU ������ý������Department of Ethnic Studies.

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