On Tuesday, Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported that ESPN is the most likely landing spot for Pat McAfee as he looks to move make moves for his digital program. The news was reported one week ahead of Disney’s Upfront event and just a day after McAfee declared that “Up to Something Season” had concluded with an announcement to come.
As the countdown continues and sports media pundits try to gain insight on McAfee’s self-professed “industry-changing” move, Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti reacted to the latest report on WFAN Wednesday morning. Giannotti expressed confusion as to why McAfee would want to exit a four-year contract he inked with FanDuel, reportedly worth $120 million, in order to take his talents to linear television.
“ESPN clearly is a content-controlling entity and probably has gotten even worse over the years with some of the Disney stuff that has gone on and has leaped into ESPN and political leanings and the things that they cover and everything else,” Giannotti said. “Why would – because if I’m him as I try to put myself in his shoes – I’ve got this great deal, I’ve got this creative control, I can say whatever I want, but now I’m going to go over to [Disney], who [is laying] off 7,000 employees and is probably going to have their hands in everything that I do?”
McAfee and a majority of the recurring cast of his show, which includes co-host A.J. Hawk, are said to be aware of the move. While McAfee has expressed that he took many business meetings throughout the process with sports media executives – including posting a photo with Bob Iger, chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company – he has been relatively silent as to which companies were involved.
Esiason chimed in and told Giannotti that adding McAfee and his group is a profitable step for the Walt Disney Company. Perhaps McAfee being willing to take less money to join ESPN is a move to potentially ease his direct involvement in other areas of the show.
“He and his wife just had a baby,” Esiason said. “There’s maybe some pressures and stress that we don’t see that he has to deal with on a daily basis that he wants to kind of maybe get away from, but he also does College GameDay too, right? He has a relationship there.”
The situation, as understood by Esiason, is that if McAfee and The Walt Disney Company struck a deal to bring his show to ESPN, only one of the three hours of his show would air on linear television. The other two hours would continue to be free for viewers on YouTube with the style of the show relatively unchanged. McAfee, who produces the show through his media company, Pat McAfee, Inc., has previously vowed to his audience that the show will always remain free to watch.
“You’re telling me the other two hours would be the show that he’s doing now where he’s saying whatever he wants,” Giannotti questioned, “but then that one hour [on] ESPN, he’s going to be trotting through Tim Kurkjian and all these other schmucks that they used to put on ESPN Radio before it went to the toilet?”
“I don’t know if they’ll put the ‘car wash’ kind of theme through all of that, but you remember,” Esiason responded, “he has Aaron Rodgers as a weekly guest, and that certainly has raised the profile of his program. He’s not stupid about that. But I would think, yeah, maybe he just doesn’t want to deal with all the machinations of running his company.”
Esiason estimates that if a deal is closed, McAfee would end up being paid between $5 million and $7 million annually to host his show and fulfill additional duties.
McAfee revealed earlier in the year that he will return to College GameDay for the upcoming college football season.
