It all started with a bang. Pat McAfee is set to take his popular digital show to ESPN in a deal worth a reported eight figures, and he appeared at The Walt Disney Company Upfront event at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center Tuesday afternoon to formally announce the blockbuster move, which goes into effect this fall.
This move is the long-awaited conclusion of “Up to Something Season,” and also includes the cast of his program. He had previously worked with “The Worldwide Leader” in a litany of different roles, including on College GameDay and on alternate broadcasts of college football games. Before news of this deal broke, McAfee had confirmed that he will return to College GameDay for the upcoming college football season. ESPN announced that he will continue alternate presentations of college football games throughout the year, which were produced last year with Omaha Productions.
“I feel like we are sitting at a beautiful intersection in the history of media that has never happened before,” McAfee said. “Digital has become an influence; it has the structure; it has the ability to reach millions and millions of people literally on a daily basis…. [ESPN] very much understood that we need to embrace both what tomorrow is and what today is. I have the exact same vision.”
“Pat is a proven talent. He and his team have built The Pat McAfee Show into one of the most engaging programs in sports and all of media,” said ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro in a press release, who was in attendance for Tuesday’s presentation. “It’s a destination for athlete interviews and breaking news, and the centerpiece of a growing community of sports fans. We’re honored to bring Pat and the show to ESPN through a multifaceted, multiplatform approach.”
Before the start of the event, ESPN also revealed a four-game slate of marquee college football matchups set to commence this September. It all begins with the Camping World Kickoff between the LSU Tigers and Florida State Seminoles, which will air on ABC on the Labor Day holiday. Six days later, the Texas Longhorns square off against the Alabama Crimson Tide, a prime time matchup on ESPN between head coaches Steve Sarkisian and Nick Saban.
In the season’s sixth week, the Longhorns make a return to The Walt Disney Company’s family of platforms as they take on the Oklahoma Sooners from the Cotton Bowl for the Red River Showdown. Both teams will join the Southeastern Conference upon their departure from the Big 12 Conference after next college football season. Lastly, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and Clemson Tigers will battle on Saturday, Nov. 4 in a matchup televised on ABC. Additional announcements related to the college football season, including Bowl games and special presentations, will be disseminated on Wednesday, May 31.
USC Trojans quarterback Caleb Williams joined Rutledge, Dan Orlovsky and Desmond Howard to talk about his drive entering the upcoming season as ESPN prepares to televise some of the school’s games. He knows his team will be highlighted, especially following his Heisman Trophy win last year, and is looking forward to proving himself.
“I haven’t really done anything,” Williams said. “I haven’t won a national championship yet and [achieved] goals like that. I’ve got a lot of goals that I want to reach and strive for. I won’t get big headed and I want to reach those goals.”
Following the conclusion of the upcoming college football season, The Walt Disney Company will embark on the first of a 10-year media rights agreement with the Southeastern Conference (SEC), coinciding with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas from the Big 12. It was a point of emphasis throughout the presentation, and more information will likely be revealed closer to the start of the agreement.
“Fans will catch all of the Southeastern Conference showdowns,” Orlovsky explained, “like the Iron Bowl; the Florida-Georgia game; the Red River Rivalry; LSU vs. Alabama and the SEC Championship Game, which also will be exclusively on ESPN platforms for the next decade.”
ESPN presented content for nearly the first hour of the Upfront event, including from its college football, NFL and NBA broadcast properties. Before any of that began, however, Serena Williams took to the stage in a surprise appearance to make a big announcement.
A new ESPN multipart series titled – In the Arena: Serena Williams – follows the success of a similar series with Tom Brady. It will present the highlights of her tennis career and give an inside look to her personal life and the trials and tribulations associated with starting a family. It will be directed by Gotham Chopra and involve Williams’ and Caroline Currier’s production company, Nine Two Six Productions. Tom Brady’s production company – 199 Productions – will also contribute along with ESPN and Religion of Sports.
“It’s going to span key matches of my tennis career tracking my ups and downs both professionally and personally,” Williams said. “[It] gives an honest, unflinching account and those 23 Grand Slam victories.”
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ESPN sports anchor Elle Duncan took to the stage to discuss the importance of live sports in today’s content ecosystem. She spotlighted the company’s multiplatform, multi-network sports coverage set for Christmas Day next year, which will include a variety of NBA games and close with an NFL matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers.
“Over 30% of all sports were watched on Disney, and if you look at just the last few weeks alone because of the NHL Draft, NBA, XFL playoffs, Sunday Night Baseball, we had half of all sports watched,” Duncan said. “That’s an incredible number. You can definitely cheer for that.”
ESPN revealed that Get Up! and First Take experienced five and seven percent growth last month year over year, respectively. As it prepares to add The Pat McAfee Show to its weekday lineup, it does so with a continued appeal towards Gen Z and those between ages 13 and 24.
“If you look at TV and streaming combined, [ESPN has] over 94,000 live and original hours of studio and event programming,” Duncan said. “Think about that – 94,000 hours – and Stephen A. Smith has an opinion on all of them.”
ESPN’s digital platforms attract 180 million monthly unique viewers, while its social channels have amassed 7.5 billion engagements. On YouTube, ESPN accumulated more than 20 billion views, and the network continues to grow thanks to exclusive media rights deals with professional sports leagues.
“Why do we watch sports?,” ESPN anchor and host Hannah Storm questioned. “We watch sports because they are some of the greatest stories ever told.”
Storm welcomed Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell, New York Liberty power forward Breanna Stewart and LSU Tigers forward Angel Reese to the stage to talk about the excitement surrounding the NBA and WNBA, respectively. They acknowledged the continued growth and evolution of media coverage with both entities, and spoke about the ongoing NBA Playoffs and impending start of the WNBA season.
In fact, ESPN/ABC is averaging 5.2 million viewers throughout the NBA Playoffs thus far, the highest figure ever on Disney platforms. Game 7 between the Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics had a total of 8.4 million viewers, making it the most-watched conference finals game on ABC in the last 12 years.
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The NFL schedule was released last week, and ESPN had its Monday Night Football announcing tandem of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman on hand to preview the action coming in the year ahead. Their appearance highlighted an expanded relationship with the NFL as ESPN embarks in the first year of a new media rights agreement, and will bring a new look to kick off next season. Details regarding the changes have not been revealed, but will presumably be debuted during its Opening Week matchup between the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets. Monday Night Football will introduce a new producer-director tandem with Steve Ackels and Derek Mobley, respectively.
“This is an exciting time for The Walt Disney Company,” Aikman said. “We’re coming off a tremendous NFL Draft. Those three days in Kansas City were amazing, [and] I can’t wait to see the moment next year when we bring out the obviously very talented Caleb Williams.”
After divulging that The Walt Disney Company will have 35% more games across ABC, ESPN and ESPN+ in 2023, including flex scheduling ability after Week 12, the duo introduced Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin. He received a standing ovation, and spoke about his traumatic experience that took place on Monday Night Football game between the Bills and Cincinnati Bengals last year after going into cardiac arrest.
“I’m feeling amazing,” Hamlin said. “It’s been a rollercoaster of emotions just trying to get back into the game; get back into the flow, the routine and things like that. At this point, I think I can do whatever I put my mind to.”
“I’ve been doing this for 30 years covering the NFL, and I’ve never been in the booth with a headset on my head struggling to find the right words,” Buck said. “That night, you get ready for a game. You go into the booth; you do your typical stuff; you’re covering play after play and then all of a sudden, life happens, and it was a scary scene. Little did we know as we stood up in the booth what actually was going on.”
To conclude ESPN’s presentation at The Walt Disney Company’s Upfront, Peyton Manning appeared on stage and talked about the third season of Monday Night Football with Peyton and Eli, colloquially known as the ManningCast. While the schedule of games for the alternate-style presentation has not been revealed, it figures to follow a similar format centered around the interaction and intellect proffered by Peyton and his brother, Eli. On an unrelated note, he also revealed that he will return to host the 2023 Country Music Awards with American Idol judge and country musician Luke Bryan.
“On our show, I try to imagine what it would be like if I was still on the field while Eli sits around and tries to come up with different ways to make fun of the size of my head,” Manning said. “….The only thing that has brought back the energy of a game for me is the energy of doing live television. Now listen, it’s not as scary as a 250-pound linebacker coming from the blind side, and it’s not as distracting as trying to tell your teammates the play in the huddle with thousands of opposing fans drowning you out. But live events are still a thrill, and live events bring the whole family together.”
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Just a few months after returning to The Walt Disney Company as its chief executive officer, Bob Iger reorganized the company into three distinct, core units – Disney Entertainment; Disney Parks, Experiences and Products; and ESPN – all with a goal to “return creativity to the center of the company.” Each unit of the media entity has its own leadership team, with ESPN being led by its chairman Jimmy Pitaro. Through the changes, Disney is in the process of laying off 7,000 employees and slashing costs by $5.5 billion with an intent to enable the company to engage in a sustained period of growth and success.
“In this era of great change, creativity and innovation continue to be the cornerstone of all we do at Disney,” The Walt Disney Company’s President of Advertising Sales and Partnerships Rita Ferro said. “We know our success is predicated on two things. The first – capturing the hearts and minds of consumers with award-winning content. And the second – a sophisticated data and tech stack.”
Continuing movements into the streaming business is a point of emphasis for The Walt Disney Company, evinced throughout the course of the Upfront event. It hopes to accentuate and promulgate Disney+ to reach a level similar to Hulu, which is responsible for 1.9% of ad supported viewership according to Nielsen Media Research. A preponderance of the company’s programming is available across these platforms and a large portion of its talent was on stage to reveal new slates of converged programming and news content.
Although the program did not contain the annual appearance by late night host Jimmy Kimmel – who sat out this year’s event in a show of solidarity with the Writers Guild of America strike – there was still plenty of additional star power on hand. From Kim Kardashian and Khloe Kardashian of Hulu’s The Kardashians; George Stephanopoulous and Michael Strahan of ABC’s Good Morning America; Jesse Palmer of ABC’s The Bachelor to Ryan Seacrest of ABC’s American Idol, the company put on a magical show for advertisers and fans alike.
Yet the focus of the event, while it was The Walt Disney Company at its core, was indeed ESPN, and the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” is ready to embark on an immense year ahead. It aims to continue serving the sports fan anytime, anywhere and to innovate with the dynamic, somewhat mercurial landscape of the sports media industry.
Derek Futterman is a contributing editor and sports media reporter for Barrett Media. Additionally, he has worked in a broad array of roles in multimedia production – including on live game broadcasts and audiovisual platforms – and in digital content development and management. He previously interned for Paramount within Showtime Networks, wrote for the Long Island Herald and served as lead sports producer at NY2C. To get in touch, find him on X @derekfutterman.
