ESPN Sees Gains With RSN Woes - Front Office Sports (2024)

BRISTOL, Conn. — The most expansive of the U.S. national sports media networks wants to be a major player on the regional level, too.

ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro (above) said Wednesday that the Disney-owned property is aiming to position itself as a meaningful response to the accelerating disruption across the regional sports network industry. That turbulence includes the ongoing bankruptcy of Bally Sports parent Diamond Sports Group, a significant winnowing of Root Sports, and viewership and subscriber declines for many other RSNs amid fast-growing cord-cutting by consumers.

But ESPN is developing a series of measures to air locally oriented games on various platforms.

“That is an industry that is changing very, very rapidly,” Pitaro said of RSNs at a media day at ESPN headquarters held with reporters. “Every day, it seems I’m reading about another team that is changing their approach in terms of local, in-market games. We want to be at least part of the solution. … We are very interested in stepping up here.”

Deal structures for ESPN could potentially take a variety of forms, including striking rights deals directly with teams or partnering on a larger basis. In this latter area, Pitaro mentioned a potential scenario in which it worked with Major League Baseball as it increasingly looks to pool a critical mass of local team rights to distribute through the league.

“We are very interested in continuing to identify partnerships on a team-specific basis,” Pitaro said in response to a Front Office Sports question. “That said, if Major League Baseball is able to put together a group of teams, we would love to be able to … do a larger deal that, quite honestly, would be simpler than having to do individual team deals.”

Flagship Talk

Pitaro also highlighted the expanding efforts to develop a direct-to-consumer version of the flagship ESPN network. That offering is still scheduled to debut in the early fall of 2025, a timetable laid out previously by Disney leadership.

Beyond acting as a key hedge against cord-cutting and the winnowing of the traditional cable bundle, a full DTC version of ESPN is also predicated on a full set of features. The forthcoming service will include all ESPN networks, including ESPN+, embedded within it, along with full integration with ESPN fantasy and ESPN Bet, statistics, merchandising and commerce, and personalized features.

“Flagship [DTC] is a top priority for ESPN. It’s a top priority for the Walt Disney Company,” Pitaro said. “It’s an understatement to say we have all hands on deck from a product and development perspective.”

The flagship DTC version of ESPN is also eyed as a key tool in the regional sports strategy with its ability to geotarget users.

Elsewhere on the streaming front, Pitaro largely demurred on the subject of Venu Sports. The streaming service bundling content from Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery is currently blocked from debuting amid an ongoing legal battle with FuboTV. The trio of Venu Sports backers are appealing the ruling.

“We do respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling,” he said. “We are appealing, and believe that Venu is a pro-competitive service, pro-consumer, pro-sports fan, and believe it’s giving the sports fan another option.”

Dream Job

Pitaro has been frequently mentioned as a potential successor to Disney CEO Bob Iger when he steps down at the end of 2026. But Pitaro, a longtime confidante of Iger, insisted his approach to running ESPN has not changed amid that speculation, and maintained he is very happy in his current position.

“I will tell you, without any hesitation, that I am sitting in my dream job,” he said. “I literally grew up wanting to work here. Even the years I was competing against this place, I wanted to work here.”

The PGA Tour will conclude its season this weekend with no end in sight to the ongoing negotiations with the financial backers of LIV Golf aimed at unifying the divided men’s professional game.

Speaking Wednesday ahead of the Tour Championship, which tees off Thursday, commissioner Jay Monahan said there is no deadline in place to reach a deal with the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which could invest up to $3 billion in the new for-profit entity PGA Tour Enterprises. “I don’t think we want to restrict ourselves in that way,” Monahan said at his annual press conference at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. “We want to achieve the best and right outcome at the right time.”

That’s a stark contrast from this time last year, when the PGA Tour and PIF were operating under a self-imposed—and eventually missed—Dec. 31, 2023, deadline to come to a definitive deal after announcing a bombshell framework agreement last June. On Wednesday, Monahan reiterated his stance that he won’t negotiate in public, and he offered few details about where talks with the PIF stand.

The PGA Tour has already released its 2025 schedule. LIV Golf will conclude its 2024 season with two events in Chicago and Dallas next month.

Time for Payday

The Tour Championship will pay out nearly $83 million to its 30-player field, part of the $100 million FedExCup Playoffs bonus. Once again using a staggered start based on performance during the regular season and two previous playoff events, here are the top five and what they would earn if they finished status quo:

• 1st: Scottie Scheffler (-10), $25 million
• 2nd: Xander Schauffele (-8), $12.5 million
• 3rd: Hideki Matsuyama (-7), $7.5 million
• 4th: Keegan Bradley (-6), $6 million
• 5th: Ludvig Åberg (-5), $5 million

The remaining 25 players will start between -4 and even par. The top 12 players will all earn at least $1 million, and last place still gets $550,000—typically a payment reserved for a top-five finish at many Tour events.