Sports Media Watch presents thoughts on recent events in the industry, starting with a look back at one of the key themes of sports media in 2025.
The final week of any year brings with it no shortage of recaps, reviews and lists, so in the interest of not repeating what has already been rehashed, this column will instead try to look between the headlines that dominated sports media in 2025.
2025 was the year of blurred lines in sports media. The boundaries between the networks are increasingly flexible; in the span of a few days last week, TNT aired ESPN-produced college football games and ESPN aired a TNT-produced NBA studio show. The thin veneer of independence between networks and their league partners continues to erode; ESPN and the NFL struck a deal in August that, upon fruition, will give each some sort of ownership stake in the other. Talent can be network employees and unaccountable free agents depending on the day of the week. Networks, whether by will or by force, are having to become “agnostic” as to where their content is seen, as NBC Sports president Rick Cordella said of his streaming service Peacock on the Sports Media Watch Podcast this year.
ESPN in 2025 either began or set in motion every possible kind of relationship with the rest of the industry; whether as a licensee, licensor and competitor to the other networks, or a rightsholder poised to acquire assets and a vested interest from its most important partner. Upon the launch of its new direct-to-consumer platform in August, ESPN unveiled the slogan “All of ESPN. All in One Place.” The definition of “all of ESPN” is becoming ever more expansive.
It is all part of an industry in transition, where both old and new boundaries are being tested, if not completely erased.
Do the old boundaries still matter? Certainly yes, at least in some cases. It still mattered to NBCU that its exclusive NFL game on Peacock over the weekend was only available via a Peacock subscription, rather than through the new NBCSN cable option. ESPN was unwilling to let Elle Duncan continue working for the network after she took a position with Netflix, which the other networks seem to regard as a far greater threat than Amazon Prime Video — with whom ESPN freely shares Kirk Herbstreit.
But as a general rule, the trends point to a growing recognition that the rules no longer need to apply. That is not to say they firmly do not apply, but just that they no longer need to. In an era of instability and uncertainty across the media industry, pieties like having a distinct, independent brand are no longer necessary. ESPN can give up two hours a day to Pat McAfee, can concede defeat in the NBA studio wars by airing “Inside the NBA,” can have its most prominent talent Stephen A. Smith endlessly mouthing off about politics on his own platform — in ways that got other employees across the political spectrum (from Jemele Hill to Sage Steele) demoted and eventually dropped.
“ESPN used to be the little network that could,” then-Tampa Bay Times writer Ernest Hooper once wrote. “A sports mecca that fans paid homage to every day. We cheered when the network got the NFL and baseball, and we booed when CBS stole the NCAA Tournament from the people who helped make it big-time.”
“Now,” Hooper concluded, “our ESPN just seems like another giant corporation.”
That assessment — written in 1994 upon the opening of an ESPN-themed sports bar at Disney’s theme park — may now seem quaint. But consider what ESPN was then. “Our ESPN” was an underdog with a distinct brand and a genuine, appreciative fanbase. More than three decades later, the ‘little network that could’ is owned by Disney, may soon be partially owned by the NFL, and has its hands in every aspect of the sports media business.
There is nothing in sports media bigger than ESPN, and as a result there really is no ‘ESPN’ brand anymore. ESPN isn’t solely a cable network, or a streaming service; it can be anything to anyone, from talent to competing networks to league partners to the viewers themselves.
But ESPN is not alone. The media consolidation widely anticipated at the start of the current administration has gone into overdrive, and while the regulatory zeal of certain bureaucrats was perhaps not expected, it has not stopped a borderline gold rush. Paramount was acquired by Skydance in August and by December was seeking to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery. A year that began with David Ellison (son of Oracle founder Larry) owning Skydance ended with him seeking to pull two of the media giants under his control.
Warner Bros. Discovery, of course, is one of two major media conglomerates that this year began the process of spinning off their linear cable networks, along with Comcast. Those moves theoretically create two new players in the sports media scene, Discovery Global (encompassing the TNT Sports networks and CNN) and Versant (including the new USA Sports networks of USA and Golf Channel along with CNBC and MS NOW). But make no mistake, leaner does not necessarily mean smaller. There may be no better indication of the merger madness in the industry right now than the fact that Comcast was one of the bidders for the Warner Bros. streaming and studios — a company spinning off its cable networks trying to absorb a company spinning off its cable networks. (A bit like trimming the fat from the turkey, duck and chicken before fusing them into a turducken.)
It all points to a shrinking of the industry even as its participants grow ever larger. As any college sports fan can surely attest, something is lost in expansion. The major conferences have less of a ‘feel’ when they span the entire nation. Sports media is no different. TNT Sports has a distinct feel that will be lost if it is absorbed into Paramount and combined with CBS Sports (or, alternatively, if it goes independent and steadily dies out for lack of resources). ESPN had a distinct feel when it was “the little network that could.” (And several networks still do have a unique approach to live sports, from NBCUniversal’s big-game synergy to the resurgent ‘Fox attitude’ to the strait-laced approach of CBS Sports.) But at a certain point of ubiquity, everything gets so big and intertwined as to become generic.
It is of course important to note that ‘the industry’ as we have known it has until recent years always come to mean ‘the linear media industry.’ Perhaps it is just a smart recalibration for the linear media industry to collapse into a handful of small giants — or more accurately, an even smaller handful of even fewer giants — given the competition from Amazon’s Prime Video, Google-owned YouTube, and Netflix. Rather than greed, it may be a simple case of self-preservation.
For the streamers, all of the recent trends are by now old hat. Amorphous boundaries? Try defining to the average person the difference between the episode of “First Take” they watch on YouTube TV and the excerpt they watch on ESPN’s YouTube channel. Does it count as ‘ingesting’ content when ESPN uploads a video from its shows onto YouTube? What about if the clip (or full replay) you see on YouTube was uploaded by RandomFan rather than ESPN itself?
Nothing has ever been more ‘anything to anyone’ than YouTube, the single biggest repository of online video ever. With the exception of Netflix, which largely gets by on its own original programming, the streamers have so much content as to make the occasional linear licensing deal or joint venture seem modest by comparison. Taken as a whole across all of its platforms, nobody — including ESPN — has as much sports content as Google. All of the major networks and their associated streaming services on YouTube TV, plus all of the official and unofficial accounts on YouTube itself.
ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro this year responded “multiplatform” when asked by Bryan Curtis to describe ESPN. The streamers have already been there; ESPN is catching up. And if in the process, that comes at the cost of the old ways, well the old ways were not going to last much longer anyway.
The era of the ‘little network that could’ — even just as a concept — is over. In college sports, the conference expansion era is generally viewed as a mere pit stop to the ultimate conclusion of a ‘super league’ and a transformation into a true professional league. The current upheaval in media seems to be a transition of its own, eventually leading to an outcome where today’s linear media companies either adapt in line with the digital powers or simply die out.
One of the most interesting storylines in sports media this year was the viewer reaction to the Disney-YouTube TV blackout. The overwhelming sentiment toward ESPN was negative, and it was not uncommon to see people on social media seeming to cheer on YouTube — owned by one of the few companies massively bigger than Disney, Google — for holding the line.
That Ernest Hooper article from 31 years ago highlighted a sense of betrayal that has been a common theme in discussions about ESPN in the decades since. If the opposite of love is indifference, all of the opprobrium aimed toward ESPN is a sign that a great many viewers at one point felt that same sense of kinship with the network.
What was especially interesting is that YouTube TV could have easily generated a similar reaction (and in some cases did), given its stark price increases from launch to present day. But with the possible exception of Netflix, there is no indication yet that viewers feel as strongly about streaming services as they do about linear networks, especially when those platforms are functionally just distributors rather than sources of original content.
The linear networks may in practice be ‘anything to anyone,’ but it might not be so easy for them to be seen that way by the general viewing public. And they may find that there is some risk in shedding the old ways. For ESPN in particular, there is already considerable mistrust among a vocal subset of sports fans. It seems as if a number of observers see the ESPN motto “To Serve Sports Fans” and think — channeling the old “Twilight Zone” episode — that it’s for a cook book.
YouTube is generally not held responsible for, or at least meaningfully associated with, any of the controversial and at times highly irresponsible content uploaded there every single day. But ESPN is not YouTube, not yet. When Stephen A. Smith says something on his personal podcast, the news headline about it might read “ESPN host says …” If Pat McAfee says something potentially libelous on the show that ESPN licenses from him, the network could be liable.
Those risks are not going to stop the overarching trend in the industry. But as linear media starts to resemble the digital giants, remember that the tech companies are operating in a different playground with Section 230 protections and no particular expectation of even the basest level of social responsibility. For cable and especially broadcast networks, the expectations are greater and so are the obligations. Some of the rules will still apply, and figuring out which ones may be an important task in the years ahead.
