The proverbial plume of white smoke emanating from Bristol, CT, Monday has signaled the selection of a new ESPN president.
Disney consumer products chairman Jimmy Pitaro has been named the new president of ESPN, it was announced Monday, filling the vacancy left when John Skipper abruptly resigned last year. Pitaro will also fill Skipper’s role as co-chair of Disney media networks.
Pitaro has been with Disney since 2010. He was previously VP of business affairs for Launch Media, and joined Yahoo! after that company acquired Launch in 2001. His time with Yahoo! included three years as general manage of Yahoo! Sports.
Pitaro is the eighth ESPN president in the company’s 39-year history. The sixth, George Bodenheimer, had been serving as interim president since Skipper’s departure.
ESPN has experienced unusual tumult in the late 2010s. Topping the list of issues has been an erosion of cable subscribers that has badly affected the entire industry, but ESPN especially. The company benefited the most from the cable bundle model, wherein subscribers who never watched a second of ESPN programming still paid for the channel anyway. As such, it has been by far the most vulnerable to the bundle’s decline, dropping from over 100 million homes in 2011 to 86.7 million in the latest estimates.
The decline in subscribers has come as sports TV rights fees continue to rise. ESPN is on the hook for $3.3 billion/year on NFL and NBA rights alone. The network laid off hundreds of employees last year, including prominent talent.
ESPN will debut a new revenue source this year, an over-the-top channel that will feature a slew of various sporting events. The channel, ESPN Plus, will be available for $5 per month. Pitaro, as CNBC noted in January, has an extensive digital background from his days at Yahoo! and Launch.
[Mon. news from ESPN PR 3.5, with additional info from CNBC 1.23, Sports TV Ratings 2.27]
