“We cannot have everything,” admitted ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro today of the sports rights universe and the newly launched ESPN Unlimited.
“We are at peace with this idea of not having it all. That being said, last thing I’ll say on this …as I sit here right now, without any hesitation, we have the best rights portfolio that we’ve ever had in our 46-year history at ESPN”
Speaking at the Financial Times’ Business of Entertainment Summit in West Hollywood this morning, Pitaro didn’t address the sudden exit of Molly Qerim from the Stephen A. Smith fronted First Take, nor if he wants to still be in the running as a potential successor to Disney CEO Bob Iger. However, parsing the palace intrigue politics, the seasoned exec sure spoke a lot about the ESPN Unlimited birth and where the service and the sports media giant aims to go.
To that, starting off with a technical glitch on Pitaro’s microphone, the opening keynote of the FT huddle was mainly an exercise in a traditional executive pitch session – which has long been a Pitaro strength.
“What you see today is only a small portion of what’s coming,” he said of the new service (which has been bundled with Disney+ and what remains of Hulu) and app. “I keep saying, it’s the first inning. We’re just getting started here, and the betting experience is a good example of that.”
The growing force of sports betting (“a huge part of the fandom experience”) for any media brand aside, today’s FT chat was full of terms like “adding value,” “direct to consumer” and app, app, app, this latest appearance by Pitaro on a press tour by any other name once again brought up that ESPN is “certainly open to other potential partnership and bundling opportunities.”
“That is that is very much by design as we made progress towards this direct-to-consumer launch, we wanted to make sure that our rights portfolio was very robust,” he told the WeHo crowd, noting the upcoming October link with Fox One. “If there’s something that you want that we don’t offer, we are very focused on partnership and bundling.”
In the multiverse of scale and platforms that increasingly defines the growth parameters of media in 2025 (Just ask David Ellison and David Zaslav), Pitaro made a point Wednesday of spotlight the audience growth and reach in a fragment market.
For one thing, he says ESPN knows precisely who their audience is with the ESPN Unlimited app. “It’s people who’ve cut the cord, or people who have never subscribed to pay television,” Pitaro bluntly stated.
The cord cutters and digital natives are, of course, the jewel in the crown of all major media of all mediums right now. Designated as an audience that is mobile, literally and figuratively, in the era of linear TV decline, for a shifting ESPN the combination of imperial power and nimble moves is key, Pitaro put out there Wednesday.
“I like our hand, and I say that because, first off, our brand continues to resonate, especially with younger people,” the ESPN chief stated, with acknowledgment of the rising power of YouTube, who just had their first exclusive NFL game. “We’re seen as the most trusted, most innovative brand in sports.”
He added: “Number two, our production capabilities. No one’s producing the amount of content that we are at the Walt Disney Company. The fact that when we enter into a partnership with a league, we don’t just bring ESPN. We bring broadcast television through ABC. We bring Disney, plus we bring Hulu. We bring the theme parks in terms of their ability to promote and get behind a league or a property.”
“We’re not going to judge ourselves based on any one individual platform. We’re going to judge ourselves based on the totality of people consuming ESPN.”