Pat McAfee joining ESPN in an industry shaking move
McAfee leaves behind $120M Fan Duel deal to join ESPN
Hello World,
As announced yesterday via YouTube, The Pat McAfee show will be making the move over to ESPN this fall in a groundbreaking deal that will surely change the way sports shows are viewed for years to come.
Before we get into that let me introduce, to those who are unaware, who Pat McAfee is he is a former American Football punter turned sports analyst and wrestler since retirement. In his football career he is a 2x Pro Bowler (2014, 2016) and was named to the 2014 First-team All-Pro. He would retire in 2017 and head over to Barstool Sports for a year until he would leave in 2018. Since then he he formed Pat McAfee Inc. and began his hit The Pat McAfee Show 2.0. On the side he began to wrestle and commentate in the WWE and in 2022 joined College Gameday as a regular contributor.
And now in 2023 he will be ending his four-year, $120 million contract in it’s second year to make the move to ESPN. He will be taking his iconic crew with him over to ESPN and they will be retaining creative freedom, a big sticking point for McAfee during negotiations.
Another major point is that it will remain free for all viewers, although it can be watched on ESPN, ESPN+, it will also appear on ESPN’s YouTube channel. McAfee also notes that they will need to not use language like f*** as much due to now being under the Disney umbrella.
But now how does this affect the future of sports media, I think it will have a major impact. McAfee has just opened a path that showcases the traditional formula of debate and news shows may not be working as they once did and people expect more. Although, it is sad to see someone who was so successful independently of big media cave in, I think it will be interesting to see how this all unfolds. Will ESPN truly not change his show and if so, is this the beginning of major media networks fully adapting and embracing what people are truly looking for and as with a lot of things I write about, only time will tell.
Congratulation to Pat McAfee and the entire crew on this amazing opportunity and excited to see what comes from it.