Jimmy Pitaro is a diehard New York Yankees fan. It is an affiliation the ESPN chairman wears proudly and one that has been passed down like a family heirloom. Pitaro’s childhood dog, Pags, was named after the George Steinbrenner-era third baseman, Mike Pagliarulo, who hit 105 home runs over six seasons in New York from 1984 to 1989. He says his mother to this day refuses to watch the Yankees in the field because she believes that nothing good can happen when her team is not at the plate. His sister, Lara Pitaro Wisch, possessed the same sports passion: She grew up to be the general counsel of Major League Baseball.
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As part of a 50-minute interview last week — a conversation that covered everything from ESPN’s interests in retaining the NBA, Formula One and Big Ten rights, to how ESPN sees sports gambling as part of its company heading forward, to Pitaro unequivocally saying ESPN would love to broadcast soccer’s World Cup again — I asked Pitaro if he would trade his current gig for the general manager job of the Yankees.
“No, I wouldn’t take it,” Pitaro said. “But if I had any other job on this planet, I think I would say yes. I am in the job that I grew up wanting. Of course, (being part of the Yankees) is a close second.”
If you are a sports fan, what Pitaro thinks and how ESPN proceeds forward will have a massive impact on your sports consumption. Here are a ton of excerpts from our conversation, and you can listen to the entire interview here. Pitaro was the guest this week for my Sports Media Podcast.
On whether Pitaro sees any scenario where ESPN would not have a portion of the NBA’s next media rights contract given ESPN’s long history in the sport
Pitaro: I sure hope not. It’s an incredibly important property for us. We also see that property as ascending — younger demographics. Right now I think they have more parity than we’ve seen in a long time. We see young stars who are starting to catch on in the zeitgeist. We are incredibly excited about the NBA. We also like what we’ve done. We’re very happy with our team both in front of and behind the camera. I’m talking games. I’m talking about our studio programming.
That being said, do we need to continue to innovate? (NBA commissioner) Adam (Silver) and I have talked about this. Yes. Are these alternative broadcasts that we’ve done solid? They absolutely are. Do we need to be doing more of them? Do we need to be thinking about more innovation around the primary broadcasts? We do. We can’t just sit idle here and be complacent. I know that there’s some discussion around the (ratings) comps to 2019, but we’re very pleased with our numbers for the NBA Finals, especially when you compare them to the past few years. Our sales team has been very happy with our ratings performance. We have a great relationship with the league, and I really want it to continue. Now, we have some time here. We still have three seasons left. So there’s no urgency. But we absolutely would like to extend our partnership with the NBA.
On the prospect of the NBA taking premium content to a direct-to-consumer product such as Apple or Amazon
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Pitaro: Well, we hope that’s us. When we sit down with the league, we hope that they’re open to us having ESPN+ as a part of that conversation. By the way, not just ESPN+. It could be Hulu as well as we did with the NHL. But could I foresee them bringing other partners to the table? Of course I could. If you look at what Apple and Amazon are doing right now, they’re bidding and they’re acquiring rights. So I’m assuming that they’re going to be part of the NBA discussion just like they’ve been a part of the NFL and MLS discussions and others. I would not be surprised if they acquire some, but like I said, we’re all-in on the NBA.
On what being part of the Super Bowl rotation means for ESPN as an organization
Pitaro: Morale. Obviously, that’s not the only reason why we acquired the rights to two Super Bowls in our next deal. But it is one of those intangibles, one of those benefits. I think that our employees were confused by the fact that we had these rights, we were really prioritizing Monday Night Football from a production perspective, from an investment perspective, and I think folks saw the numbers that were reported publicly in terms of what we were paying and folks were internally confused. So fast forward to today and our NFL team could not be more excited.
Look, it’s huge for us. We all know what the household rating is for the Super Bowl. But it’s beyond that. It’s about us expanding the partnership that we have with the league and the league saying back to us, just like you value the partnership, we very much value the partnership. So there are the intangibles. Then of course, there are the tangibles. If you were to talk to our sales team, they would tell you that we’re going to bring this to our existing sponsors, but this is an opportunity for us to bring in new advertisers and new sponsors to the discussion. They’re incredibly excited about the opportunity. At the macro level, this game is always in the zeitgeist. For us to have NFL rights but to not have that game, it hurt a bit internally at ESPN. We’re pretty excited about it.
On ESPN’s interest in continuing its rights deal with Formula One and Pitaro attending the Miami Grand Prix in May
Pitaro: We were already very interested in continuing this relationship. I did grow up in a household that was passionate about motorsports. But I’d never been to a Formula One race, so it was a fantastic experience. I wasn’t just in the conference room the whole time. I was out there and it really is an amazing experience. I highly recommend it for anyone who has not been to one. Look, we are very interested in extending our deal with them and kind of finishing what we started here. It’s been a great run. You’ve seen it. The ratings have been off the charts great. This is definitely an ascending property. We believe it will continue to ascend. We have Vegas coming up (starting in 2023), which we’re really excited about.
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We’re in the thick of it right now. We’re in conversations. … (We) very much want to stay in this business. But again, like everything else, we’re going to be disciplined and we’re going to model this out and figure out what it’s worth. Then once we do that, we’re going to be as aggressive as we can. We take a lot of pride in helping to grow the property. Of course, Netflix has contributed in a very significant way, and we love that. It’s a rising tide for everyone. But we do take a lot of pride in how this is done on our own airwaves.
The last thing I’d say is we love the direct-to-consumer, the ESPN+ component here, so if we were to move forward, we would love to do something in that capacity to the extent that they’re open to that. (Pitaro said he envisions races appearing on ABC and ESPN in any future deal.)
On ESPN’s interest in Big Ten football rights heading forward
Pitaro: Look, we have a great relationship with the Big Ten. They are certainly an ascending conference. They had a fantastic season last year. I’m not just talking about football. … They’ve been a big part of ESPN for a long time now. It’s no secret. If (commissioner Kevin Warren) were on this podcast with me right now, he would be comfortable with me saying that we are in discussions. That being said, just like every other property, we enter these discussions understanding that we can’t get everything and that we’re going to proceed with both discipline and thoughtfulness. So I can’t tell you how this is going to play out. We are very much in it right now.
On whether ESPN’s SEC deal and added inventory impacts whatever future interest they might have in the Big Ten and Pac-12
Pitaro: So just in case anyone doesn’t know what the heck we’re talking about here. In 2024, we will add on to our game inventory with the SEC first pick (for football) every week. That has been the 3:30 p.m. ET broadcast window on Saturdays (on CBS). In addition, we’ll have the conference championship game. We’ll get an additional nine marquee SEC basketball games. We’ll have one out-of-conference SEC football game per team per year. So once Texas and Oklahoma are in (in 2025), we’ll have 16 out-of-conference games. In the 2024 season, it would be 14 games. That’s the deal we struck with the SEC.
The great thing about that deal if I had to summarize it with one word, it would be flexibility, meaning we’re now going to have a marquee game at 3:30 on broadcast on ABC but we also have the ability to put marquee games Saturday night on ABC. We’re going to have SEC games across ESPN and across ABC for all three windows on Saturday. I think if commissioner (Greg) Sankey were on this podcast right now, he would say that they’re really excited about being partnered with one enterprise where we can create that kind of flexibility. But just getting back to your question, is there less inventory? Of course there is because of when this SEC deal kicks off in 2024. However, we’ve been very thoughtful about this and there’s still plenty of room for Big Ten and Pac-12. We’re pursuing both. … No one should misinterpret: When we did this SEC deal, no one at ESPN said, OK, that means we’re walking away from another conference.
On the subject of navigating the gambling space when it comes to presentation, investment, consumer interface, and how he sees the idea of real-time odds appearing on ESPN platforms
Pitaro: I’ll start with the fact that we’ve been in this space for a while now. This is not new to us. We have had podcasts, we have had segments on SportsCenter starting with Scott Van Pelt, we have had dedicated sections of our dot-com, we have studio shows that are airing specifically focused on betting, like Daily Wager. We have a branded studio in Vegas on the Strip in partnership with Caesars. I can go on and on here. We closed deals a little while back with both Caesars and DraftKings. We call them link-out deals where we are providing contextually relevant links to third-party sites trying to take the friction out of sports betting. So if you’re on a specific dot-com page and you want to place a bet as you’re consuming our box score, we’re trying to make that as easy as possible. We have an official odds relationship as well, so that we are putting odds on our networks now.
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In terms of how far we’re going to go with odds, that’s TBD. I mean, we’re already doing it around games. We’ve done alternative broadcasts that focus specifically on betting. We’ve done it on the NFL’s side with the nomenclature being ‘Between The Lines.’ We’ve had an NBA alternative broadcast that’s betting-focused. I know we’re going to be doing more and more of that.
So the question for us is, what’s next here? Is there a next frontier? Here’s what I will tell you: We think that this is a growth opportunity for us. We think we can potentially be doing more. I have talked a little bit about this, not a ton, but what I’ll tell you is we have done the research and it wasn’t too long ago where folks were really concerned about what us being more aggressive in this space would mean for our brands. The research has come back and said it’s somewhat neutral in the Disney brand. It’s not going to help. It’s not going to hurt. But on the ESPN brand, it’s not just OK, it’s important. It’s something we need to be doing. It’s something that our fans are expecting from us. So it’s not a “nice to have,” it’s pretty much at this point a must-have. That means we need to be serving the sports fan with what they’re expecting and taking the friction out of the process. In terms of what that means for us and what’s the next step, I can’t tell you. I will tell you that we have opportunities to partner with different folks and be a bit more aggressive in the space. But we’re just not there yet. We are being very thoughtful here. We have to get this right.
On how in his position should be evaluated
Pitaro: Wow. How much time do we have? Look, from one of my first interviews with Bob Iger and other members of (Disney) corporate, I talked about what I thought should be the ESPN priorities. Fortunately, I spent many years competing against ESPN and then I spent many years at Disney sitting at the leadership table right next to (former ESPN presidents) George (Bodenheimer) and John (Skipper). So I was pretty familiar with the ESPN organization, with their strategy, by the time I got this job.
As I sit here today, the four priorities that I identified during the interview process remain. Bob Iger knew and (Disney CEO) Bob Chapek knows today what those priorities are and I’d expect them to evaluate me based on how we’re performing in each of those categories. Now, admittedly, some of it is not objective, it’s subjective. When we self-evaluate, when we talk at my staff meetings every single week, the North Stars are those four priorities and making sure that everything we do is connected back to them.
(Note: The four priorities are direct-to-consumer, audience expansion, quality storytelling and programming and innovation. Said Pitaro: “Those are what we call our vertical, our cutting across everything. The horizontal is diversity and inclusion. You could say that there are five and we’ve been consistent on those four or five from the day I got here.”)
On when he gets involved in negotiations with on-air talent such as Troy Aikman
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Pitaro: I do what I can to let our talent team do their jobs, and they’re really, really good at it. I’m just going to be completely honest with you: Sometimes when I get involved, it complicates things. It’s a game of telephone where folks hear me say one thing and it’s either misinterpreted or conveyed in a different way to our talent group. So me getting involved is actually not helpful. That being said, I do have relationships with almost all of our talent. I was a lawyer and then I was the deal guy, so my background, I don’t know how to say this, I could be helpful here. But it’s for the most part me saying to our talent, me saying to agents who I also know and have very good relationships with, you need to work with our talent department. For specifics, deal negotiation, deal points, dollars and cents, it’s just better if that stuff is left to our talent department so that there’s no person getting involved that’s going to confuse or complicate things.
Now, of course, there are times and exceptions to that, but it’s very rare where I’m actually speaking to talent or even an agent and talking dollars and cents. It is definitely the exception rather than the rule. That’s today. When I started four and a half years ago, I was more involved. Part of it was I was learning. Part of it was I was trying to add value. But as the months and years go by, you start to trust your folks more, you get to know your folks more, and also have experiences where you realize that you may not necessarily be helping things by getting involved. It’s a tricky balance because you never want to say to a talent or an agent, “You can’t talk to me.” I hate that. One of the things I pride myself on is being accessible. I’ve learned this from many of my bosses and mentors over the years, if someone wants time with me, I’m going to make myself available.
On the intersection of sports and politics and navigating that as a company when an individual employee wants to offer commentary as a citizen, especially in a very politicized and divided time
Pitaro: So, look, these are complicated times. There’s no science here. There are no easy answers. What I will tell you is our mission is to serve the sports fan. That hasn’t changed. That long predated me. Serve the sports fan anytime, anywhere. It’s hard to do that. It’s hard to meet consumers’ expectations on a daily basis across platforms. We’re the place of record. When something happens in the sports world, people tune into us. They trust us. If you look at our brand research, the love and trust for our brand has actually gone up during the pandemic, and we feel really good about that. We take a lot of pride in that, but with that comes even higher expectations. So our mission remains to serve the sports fan.
Now, to your point, yeah, there is an intersection between sports and politics, sports and society, sports and culture, whatever it might be. We’ve been consistent that we are going to cover that intersection. I think the difference now is that that intersection is happening every day. So we’re trying to strike the balance and make sure that we’re still serving our fans’ needs, we’re meeting their expectations. On top of that, what I would say is we’re not perfect. We’re going to make mistakes. There are times when things are going to be said on our air or on social platforms where there wasn’t complete internal alignment. We regroup, we learn, we try to get better because of that. We like to say over here “a little bit better every day.” I think we are better today than we were yesterday.
Over the past few years, we’ve learned a ton and it hasn’t always been easy. Are there times when our talent have veered away from sports on our air, on our platforms? They have. But from my perspective, from leadership’s perspective, a lot of this has been not about politics. It’s been about humanity. For us, we have our values. If our folks are speaking from the heart consistent with our values, we’re OK with that. Now, again, with them understanding, with the folks behind the scenes understanding, that we can’t lose sight of the fact that we’re here to serve the sports fan.
On balancing declines in cable subs with big increases to ESPN+ and a growing direct-to-consumer business — and what an ideal ESPN might look like in 2027
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Pitaro: The reason you don’t have a date on the (linear) flagship being direct-to-consumer is because we don’t have one. It’s that simple. We don’t have one. The reason why we don’t have a date is because these parallel paths that you referred to are going quite well for us today. Yes, the traditional ecosystem has been very valuable to us and today remains very valuable to us. At the same time, we are investing in direct-to-consumer ESPN+. I think on our last earnings call we announced 22.3 million subs (for ESPN+). That’s significantly ahead of where we thought we would be at this point. The rights that we’re acquiring for ESPN+, the content that we’re creating for ESPN+, the library that we’ve accumulated that is exclusively on ESPN+ … that’s all working.
So these two paths make sense to us because we have on one side folks who are still very much engaged with DirecTV or Comcast and we need to be there. We need to be serving them. You also have fans who are consuming sports content on their phones or tablets, so if you want to authenticate, you can get flagship. … We will continue to acquire rights that enable us to continue to advance both of these platforms, meaning traditional and digital.
If you look at the eight or nine deals that we’ve done over the past two years — I think it may be the best stretch in the 43-year history of this place just in terms of rights acquisitions and (ESPN president of programming and original content Burke Magnus’) team has had an amazing couple of years — the common theme here is acquiring content for traditional and digital. That’s going to continue because we see both working for us today. So to your question of 2027, what is going to look like? I don’t know if we’re going to have (a linear) flagship available. I can’t say we’re not. I can’t definitively say we are. We’re looking at these numbers on a month-to-month basis. Our commitment to the sports fan is that we’re going to continue to follow you. As the sports fan moves more and more to a digital platform, a direct-to-consumer platform, you’re going to see us moving more and more content that way. But today, having these two properties, both traditional and digital, it just makes sense for us.
On the most important piece of data about ESPN that comes across his desk every week
Pitaro: Ratings are important. Engagement. Time spent. Unique users. ESPN+ subs. In the aggregate, it’s just how often our fans are engaging with ESPN on a daily basis. I’m sure 20 years ago the focus was almost entirely on traditional (TV) ratings. Fast forward to today and I’m getting regular reports on how many engagements we have on social platforms, how many unique users we have across ESPN digital properties, how many users we have on the ESPN app, how many active paying subscribers we have on ESPN+. All of those are important. But I will tell you that traditional television ratings are still very, very important to us. They still get a ton of attention from the media. But even beyond that, we have a pretty aggressive sales team that’s still doing a fantastic job at selling traditional television.
On how many emails he averages a day
Pitaro: Several hundred. Because you have to remember, oftentimes I’m part of the Disney conversation. Things that are happening at Hulu, things that are happening at ABC, things beyond just ESPN. So at least several hundred and by the time I go to bed every night, I’m aware of everything. I try to respond to everything. I live by the unread email icon.
The Ink Report
1. Nice sports media-centric Fathers Day piece by my colleague, Brittany Ghiroli: Women in sports media on the dads who shaped their sports fandom.
1a. With permission from Sports Business Daily managing editor/digital Austin Karp, the below chart is the NBA Finals viewership trend since 2013. Said Karp: “While Warriors-Celtics was well below the average for many of those matchups before the pandemic, the NBA Finals averaged its highest share of the U.S. TV audience in five years. What does that mean? The overall TV-watching audience continues to decline — whether its news, sports or entertainment programming. But among the remaining U.S. audience, sports is getting a bigger piece of the pie.”
2. Episode 215 of the Sports Media Podcast features Michael McCann, a legal analyst and senior sports legal reporter at Sportico and a Professor of Law at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law, where he is director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute. In this podcast, McCann discusses why coverage of the intersection and sports and legal has increased multifold; how he distinguishes between his legal read on something versus how he might feel morally about it; Jack Del Rio from a sports law vantage point; PGA Tour suspensions of LIV golfers and what legal fallout may come of that; the new reporting that found DeShaun Watson booked massage appointments with at least 66 different women from fall 2019 to spring 2021; whether the Browns can void the Watson trade if they wanted to; Johnson v. NCAA, which is before the Third Circuit, and why this case is extremely important; at least 12 states enacting legislation banning transgender students from participating in sports teams at public high schools and what that means legally; the NCAA women’s basketball tournament and what recourse players have on media compensation; and more.
2a. Excellent idea by Demetri Ravanos of Barrett Sports Media to do a podcast on how the fathers of Mike Golic Jr, Wes Durham, and Spike Eskin played roles in their being part of the sports media business.
2b. The media company Just Women’s Sports signed a partnership with the National Women’s Soccer League to distribute NWSL highlights from both the current and past seasons.
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3. On Tuesday (10 p.m. ET), HBO’s Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel will feature a profile of Chris Evert, the tennis great and ESPN broadcaster, who is battling ovarian cancer. Evert let Real Sports film her chemo treatment and meetings with doctors and went in-depth on how the 2020 death of Evert’s sister, Jeannie, from ovarian cancer, has guided her now as she faces her own treatment. The reporter for the piece is Mary Carillo. The producer is Nick Dolin. It’s worth watching.
4. Non-sports pieces of note:
• The town crier. By Stephanie McCrummen of The Washington Post.
• Self-documenting and self-branding are becoming basic to all forms of work. By Sophie Bishop of Real Life Magazine.
• Dom Phillips, journalist who chronicled Amazon deforestation, is dead at 57. By Matt Schudel of The Washington Post.
• From Christopher Flavelle of The New York Times: As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces An ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb’
• Big Dairy, Long a Power Player in Oregon, Faces a Climate Change Crossroads. By Ramona DeNies of Portland Monthly.
• Death in Ukraine: A Special Report, via The New York Times.
• He’s one of Guatemala’s last independent judges. Will he be forced to flee too? By Jeff Abbott and Kate Linthicum of L.A. Times.
• Tokyo Vice Scene-Stealer Show Kasamatsu Is the Quintessential Michael Mann Cool Guy. By Paul Thompson of GQ.
• The Crypto Party Is Over. By Carrie Driebusch and Paul Vigna of The Wall Street Journal.
• Loans got me into journalism. Student debt pushed me out. By Carrington J. Tatum of MLK50.com.
• Reeling Black Residents Decry Years of Little Investment in East Buffalo. By Omar Abdel-Baqui and Joseph De Avila of The Wall Street Journal.
Sports pieces of note:
• A minor league announcer reported an assault, and ‘In the end, it hurt me.’ By Brittany Ghiroli of The Athletic.
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• Everybody Loses in the PGA-LIV Golf Schism. By Kevin Clark of The Ringer.
• The Athletic’s Pablo Maurer and Matt Pentz solve American soccer’s oldest mystery: the disappearance of Wee Willie McLean.
• A High-Powered Legal Fight Is Brewing Over Deshaun Watson’s Impending Suspension. By Andrew Beaton and Louise Radnofsky of The Wall Street Journal.
• Book Richardson, coach who pleaded guilty in FBI’s college basketball probe, breaks silence. By Seth Davis of The Athletic.
• When Women’s College Basketball Had to Choose: AIAW or NCAA. By Mark Bechtel of Sports Illustrated.
• How Commanders’ Ron Rivera became ‘guardian angel’ for cancer patients. By Jeff Howe of The Athletic.
• Recode’s Peter Kafka interviews Bill Simmons.
• Developers Embrace Passion for Pickleball. By Seth Berkman for The New York Times.
• The Sounds of Late Night Chess Around New York City. By Julia Carmel of The New York Times.
• For Jim Harbaugh, Lane Kiffin, coaching was inevitable. For other sons of coaches … not so much. By Christopher Kamrani of The Athletic.
• ‘We haven’t learned a damn thing’: Sexual violence is embedded in junior hockey culture. By Ian Mendes, Dan Robson and Katie Strang of The Athletic.
(Top photo: Kyle Terada / USA Today)
