ESPN is at the center of the sports universe for American sports fans. It’s next to impossible to be a sports fan without ESPN and its 45-plus-year history as the Worldwide Leader in Sports.
But in 2025, more sports fans than ever don’t have a positive relationship with ESPN. The network has been hit from all sides in recent years, becoming a piñata batted around in everything from culture wars to carriage disputes.
ESPN will likely tell you its business has never been better. They have built an impenetrable position at the top of the sports media landscape. They own the rights to almost all the major sporting events and are watched by millions consistently. Their bottom line with corporate parent Disney is showing increased resistance against industry headwinds after years of turmoil. ESPN president Jimmy Pitaro would not be touted as a potential successor to Disney CEO Bob Iger if things weren’t going well.
ESPN has navigated incredible change and transitions in the sports and media worlds and are trying to build the plane as they fly it. That means redoing how they do content by splashing out cash for big personalities and doing licensing deals to get top shows. It also means putting a new puzzle together for their revenue stream by trying to launch a new streaming service while still keeping the line open to cable and satellite subscribers. And it means new partnerships like the proposed equity deal with the NFL to cement the network’s future further.
But this isn’t about ESPN’s business. It’s about their relationship with the sports fan.
And everywhere you look, fans are losing trust and losing patience with ESPN. From failed ventures to carriage disputes to polarizing personalities and endless apologies, it seems like not a day goes by without some kind of drama circulating around Bristol.
Is ESPN too woke? Not woke enough? Are they carrying water for the SEC? Can they still do journalism and reporting? Who is fighting with whom?
All of it chips away at the foundation that has been laid for decades, which made ESPN a trusted home for sports fans. And in its current state, those cracks have never been deeper or wider.
Here are several reasons why the vibes around ESPN have never been lower.
YouTube TV Carriage Dispute
If you’re a YouTube TV customer, you may lose access to ESPN’s networks, including CFB, NFL and NBA games on ESPN and ABC. Go to https://t.co/7Rt52TtDUR now so you don’t miss out. pic.twitter.com/pedTniPUUE
— Scott Van Pelt (@notthefakeSVP) October 30, 2025
Most carriage disputes between media companies and providers end quickly when a deadline approaches, knowing that fans missing major games (especially football) is a recipe for disaster for both sides. With ESPN and YouTube TV in an extended impasse with no end in sight, fans are caught in the middle, left searching for answers.
In most carriage disputes, it’s usually the networks that win the PR battle as they are able to reach out directly to fans who may be frustrated with losing some of their favorite programming. But that has not been the case with the ESPN-YouTube TV disagreement.
I honestly thought majority of people blamed their cable company.
For ESPN/disney to be -46 here (yes I know, it’s unscientific) is REALLY surprising to me.
People siding over a company that they pay money to over a content company. Never thought I’d see it. https://t.co/CgOXd2D9MT pic.twitter.com/FvLaFI04R0
— Ben Koo (@bkoo) October 31, 2025
If anything, seeing top ESPN personalities take to social media just to toe the company line has made things worse from their perspective. Disenchanted sports fans filled the mentions of Stephen A. Smith, Mike Greenberg, and Scott Van Pelt, urging ESPN to get a deal done. It’s even led to infighting at the network as Pat McAfee called out the strategy as a losing idea.
When not even the reality of missing college football and the NFL is enough to rally sports fans to ESPN’s side, you know the network has a significant image problem.
ESPN Bet Failure
ESPN was late to the game in trying to topple the DraftKings-FanDuel dual dominance over the American sports betting landscape. But they bet that the power and weight of the ESPN brand would be enough to overcome the built-in advantages of the country’s most prominent sports betting companies. Instead, the network rolled snake eyes.
ESPN and Penn Entertainment pulled the plug on ESPN Bet after two dismal years of business together, where they failed to make any impact whatsoever. The writing was on the wall earlier this year, when the numbers showed that ESPN Bet was gaining little traction with sports fans despite the huge marketing campaign and push from the network itself.
Despite all of ESPN’s efforts online, on TV, and on social media, the ESPN brand turned out to have as much juice as its previous Penn sports betting partnership, Barstool Sports. From a talent standpoint, Ryen Russillo just opted to launch a podcast with Barstool Sports rather than an overture from ESPN, so it’s not just gamblers who are finding the gravitational pull towards ESPN lacking.
ESPN has now moved on to a partnership with DraftKings, nearly a decade after leaving them at the altar in an investment deal, seemingly admitting defeat in turning a sportsbook of its own into a powerhouse. Now, ESPN knows what its own competition must feel like.
ESPN Unlimited Confusion
Credit: ESPN
The gambling industry wasn’t ESPN’s only bet this year. The network also launched its highly anticipated direct-to-consumer platform. Although it’s known simply as ESPN, most fans will know it as ESPN Unlimited because that’s the package that offers all of ESPN streaming in one place. It’s not ESPN+, even though that would make a lot more sense.
The crazy part is, I have some sort of subscription because I watch Espanyol matches on ESPN+
But I can’t watch MNF.
I don’t understand it and quite frankly just don’t really care to figure it out right now.
Just frustrating.
All of it.
— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) November 4, 2025
ESPN Unlimited was never meant to replace the revenue stream from cable and satellite providers fully. But it was meant to give cord-cutters another option and present a new way for the network to reach fans in a digital age. ESPN even began stacking the app with exclusive WWE premium live events and more exclusive content like the return of Rich Eisen.
But back to the complicated network of carriage deals. Your access to ESPN Unlimited varies depending on what provider you have. And in spite of the network saying that anyone with a current subscription to ESPN would have access to Unlimited, that quickly turned out not to be the case. It’s led to a huge consumer education problem that ESPN has yet to truly solve, and nothing but frustration from fans who are desperately trying to figure it all out for themselves.
Inside the NBA, RedZone Panic
Screen grab: ‘Inside the NBA’
In the past year, ESPN has added two of the most iconic properties in sports under their wider umbrella – NFL RedZone and Inside the NBA. And both moves were met with panic from a significant chunk of sports fans worried that ESPN would mess up either one.
NFL RedZone is part of the proposed ESPN-NFL equity deal. ESPN will get to distribute the channel while the NFL will maintain production. And yet, when the deal was announced, the immediate reaction from fans was a hope that Pat McAfee wouldn’t replace Scott Hanson.
A similar story happened on the NBA side, where ESPN had to assure basketball fans that Stephen A. Smith wouldn’t chain himself to the middle of the TNT set.
There’s no reason to believe that ESPN would fix something that isn’t broken. And in at least the case of Inside the NBA, they have kept their word to keep the beloved NBA studio show as is. ESPN personalities have made contributions, but only as reporters and not in the studio.
A generation ago, ESPN joining forces with these entities would have been cause for celebration by sports fans. You would think about all the cool crossover potential, what a great job ESPN would do in hyping up the programming, and what it would mean to the sports world. But now, any move ESPN makes is met with angst.
Polarizing Personalities
Credit: ESPN
Some of that angst comes from just how exhausting it is to watch ESPN.
We’re not talking about the games for the most part. ESPN’s game coverage is top-class in many ways. Having said that, you can pick out areas where the network can do a lot better. ESPN needs to totally rethink its NBA coverage after being thoroughly outclassed by NBC and Amazon so far this season. Their NBA studio show was an abomination during last year’s NBA Finals. The network faced severe criticism from college football fans for its College Football Playoff coverage, which was deemed too negative. And baseball fans aren’t exactly in love with the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast booth.
But usually when ESPN covers sports in a vacuum, it goes well. It’s everything else that gives sports fans heartburn.
ESPN has gone all-in on a personality-driven approach at the network. But when most of the day is dominated by the likes of Stephen A. Smith and Pat McAfee, it can mean that a fair few controversies will come the network’s way. Smith has turned First Take into his own personal fiefdom, settling vendettas with LeBron James to sending ominous warnings about the Trump administration. And given his new ESPN contract basically allows him to be anywhere he wants, anytime he wants, it’s hard to escape his shadow over the sports world.
McAfee has finally settled into a groove on College GameDay, but he can’t escape the endless cycle of fighting with his critics, whether real or imagined. A report into his “diva” behavior at the network can’t be a surprise, given his own frequent criticisms of ESPN itself and the trouble that he has gotten the network into thanks to his freewheeling persona.
But it’s not just Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith. There is a combative spirit seeping into every corner of the network, as our current media ecosystem constantly rewards those who are the loudest and boldest. We are now witnessing a generation of sports media personalities who grew up or broke into the business thinking the SAS Hot Take Blueprint was the one to follow. But when it’s nothing but hellfire and brimstone, it can suck the joy out of being a sports fan fairly quickly.
Nobody has fallen victim to that quite like ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark, who, it seems, has more apologies in the last year than Patrick Mahomes has 300-yard passing games.
The Bottom Line
Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
There are so many other examples that could be cited here where someone has ESPN in their crosshairs on a daily basis. Former ESPN stars are now publicly slamming the network and what it has become compared to their time in Bristol. College football fans are constantly on the lookout for signs of SEC bias and ESPN putting their billion-dollar contract with the megaconference first above all else. And ESPN is always one tweet away from getting sucked into a culture war with Clay Travis or Dave Portnoy.
Some of these issues are of ESPN’s own making. But the truth is that some of them aren’t. When ESPN gets pulled into a political battle or gets hit with various conspiracy theories, there’s not much the network can do to make people suddenly start acting rationally.
But even if ESPN believes that things are going well and shareholders are happy, sports fans are not. The brand is constantly getting hammered from all sides in a never-ending hailstorm that seemingly won’t let up.
It’s said that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. And ESPN is finding that out more and more with each passing day.