ESPN has had a very bad week. They lost a ton of viewers. They lost their gambling app. They have high-profile personalities generating embarassing headlines. And ratings are down.
Just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong for ESPN over the last week and there's really no indication that any of these things will change anytime soon. Here's a brief recap of everything the Worldwide Leader in Sports has dealt with in early November. Note that most of it doesn't actually have anything to do with sports.
ESPN vs. YouTubeTV
ESPN has been off YouTubeTV for over a week now and approximately 10 million people have been without the network for two Monday Night Football broadcasts in a row now. A full slate of college football went unwatched last week. This week fans will miss college football, college basketball and the NBA. If ESPN and YouTubeTV don't work things out by Wednesday, subscribers willmiss the only remaining Inside the NBA broadcast until Christmas.
This has led to some ESPN employees telling fans what they can do to take action. Which in turn led to Pat McAfee going on ESPN to call out his colleagues, saying, "Stop telling people to go to a website to save a multi-billion-dollar deal. Nobody cares what you have to say."
RIP ESPN Bet
After two disappointing years ESPN is shuttering ESPN Bet and breaking up with PENN, who previously couldn't make things work with Barstool Sports. With PENN gone, ESPN will now partner with DraftKings. So say goodbye to all your favorite ESPN Bet-branded bits and say hello to gambling promotions on every single ESPN show brought to you by DraftKings.
Stephen A. Smith's sketchy Solitaire app
Remember when Stephen A. Smith was caught playing solitaire during the NBA Finals? Well, he's thankfully turned that into another income stream. This week Smith debuted an AI generated ad for a game called Solitaire Cash.
So far Dan Orlovsky, Mina Kimes, Kendrick Perkins and Laura Rutledge have joined Smith in promoting the app.
The main problem? Solitaire Cash is run by Papaya Gaming, a company currently being sued for false advertising and rigged games. Smith and his co-workers pushing the app this week has resulted in the following headlines:
"Stephen A. Smith And Other ESPNers Partner With Obscenely Scuzzy Mobile Casino" - Defector
"Solitaire App Pushed by ESPN Stars Faces Suit Over Bots, ‘Rigged’ Games" - Front Office Sports
"Top ESPN personalities are selling out for Stephen A. Smith’s sketchy solitaire app" - Awful Announcing
According to Alex Weldon at PokerScout:
Papaya no longer disputes that, at one time, it pitted human players against computer-controlled adversaries. Some were used to fill tournaments that had insufficient human players, but others were deployed to guarantee a specific outcome — win or loss — for a particular player.
You would think this isn't the greatest partnership for ESPN personalities take on while they change betting partners and cover gambling scandals. But as long as people are still watching...
Bad ratings
The Week 9 Monday Night Football game between the Cardinals and Cowboys drew 16.2 million viewers between ESPN, ABC, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes and NFL+. Considering Dallas was involved, that doesn't sound great and it turns out it isn't. As SI's Jimmy Traina points out, that's down from the last two weeks of MNF games and way down from last season's Week 9 matchup.
ESPN PR's tweet promoting the ratings as "one of ESPN's top Week 9 audiences" even earned a community note:
How much of that 20% dip can be directly attributed to the YouTubeTV carriage dispute? It's unclear at the moment, but when approximately 10 million people lose access to the game, you have to assume it's going to have an adverse effect.
More from Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as ESPN and the Horrible, Rotten, No Good, Very Bad Week.
