Ex-ESPN star believes 'over a billion dollars walked out the door'

Ex-ESPN stars are becoming more and more common as the network continues to shed bloated salaries, going full reinvention mode in their direct-to-consumer renaissance.

ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro has been wheeling and dealing, partnering with the NFL for a 10% stake of the Disney-owned sports network to overtake the league's media assets, most notably the coveted RedZone channel, and now news broke this morning that the Worldwide Leader in Sports is linking up with FOX One's new DTC platform starting in October for a $39.99 monthly price. The ESPN standalone version is about to launch for $29.99 per month.

(Pitaro should be commended for his fantastic job, and transparently, way back in the day, I worked for him at Yahoo! Sports and think very highly of him.)

Having said that, some of the names with bloated salaries that have left ESPN, some unceremoniously, include Bill Simmons, Colin Cowherd, and Dan Le Batard. (Both Simmons and Cowherd left controversially in 2015, before Pitaro's tenure started in 2018.)

Simmons turned Grantland, the hip ESPN brand, into The Ringer, and eventually sold it to Spotify for $250 million. Cowherd is a FOX Sports staple and started his own podcast network, The Volume, even though Pitaro reportedly tried to possibly bring him back to ESPN before the 61-year-old hot-take extraordinaire signed a contract extension with FOX Sports.

Le Batard founded Meadowlark Media after leaving ESPN in 2021, ironically with Pitaro's predecessor John Skipper.

One of Meadowlark's breakout stars has been Pablo Torre, whose investigative podcast, "Pablo Torre Finds Out," recently inked a partnership deal with The Athletic.

Torre believes "over a billion dollars walked out the door."

Talking to Semafor, here's his argument.

"ESPN is also operating at such a level of billions and billions in TV rights deals, the most valuable property in sports and television, that... if you think about Zach [Lowe], Bill Simmons, and Ryen Russillo, and Dan Le Batard, and Colin Cowherd, and throw me in there somewhere in the rotation... So that's Meadowlark. That's The Ringer. That's The Volume. That's some other stuff that is emerging. If you were to collect all of those guys, and just do the math on that. ESPN, legitimately, let over a billion dollars walk out the door.

It is certainly an interesting case made by Torre, and it's obvious ESPN has circled back to the strategy of partnering with stars that have their own built-in audiences across social media platforms and YouTube, like Pat McAfee.

Could they have built a multi-billion dollar podcast network in-house if they had cultivated some of their brightest non-linear stars? It's a fun what if.

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