ESPN is about to go through this again.
According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, ESPN and NFL Network are bracing for another wave of job cuts as part of a larger reduction across parent company Disney. Marchand’s report says the cuts will hit a handful of on-camera personalities working out of Bristol along with a much bigger pool of NFL Network staffers who work both in front of and behind the camera.
Ryan Clark is the first name confirmed, with ESPN letting go of the former NFL defensive back who built a career at the network that started with him working the telestrator on Scott Van Pelt’s late-night SportsCenter and grew into a full-time hosting role on NFL Live, regular appearances on First Take and Get Up, and a seat on the Monday Night Countdown panel.
The layoffs continue a pattern that traces back to ESPN’s absorption of NFL Network earlier this year. As part of that deal, the NFL took a 10 percent equity stake in ESPN, and while the arrangement gave ESPN full control of NFL Network and RedZone, it also merged an entire second workforce into Bristol’s operation.
Front Office Sports reported in June that ESPN was already bracing for more cuts on top of the roughly 30 off-camera employees let go that spring, tying the coming layoffs partly to the NFL Network integration and to comments from incoming Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro, who referenced “eliminating roles” in a note to staff around his promotion. Several NFL Network personalities — including Ian Rapoport — have since signed new deals with ESPN and Disney even as this latest round of cuts hits others across the same platform.
How many additional names surface Tuesday, and how deep the cuts run at NFL Network specifically, isn’t yet clear.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.