When ESPN signed Pat McAfee last spring, the host foretold what many seem to now be forgetting amid a rapid-fire news cycle involving Aaron Rodgers, Jimmy Kimmel and someone named Norby Williamson.
“They all very much understood that we need to embrace both what tomorrow is and what today is and I have the exact same vision,” McAfee said of Disney CEO Bob Iger and the other execs he met with during negotiations.
What did that mean? ESPN was confronting a few realities. They were trailing independent creators like McAfee in digital video and the younger, more dedicated audience that comes with it. They had no singular personality attracting new loyal ESPN viewers. And they were facing down an eventual leap away from cable television without anyone or any property outside of games themselves that could lure subscribers.
In McAfee, ESPN clearly believed the network had found someone to help solve many of its problems. And while McAfee’s touchy interview with Rodgers last week clearly crossed a line, he still has significant value to the company.
Rodgers accusing Kimmel of disgusting criminal activity can’t and shouldn’t be ignored. But nearly everything that has happened since is a feature of The Pat McAfee Show and its value to ESPN, not a bug.
A Barstool Spirit
After Barstool Van Talk was canceled by ESPN after one episode in the fall of 2017, Barstool CEO Dave Portnoy smugly claimed “Barstool is gonna be the next ESPN … because we do things our way, for better or for worse, we’ll continue to do it.”
“And people who have been with us forever know we’re not sexist, we’re not chauvinistic, we’re not any of it,” Portnoy continued, responding to criticism over his obscene comments toward ESPN host Sam Ponder. “We make fun of everybody.”
By that time, McAfee was a year into working for Barstool, where he developed a Heartland division of the company and hosted a Sirius XM show. The program that would become ESPN’s midday anchor was alive.
Barstool Van Talk was doomed because ESPN and Disney couldn’t afford to be connected with the racist, misogynistic themes of Barstool’s content. But in PMS, ESPN gets the Barstool spirit without the Barstool.
Portnoy saying “We make fun of everybody” is not far afield from McAfee’s defense of Rodgers over Rodgers connecting Kimmel to sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein last week. “I think Aaron was just trying to talk s***,” McAfee said. What Rodgers said mattered to Disney executives because it lit Kimmel’s fuse. But it was not an aberration.
PMS became famous because of Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays. The Deadline story announcing McAfee’s deal to join ESPN called the host “Aaron Rodgers Pal Pat McAfee” in its headline. And all along, Rodgers has discussed his views on the COVID-19 pandemic, big pharma and psychedelic drugs, as well as support for what he would call “the c-word” (conspiracies). ESPN knew it was licensing a show in PMS where nothing was off-limits, and the biggest guest frequently veered off-script toward fringe beliefs.
It’s the Subscribers, Stupid
The reason it did so was not to juice its television ratings. McAfee was incensed that someone at ESPN (which he believed was Williamson) would leak TV numbers because he knows that’s not why ESPN brought him on.
McAfee frequently clears 100,000 live concurrent viewers on his YouTube channel during Rodgers interviews, a huge number for any livestream. When ESPN first announced it was licensing PMS, the press release stated the program would stream live on ESPN’s YouTube channel as well as McAfee’s, its streaming service, and the ESPN network. This is important.
ESPN believed duplicating the stream on a fourth platform (its own YouTube channel) was that valuable. While that strategy never came to pass (for reasons unknown), ESPN maintains the right to post PMS clips to its social media channels and has launched a TikTok account to stream the show to 1.3 million followers there.
So when McAfee went on a rant calling Williamson a “rat” over ratings leaks, it was because judgment of the show has to be broader in scope. In fact, the ESPN press release on the show’s recent viewership grouped the network audience in with YouTube and TikTok. A cynic might say that’s ESPN spinning its own numbers, but it’s not.
PMS is different structurally than anything on ESPN airwaves, or any big television network for that matter. McAfee’s only commercial break on ESPN comes at the top of the hour, halfway through the show. Throughout the rest of the program, ESPN sells on-screen, branded ad graphics in place of typical commercials.
ESPN’s logo appears in the bottom right corner, even on McAfee’s YouTube stream. The show’s ticker is sponsored by SeatGeek. Odds for the show’s weekly NFL picks segment are produced and branded through ESPN Bet. Rather than producing a studio show it can sell ads against, ESPN is monetizing a digital product that happens to be broadcast on its network for a couple hours.
As Disney looks toward a future in which the ESPN linear network is de-emphasized or gone altogether, this will matter much more than what proportion of First Take’s audience McAfee maintains on television.
Licensing vs Producing
The stickiest issue ESPN faces with McAfee is the arrangement it has with the show. Because ESPN licenses the show rather than producing it in-house, there is a limit to the creative oversight it can have. A small team of producers creates the entertaining program straight from the “Thunderdome” in Indianapolis, where McAfee has broadcast forever.
This is a big part of why McAfee likely feels confident going after ESPN executives or breaking the network’s cursing rules from time to time. He has leverage. Unless McAfee agrees to certain changes, the only influence ESPN can exert on him is to suspend him from his other duties at the network like College GameDay — or move on from him altogether. No matter how much ESPN may want to “fire” Rodgers, Rodgers is paid by McAfee. Not Disney.
But remember, ESPN had a chance to make their own version of PMS. From Bill Simmons at Grantland to The Dan Le Batard Show’s extended universe to the NBA TrueHoop network, many at ESPN have tried to build modern digital properties. When they branched too far from the ESPN tree or took advantage of creative freedom, those entities were shut down.
So instead of nurturing their own Pat McAfee, ESPN hired a made man. The thing about made men is they answer to themselves alone.
Looking beyond PMS, we can see ESPN’s strategy with its Omaha Productions partnership as well. While Omaha content brings Peyton Manning’s aw-shucks persona rather than Barstool’s, even Omaha’s digital shows are looser and chasing after a different audience than SportsCenter or even First Take. Recent deals with Kevin Clark and Kenny Beecham show Omaha is thinking outside the four letters.
‘The Exact Same Vision’
If ESPN wants to give anyone a reason to pay for its subscription service, it needs can’t-miss content. Maybe the service eventually leans more and more toward a pay-per-view setup where games are the primary attraction, but that would signify a major step back for the company.
Just as we see with Max licensing The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz or launching a CNN show with Charles Barkley, convincing a sports fan to pay for content requires 24/7 entertainment. Convincing a young sports fan to pay for content is even more difficult, and it means making stuff they actually want to watch.
It wouldn’t surprise anyone if ESPN’s future plans for McAfee include exclusive paywalled content on its direct-to-consumer service. He is the star of GameDay and — in a year in which some expect Smith to depart the company — soon could be the face of ESPN.
So long as its most famous guest avoids saying potentially libelous nonsense about another face of the company, PMS is doing exactly what it is supposed to for ESPN. Without its confrontational nature, unique format and adventurous scope, there is no PMS. And without PMS, ESPN would be even more desperate.
