If there’s one thing that Americans have become addicted to in the age of smartphones and social media, it’s mindless scrolling on your phone through various platforms to take our minds off of the world falling apart in every way imaginable around us. But now ESPN is here to help.
Not to save the world, mind you, but to give you another option for doom scrolling.
Well, not “doom” scrolling necessarily. But one of the reasons why the nostalgia of Rich Eisen hosting SportsCenter hit so hard is that there is really no like-for-like substitute in today’s sports and pop culture. Sports highlights, news, trends, and almost everything else is now available at the flick of a finger on your phone. Do you remember the last highlight package you actually saw on ESPN? Or heaven forbid, by going to their website?
ESPN is now hoping that we will now spend some of the time with our heads buried in our phone in their new app and DTC platform.
One of the ways that ESPN will hope to achieve that is to include a feed in the app with highlights, reactions, and user-generated content according to Sportico. The long talked about “personalized” SportsCenter could be on its way too.
Having built the largest TikTok account among U.S. companies, with more than 50 million followers, ESPN will bring all its vertical short-form video knowhow to its own app later this week.
An in-app feed (with a name to be announced) will offer a mix of highlights, reactions and user-generated content, sitting alongside a daily, personalized (and yes, vertical) version of SportsCenter that will launch as a beta product on Thursday.
“We want this to be a fresh feed that you can get lost in whenever you open the app,” ESPN SVP, digital, social and streaming content Kaitee Daley said. “Vertical, scrollable video is how so many fans get their information today. I’m just thrilled to be at that moment where we can deliver that.”
It makes perfect sense given the digital media landscape for ESPN to go this direction. Even with the success of its TikTok page and various social platforms, the whole point and purpose of the new and improved ESPN app is to get you to spend as much time in it as possible. That’s why ESPN has been so laser focused throughout this process on building as many partnerships as it can, including its equity deal with the NFL.
The vision of Jimmy Pitaro and company is for the new ESPN app to become the “front door” for sports fans into the wider sports world. Whether that’s anything and everything NFL, personalized highlights, TikTok videos, or a directory for local listings for games, ESPN is going to do all that they can to live into its calling as the WorldWide Leader in Sports. And in 2025, that means you better have a never-ending scroll of vertical videos to keep our ever-shrinking attention spans.
About Matt Yoder