ESPN Photo by Mike Windle/Getty Images for ESPN

The news of the death of Venu Sports last week shocked everyone as ESPN and friends suddenly pulled the plug on the joint streaming venture.

Before this development it appeared that partners, Disney, Fox and Warner Bros Discovery were in for the long haul. The fact that the venture was killed before it got off the ground was indeed surprising. However, if you look at some of the past history with Disney’s ESPN, this isn’t the first time that one of its projects has been thrown to the wayside.

You can’t blame ESPN for trying, however, some of the projects have been introduced with a lot of fanfare only to go down in flames. ESPN’s publicity machine was totally behind these ideas at launch yet at the end, they would be quietly put out to pasture with barely a whimper.

Let’s take a look at some of the high-profile products and projects to which ESPN gave the green light, but no longer exist.

Mobile ESPN

Before Apple introduced the smartphone with apps to download, ESPN went into the mobile phone business. It introduced a flip phone (remember them?), first a Sanyo and then a Samsung. This lasted just for more than a year from November 2005 and December 2006.

Here are a couple of promos for the service, one with former ESPNer Trey Wingo:

The cost for Mobile ESPN was prohibitive and the phone was clunky. According to the ESPN tome Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN co-written by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller, the late Apple legend Steve Jobs told ESPN President George Bodenheimer that “Your phone is the dumbest fucking idea I have ever heard.”

Of course, Apple would launch its own phone, revolutionize communication and ESPN would later launch its own smartphone apps.

Mobile ESPN’s plans didn’t offer many perks to its subscribers, but one innovation that came with it was the Vanderbilt-Michigan game in 2006, which was the first sporting event to ever be streamed live on a mobile phone.

Perhaps Mobile ESPN might have gotten a footing in the cell phone market if the Worldwide Leader had stayed with it, but as we know, when Apple came out with the iPhone in 2007, all things changed and the flip phone was as dead as a doornail.

ESPN 3D

Amid a lot of fanfare at the CES Tech Show in Las Vegas in January 2010, ESPN announced a new network, ESPN 3D. The 2010 FIFA World Cup was to be a big showcase for the network. ESPN 3D was to use the technology in 3-D televisions which were going to be the rage for the new decade.

Among some of the events that were shown in 3D on the network included the 2010 Summer X Games, 2011 BCS National Championship Game between Auburn and Oregon, several NBA games and the 2011 Wimbledon ladies and gentlemen’s semifinals and finals.

As part of a press release touting the new network, then-ESPN President George Bodenheimer made sure the world knew that this was going to be a big thing:

”ESPN’s commitment to 3D is a win for fans and our business partners,” said Bodenheimer.  “ESPN 3D marries great content with new technology to enhance the fan’s viewing experience and puts ESPN at the forefront of the next big advance for TV viewing.”

ESPN did show a commitment to it by operating the network 24/7 starting in 2011, but it was shut down in 2013 due to a lack of interest in 3-D televisions.

While the picture and effects were great, consumers really did not want to wear glasses (other than their own) to watch TV in 3-D.

Once again thanks to YouTube, promos for ESPN products never die. Here’s one featuring former Villanova basketball coach Jay Wright.

ESPN tapped then-Los Angeles Lakers stars Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom for this promo to sell ESPN 3D.

Oh, and here’s a promo featuring Mark May. I had to throw this one in here.

At the beginning, ESPN 3D was picked up by major providers like Comcast, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable and Verizon Fios, however, 3-D TV sales were very low and eventually, just like Mobile ESPN, the Worldwide Leader pulled plug in 2013.

ESPN spokesperson Katina Arnold tweeted the first part of an official statement about the network’s fate.

The tweet said, “ESPN 3D was great at home but due to low adoption of 3D to home, we are discontinuing to focus on other products for fans and affiliates.”

An article from 2013 in Sport Video Group went further with the statement, “Nobody knows more about sports in 3D than ESPN, and we will be ready to provide the service to fans if or when 3D does take off. As technology leaders, we continue to experiment with things like Ultra High Definition television (also known as Ultra HD television or UHDTV) production tools to produce our current ESPN family of HD channels.”

So ESPN definitely all-in with ESPN 3D only to pull the plug just three short years into its existence.

This isn’t the only project to which ESPN said goodbye.

Playmakers

Playmakers came out in an era where ESPN was not only airing live sporting events, but also scripted dramas. It was hoped that Playmakers would usher in more movies and dramas to ESPN. This was part of ESPN Original Entertainment. Remember this introduction to programs such as Pardon the Interruption?

Playmakers was part of a strategy put forth by then-ESPN senior vice president and general manager of programming Mark Shapiro. If sports was drama, then ESPN was also going to be a network for scripted dramas and movies. Kyle Kensing did a deep dive into ESPN’s foray into original programming in 2023 and I totally recommend you read to go over some of the programs that were green-lit by the network.

If you never saw Playmakers, it was about a fictional football team, the Cougars, playing for a fictional football league (aptly called “The League”) and it was about what the team had to endure that season to make the playoffs. It seemed that anything that could happen to the Cougars did whether it was drug use, witnessing a shooting at a nightclub, domestic violence, homophobia, it all seemed to happen within a span of eleven episodes.

Jill Cowan went over that single season for Awful Announcing in 2019.

Ratings for Playmakers which aired from late August to November 2003 were very good, however, there was one reason why the series never went to a second season and that was the very real National Football League. It apparently didn’t like how football life was portrayed and pressured ESPN to drop the show. The Shield felt that Playmakers reflected negatively on its image. In February 2004, ESPN announced that Playmakers would not be picked up for another season.

Good luck in trying to find the show on a streaming service. Those who have the series on DVD, consider yourselves very lucky.

League of Denial

This was another project that angered the NFL and almost napalmed the network’s relationship with the league. While this venture wasn’t killed, it didn’t give ESPN a good look that it was pulling out of the project just a couple of months before it was going to air.

League of Denial was based on the book by the same name by ESPN reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru. This was a documentary that aired on PBS and part of the Frontline documentary series.

Not only was it reporting that looked the NFL’s handling of concussions, it was also going to be cross-promoted through ESPN’s Outside the Lines program as well as air in two parts on Frontline. ESPN and Frontline had done the work for the documentary, but just a couple of months before the documentary was to air, ESPN announced that it was going to pull its name and logo from the project. PBS said despite that, it would go forward with League of Denial.

The New York Times reported in August 2013 that NFL league officials including commissioner Roger Goodell expressed their displeasure over League of Denial during a lunch with ESPN president John Skipper and other network executives. That meeting eventually led to ESPN pulling out of League of Denial, end the cross-promotion and the network stating it was leaving over the lack of editorial control.

Awful Announcing covered that extensively with Matt Yoder writing that Frontline’s producers felt that they were abandoned by ESPN at the last minute.

In my review of the documentary in 2013, I did note that while ESPN’s name and logo were not on League of Denial, their presence was heavily felt:

And while ESPN ended its cooperation with Frontline on the documentary late in the process, its fingerprints are all over the film through the reporting of the Fainaru brothers and network footage.

The film has the potential to change the way the American public looks at football and how future generations play the game. 

A couple of months after the documentary aired, an ESPN executive acknowledged that pulling out of League of Denial hurt the brand in the short-term, but overall, he felt it was the right decision.

League of Denial led to a lot of soul searching within ESPN. Then-ESPN Ombudsman (remember the ESPN Ombudsman?) Robert Lipsyte wondered if the network’s dropping out was “sloppy, naïve or compromised? Or all three? You get to pick….”

The league, however, cannot pull the documentary as it still exists on the PBS Frontline YouTube channel.

ESPN has a history of being in projects that either didn’t work or just weren’t ready for primetime. It’s interesting to look back with some time on how it has managed them or how it has moved on.

About Ken Fang

Ken has been covering the sports media in earnest at his own site, Fang's Bites since May 2007 and at Awful Announcing since March 2013.

He provides a unique perspective having been an award-winning radio news reporter in Providence and having worked in local television.

Fang celebrates the four Boston Red Sox World Championships in the 21st Century, but continues to be a long-suffering Cleveland Browns fan.