ESPN takes ‘Inside the NBA’ in attempt to leverage rivals’ sports concepts
If he can’t beat them, ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro is still willing to do business with them.
A creative deal that will bring perhaps America’s favorite sports studio show to Disney after years of running it on Warner Bros. has been broadcast. Discovery’s TNT highlights a growing willingness at ESPN to take a “curation” approach to game day concepts and content. Some of the biggest deals at ESPN in recent years have not been the ones that start new formats or series, but rather the type that make ESPN a go-to for sports personalities who have already proven popular elsewhere.
The new pact, which was formally unveiled Monday after leaking over the weekend, makes “Inside the NBA” an ESPN property as far as fans are concerned. Sure, Warner Bros.’ TNT Sports. Discovery will continue to produce the show from Atlanta for the duration of the pact, which begins with the 2025-2026 NBA season. But the show, led by Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and a tight-knit team, will only be on ESPN and ABC, especially around top events.
Fans may not see “the show ‘Inside'” as often as was previously the norm. It will appear alongside all NBA games airing on ABC starting in 2026; during coverage of the NBA Finals, Conference Finals and the NBA Playoffs; and on Christmas Day and the first and last week of the season. In creating such a schedule, ESPN is emulating the “scarcity” strategies used by Fox Sports, MSNBC and Comedy Central. These three networks have figured out ways to keep top talent on the grid without oversaturating their schedules with them (and presumably not paying them as much as they would make for a more full-time arrangement). At Fox, an MLB studio team of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz only shows up for the league’s biggest events, like the World Series. MSNBC and Comedy Central have now developed concepts in which Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart only perform regularly on Mondays.
How often viewers see “Inside the NBA” may not matter, as long as they can only see it through ESPN.
Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to develop a more general sports program that will utilize the “Inside” team and may come up with other programming ideas using Barkley, Shaq, et. al. After all, the company is still in the middle of long-term deals with all of the show’s talent. However, when it comes to hearing Kenny Smith or Ernie Johnson talk basketball with the all-star duo, Warner is giving up the opportunity to tie that exclusively to TNT, where NBA games have generated millions of dollars in advertising revenue.
ESPN may be known as the home of legendary concepts like “SportsCenter” and, more recently, the “ManningCast,” but it has become clear in recent years that its executives and producers are keeping more than a passing eye on competing programming.
In the spring of 2022, ESPN raided rival Fox Sports and brought top NFL announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman under the Disney umbrella to call “Monday Night Football.” ESPN did this after years of trying to build its own “MNF” team and being dissatisfied with the results (even if producers came up with a mobile side cart called “Boogermobile” in the process). In 2023, ESPN began airing the decidedly unorthodox “Pat McAfee Show” — both on YouTube and on linear TV — in an effort to bring in younger people who liked the free-thinking and outspoken host. ESPN has remained loyal to McAfee even as he struggled with some of the conventions that come with being a regular TV outlet, including launching an on-air tirade at a former senior ESPN executive.
Sure, ESPN has a lot of personality under its own hood. Stephen A. Smith remains perhaps the network’s best-known figure and will have opportunities to try other projects if his current contract extension talks come to fruition. Mike Greenberg, an old hand first noticed on radio, is a fixture on the morning show and was recently sent to host ESPN’s Sunday “NFL Countdown.” Malika Andrews is getting new attention on “NBA Today” and “NBA Countdown,” the latter of which will still appear during the regular season. And the company has hired notable athletes and coaches in recent months, including Jason Kelce, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick.
Still, the interest in luring outsiders is something to watch.
Perhaps Pitaro and his team are trying to future-proof the company. There appears to be a day when more sports fans will bundle their favorite gaming resources into one package. Disney, Warner and Fox have a standalone service called Venu that is waiting to launch as long as they can prove in court that the new company is not anti-competitive. Subscribers to that service may not feel strongly about ESPN vs. Fox Sports vs. TNT Sports. They just want access to their games and their favorite commentators. ESPN’s parent company, Disney, already offers a bundle of Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+, and the main selling point of that package is the broader scope of event-style programming a customer can access.
To gain access to Barkley and his team, ESPN was willing to give Warner’s TNT Sports the rights to televise an exclusive slate of Big 12 football and men’s basketball games starting in the 2025 season. However, these games were largely expected to be streamed on ESPN+ and might not be the biggest crowd pleaser for ESPN. ESPN previously won some new money by sublicensing TNT Sports to broadcast two college football playoff games.
Whether ESPN can offload other parts of its gaming inventory to bring in new talent remains unproven (and in the case of other sports media entities, probably unlikely). But the sports giant’s ability to branch out when the timing is right could prove useful as more media companies are forced to look within for cost savings in an era when their position is less secure.
