Latest in ESPN

ESPN said Thursday that due to concerns over Covid and Covid-related restrictions that it will not send its news personnel to the Winter Olympics next month in Beijing. The news comes a day after rightsholder NBC said it will keep most of its announcing teams in the U.S. during the Games, which are set to run February…

Tennis Hall-of-Famer and broadcaster Chris Evert revealed today that she has stage 1C ovarian cancer. Evert, who is 67, was diagnosed last year after undergoing a preventative hysterectomy, she said. Cancer has not been detected elsewhere in her body, according to a piece she co-wrote with Chris McKendry on ESPN.com…

Georgia’s 33-18 victory over rival and defending national champion Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship game Monday on ESPN was watched by 22.6 million viewers across the wide range of the network’s platforms, a total it said made it the biggest event on cable TV since the LSU-Clemson title…

The College Football Playoff National Championship pitting No. 1 Alabama and No. 3 Georgia is set to kick off Monday at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on ESPN, the hub of the network’s “MegaCast” coverage across 13 brands and platforms including Spanish-language ESPN Deportes, the ESPN app, the SEC Network and ESPN Radio. The…

Jeff Dickerson, an NFL reporter for ESPN who covered the Chicago Bears for two decades, died Tuesday of complications from colon cancer, at the same hospice facility that his wife, Caitlin, died in two years ago, the network reported. He was 44. “JD was one of the most positive people you will ever meet,” ESPN deputy…

The University of Hawai’i has been forced to bow out of playing in the Hawai’i Bowl, which was scheduled to kick off in its traditional Christmas Eve TV slot this evening on ESPN. The host school, which was to play Memphis in Honolulu, cited Covid issues within the football program and pulled out late Thursday night…

YouTube TV and Disney agreed to a new deal that will restore access to a number of the entertainment giant’s networks including ESPN, ABC and FX. News of the updated carriage deal comes Sunday afternoon, just days after negotiations between Disney and Google failed to reach fruition, leading to the Disney networks goin…

ESPN, a longtime cornerstone of the Walt Disney Co., continues to lose lucrative pay-TV distribution, shrinking another 10% to end fiscal 2021 at 76 million U.S. households. Citing Nielsen, Disney provided the number as part of its annual report, filed with the SEC this afternoon. The company operates on a fiscal…

The two top teams in college basketball met tonight as No. 1 Gonzaga faced No. 2 UCLA, but the highlight of the evening was legendary ESPN broadcaster Dick Vitale returning to call the game after battling two separate forms of cancer this year, with his latest diagnosis coming just last month. Before the game, Vitale…

ESPN’s Monday Night Football ended an eight-week year-over-year ratings win streak when Tom Brady and his Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ clobbered the lowly New York Giants this week. The 30-10 game drew an audience of 12 million across ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes, which was down a bit from the previous Monday and by more…

The new ESPN+ original series Man in the Arena: Tom Brady — the star quarterback’s firsthand account of Super Bowl appearances over two decades — debuts Tues. Nov.16 with new episodes posting weekly. Directed by Religion of Sports' Gotham Chopra, the series features Brady and others from his life and career…

ESPN Classic will go dark on January 1, ending a nearly three-decade run of nostalgic pay-TV sports programming. The network was founded as Classic Sports Network in 1995 and was acquired by ESPN in 1997. The decision to shut it down follows several years of declining distribution. Several major providers had dropped…