ESPN Hit with Brutal Fact Check as Relationship With Fans Hits a New Low

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ESPN got caught. The network tried boasting that its “Monday Night Football” game between the Cardinals and Cowboys attracted the second-highest Week 9 audience since 2011, averaging 16.2 million viewers across platforms.

“Cardinals-Cowboys drives Monday Night Football to one of ESPN’s top Week 9 audiences,” they bragged on X.

But they left out some very important context.

Social media users and pundits quickly fact-checked the claim, pointing out that last year’s Week 9 Buccaneers-Chiefs matchup drew 20.6 million viewers.

Comparing the two reveals a 21% year-over-year decline in the Monday night ratings. A community note was slapped on ESPN’s post, pointing out that piece of information.

ESPN tries to sugarcoat its ratings

Now, there are a few factors here that might have come into play. Chief among them (pardon the pun) is that Taylor Swift made an appearance at last year’s game, meaning an increase in viewership due to curiosity from casual and even non-football fans.

Another obvious question arises with the Cowboys-Cardinals game.

As reported by Bounding Into Sports, an ongoing carriage dispute between Disney (ESPN’s parent company) and YouTube TV has resulted in the blackout of ESPN channels for approximately 10 million subscribers, denying them access to key programming, including college games and Monday Night Football.

Worse, Disney, the parent company of ESPN, is hemorrhaging an estimated $5 million per day due to the dispute, a staggering hit to its bottom line amid ongoing negotiations.

Fans are missing NFL and college football games as the battle wages on.

ESPN personalities, including Pat McAfee, have criticized the network’s public pleas to fans as ineffective, urging both sides to resolve the pricing standoff quickly to better serve sports viewers. Trying to deceive fans by saying ‘Our ratings are doing fine’ isn’t the correct tactic.

READ MORE: Disney Poised to Bleed Out Upwards of $150 Million in Ongoing YouTube TV Dispute

Losing the fans

All of this gaslighting of the fans by ESPN comes as Matt Yoder at Awful Announcing penned an essay pointing out that the network’s relationship wth sports fans is “at an all-time low.”

Key contributors, in Yoder’s view, include the aforementioned YouTube TV dispute, the failed ESPN Bet sportsbook venture with Penn Entertainment, and confusion over the rollout of the ESPN Unlimited streaming platform.

Then there are the polarizing on-air personalities like Stephen A. Smith and McAfee who are more attention whores than actual sports analysts.

“But it’s not just Pat McAfee and Stephen A. Smith,” Yoder writes. “There is a combative spirit seeping into every corner of the network, as our current media ecosystem constantly rewards those who are the loudest and boldest.”

Disney, in all its woke holiness, has no interest in muzzling those who turn sports broadcasts into excuses to push their political views. Where fans come to sports to escape politics, ESPN doesn’t mind forcing it back down their throats.

That won’t change anytime soon.

“When ESPN gets pulled into a political battle or gets hit with various conspiracy theories, there’s not much the network can do to make people suddenly start acting rationally,” writes Yoder.

The problem is that those with opposing political views, which might make the network seem more balanced on some issues, get forced out. Sage Steele could attest to that.