Jimmy Pitaro does not want to go from leading Bristol to Burbank at this time. 

That’s according to a report from Lucas Shaw of Bloomberg, who wrote earlier this week that the ESPN chairman “has communicated to both friends and the board that he’s not interested in the role” of succeeding Bob Iger as Disney’s CEO. 

Iger’s contract is up at the end of next year, and he has emphasized that he will be gone for good this time. 

Several media insiders with a keen understanding of ESPN and Disney spoke to Front Office Sports after the Bloomberg story came out. They did not claim to have communicated with Pitaro about why he apparently pulled his hat out of the ring to be Iger’s successor, but one pointed out that replacing Iger has already proved to be hazardous.

Bob Chapek became Disney’s CEO in February 2020, and he was ousted when Iger came roaring back in November 2022. Iger joined ABC in 1974 and rose up the ranks by the time Disney acquired it in 1995. He became CEO of Disney in 2005 and has held the job ever since except for his brief first retirement. 

While on the job, he gobbled up assets like Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, and Fox’s entertainment properties for inclusion in Disney’s empire.  

To borrow a sports analogy, it’s like succeeding Bill Belichick in New England. As the saying goes: “You don’t want to replace the guy—you want to replace the guy who replaces the guy.” 

Last year, Disney’s board appointed former Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman to find Iger’s successor. The Bloomberg report said parks boss Josh D’Amaro and entertainment co-chair Dana Walden were the likeliest candidates to become the next CEO. 

During ESPN’s media day event last year, Pitaro told the audience of reporters how excited he was about his current role. 

“I’ll tell you without any hesitation that I’m sitting at my dream job,” Pitaro said. “I literally love going to work here, even the years that I was competing against this place [while at Yahoo Sports] I wanted to work here. I’m very fortunate and blessed to be surrounded by the best executives in the industry, starting with my direct reports, and every day I get out of my bed and say to myself one thing … I have to earn this today. I feel fortunate to be here.”

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ESPN’s Burke Magnus has pledged to cover the Super Bowl like it’s never been covered before. His network just made a move that reinforces that commitment.

ESPN’s president of content is hiring award-winning director Artie Kempner away from Fox Sports. The 12-time Emmy Award–winner director will take over Monday Night Football from Derek Mobley. But ESPN is hiring Kempner with an eye toward him directing its first-ever Super Bowls after the 2026 and 2030 NFL seasons.

The 30-year sports TV veteran previously worked closely with ESPN’s MNF broadcast duo of Troy Aikman and Joe Buck at Fox. He directed Fox’s coverage of Super Bowls XXXIX and XLII with Aikman and Buck. During his career at Fox, CBS, and NBC, Kempner has directed everything from the Super Bowl, NFL playoff games, and Thursday Night Football to NASCAR, golf, tennis, college sports, and Olympic coverage.

“There’s only 12 people currently walking the Planet Earth who’ve ever directed a Super Bowl—and Artie’s done two of them. Not to mention Daytona 500s and US Open tennis and a whole bunch of stuff over the years,” Magnus told Front Office Sports Monday night. “He’s a very decorated guy who just dropped into our laps as we were getting into hard-core preparation for Super Bowl 61. To bring on a unique talent like Artie, who has done big events, who’s done multiple Super Bowls, that’s our responsibility to the company. To put ourselves in the best possible position to absolutely crush the Super Bowl.”

ESPN has dreamed of showing the Big Game since its founding in 1979. All of the major NFL talent moves by Magnus and chairman Jimmy Pitaro in recent years have been made with an eye toward the company’s first Super Bowl telecast on Feb. 14, 2027, in parent Walt Disney Co.’s backyard of Los Angeles. The now-defunct ABC Sports showed Disney’s last Super Bowl in 2006. 

Statement of Intent

Since ESPN muscled its way into the Super Bowl TV rotation in 2021, with an 11-year deal worth $2.7 billion a year, the network has been upgrading its talent in preparation for the Big Game. 

In 2022, ESPN raided Fox to hire away Aikman and Buck with staggering five-year deals of $95 million and $65 million apiece, respectively. But the duo called six Super Bowls previously at Fox. In my eyes, their hire transformed the MNF booth from worst to first. With Aikman and Buck at the helm, ESPN also received improved MNF game schedules from NFL brass on Park Avenue.

Then there’s Peyton and Eli Manning and their popular MNF ManningCast. In April 2024, ESPN announced a 10-year contract extension with Peyton’s Omaha Productions. That means the Mannings will offer alt-casts for both of ESPN’s Super Bowl telecasts.

Finally, there’s Magnus and Pitaro’s recent moves with NFL pregame shows. Over the past two years, ESPN elevated two of its most accomplished, popular anchors to boost its Sunday and Monday NFL studio shows. 

Scott Van Pelt replaced the laid-off Suzy Kolber as host of Monday Night Countdown in 2023. A year later, First Take host Mike Greenberg succeeded the ousted Samantha Ponder as host of Sunday NFL Countdown (Greenberg was also named lead host of ESPN’s NFL Draft coverage last year). ESPN added hotshot free agent Jason Kelce to Monday Night Countdown in 2024. It just announced a long-term contract extension with NFL Live host Laura Rutledge. Don’t forget Stephen A. Smith. As part of his monster five-year, $100 million contract extension, he’s expected to appear on Monday Night Countdown this season.

At our Tuned In sports media summit last September, Magnus told FOS the media giant was seeking a “vice president of the Super Bowl,” whose only job will be anything and everything related to ESPN/Disney’s production of Super Bowl LXI. ESPN got its man in January, tapping longtime producer Andy Tennant for the job. 

“We want to redefine what covering a Super Bowl looks like,” Magnus said at Tuned In. “We have, in many ways, the luxury of not having an imprint in people’s minds of what that might look like since we haven’t ever been there.”

MLB Network is making some changes headed into the 2025 season.

The nightly pregame show, MLB Tonight, is expanding by an hour and now starting at 5 p.m. ET, the network confirmed to Front Office Sports. The program will also have a new title, MLB Tonight: National Pregame Show, and regularly feature host Greg Amsinger with analysts Dan Plesac and Harold Reynolds who were previously on-air later at night.

One reason for the shift: MLB Network has leaned in to more live coverage of West Coast games, particularly centered on Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers. Hosts Adnan Virk and Matt Vasgersian will continue to host whiparound coverage plus news and highlights in the evening.

With the expansion of the pregame show, Intentional Talk will move back an hour, to 4 p.m. The show Off Base will transition from being daily to weekly. The new lineup debuts March 26, on the eve of the regular season. 

MLB Network, which as of last year is available direct-to-consumer, recently announced it is migrating its production facility to Elmwood Park, N.J., in 2028. 

Nationally, MLB live rights are expected to be in a state of flux for the next few years. ESPN opted out of its package that includes Sunday Night Baseball, the Home Run Derby, and the wild-card playoff round, meaning those rights are up for grabs after this season. The rest of MLB’s national rights, including Fox’s World Series package, are up in 2028. 

The 2025 Women’s March Madness tournament is a historic one: It’s the first under the eight-year, $920 million contract extension between ESPN and the NCAA.

The deal, which was signed in January 2024, was for 40 NCAA championships. The women’s basketball tournament was its centerpiece, valued at $65 million per year, nearly twice as much as the $34 million average payout received in its previous deal. 

The extension followed a 2023 tournament that averaged 983,000 viewers on ESPN networks, up 55% from the previous year, including a championship game between Caitlin Clark’s Iowa Hawkeyes and Angel Reese’s LSU Tigers that drew nearly 10 million viewers. 

While the deal was a sign of the women’s tournament growth, it still received criticism. There was a belief that women’s March Madness was still undervalued and that it should earn a separate deal from other NCAA championships, similar to the men’s. A gender equity report commissioned by the NCAA in 2021 estimated the women’s tournament could be worth $81 million to $112 million per year on its own.

That criticism only grew after the 2024 tournament, which took place just months after the media-rights extension was signed and surpassed perhaps even the most optimistic women’s basketball supporters’ expectations. 

Women’s March Madness Full Tournament Viewership Average

• 2024: 2.2 million (+121%)
• 2023: 983,000
• 2022: 634,000
• 2021: 546,000 

The 2024 women’s tournament final famously outpaced the men’s championship game, drawing 18.9 million viewers on ABC.

The men’s March Madness tournament will also have its eight-year media-rights extension with CBS and TNT kick in this year—a deal agreed upon way back in 2016—worth an average of $1.1 billion per year, nearly 17 times as much as the women’s annual deal.

However, there were a few reasons for the relatively low price of the women’s deal. When negotiations started in 2022, spending was somewhat constrained, as seen by ESPN’s decision to pass on the Big Ten. The Pac-12 overestimated its value that year and lost most of its schools.

NCAA president Charlie Baker also told Front Office Sports that it was important to leverage the women’s tournament as a way to lift the championships of other sports. “I wanted the best deal for everybody,” Baker said after the deal was announced.

But a key point in the deal was the timing of the end of it: 2032, the same year as the men’s championship. This would allow the NCAA to negotiate the deals simultaneously and potentially amend any inequities between the two tournaments.