{"id":28281,"date":"2025-09-17T19:19:06","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T19:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/28281\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T19:19:06","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T19:19:06","slug":"jimmy-pitaro-has-plenty-say-about-espn-unlimited-but-not-molly-qerim-exit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/28281\/","title":{"rendered":"Jimmy Pitaro Has Plenty Say About ESPN Unlimited, But Not Molly Qerim Exit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cWe cannot have everything,\u201d admitted ESPN<\/a> boss Jimmy Pitaro<\/a> today of the sports rights universe and the newly launched ESPN Unlimited.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are at peace with this idea of not having it all. That being said, last thing I\u2019ll say on this \u2026as I sit here right now, without any hesitation, we have the best rights portfolio that we\u2019ve ever had in our 46-year history at ESPN\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSpeaking at the Financial Times\u2019 Business of Entertainment Summit in West Hollywood this morning, Pitaro didn\u2019t address the sudden exit <\/a>of Molly Qerim<\/a> from the Stephen A. Smith fronted First Take, nor if he wants to still be in the running as a potential successor to Disney<\/a> CEO Bob Iger<\/a>. However, parsing the palace intrigue politics, the seasoned exec sure spoke a lot about the ESPN Unlimited birth and where the service and the sports media giant aims to go.<\/p>\n

\n\tTo that, starting off with a technical glitch on Pitaro\u2019s microphone, the opening keynote of the FT huddle was mainly an exercise in a traditional executive pitch session \u2013 which has long been a Pitaro strength.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat you see today is only a small portion of what\u2019s coming,\u201d he said of the new service (which has been bundled with Disney+ and what remains of Hulu) and app. \u201cI keep saying, it\u2019s the first inning. We\u2019re just getting started here, and the betting experience is a good example of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"ESPN<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tESPN<\/p>\n

\n\tThe growing force of sports betting (\u201ca huge part of the fandom experience\u201d) for any media brand aside, today\u2019s FT chat was full of terms like \u201cadding value,\u201d \u201cdirect to consumer\u201d and app, app, app. In this latest appearance in a press tour by any other name, <\/a>Pitaro once again stressed that ESPN is \u201ccertainly open to other potential partnership and bundling opportunities.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat is that is very much by design as we made progress towards this direct-to-consumer launch, we wanted to make sure that our rights portfolio was very robust,\u201d he told the WeHo crowd, noting the upcoming October link with Fox One<\/a>. \u201cIf there\u2019s something that you want that we don\u2019t offer, we are very focused on partnership and bundling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKicking off on August 21 at a price of $29.99 a month, ESPN packed on with\u00a0WWE<\/a>\u00a0events and expanded\u00a0NFL<\/a>\u00a0rights. Overall, the new platform offers the full ESPN dance card of live games, studio shows, original content and all 12 of its networks with AI initiative in play.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the multiverse of scale and platforms that increasingly defines the growth parameters of media in 2025 (just ask David Ellison and David Zaslav), Pitaro made a point Wednesday of spotlight audience and reach in a fragmented market. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tFor one thing, he says ESPN knows precisely who their audience is with the ESPN Unlimited app. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s people who\u2019ve cut the cord, or people who have never subscribed to pay television,\u201d Pitaro bluntly stated.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe cord cutters and digital natives are, of course, the jewel in the crown of all major media in all mediums right now. With an audience that is mobile, literally and figuratively, in the era of linear TV decline, for ESPN the combination of imperial power and nimble moves is key, Pitaro put out there Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI like our hand, and I say that because, first off, our brand continues to resonate, especially with younger people,\u201d the ESPN chief stated, with acknowledgment of the rising power of YouTube, which just had its first exclusive NFL game. \u201cWe\u2019re seen as the most trusted, most innovative brand in sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe added: \u201cNumber two, our production capabilities. No one\u2019s producing the amount of content that we are at the Walt Disney Company. The fact that when we enter into a partnership with a league, we don\u2019t just bring ESPN. We bring broadcast television through ABC. We bring Disney, plus we bring Hulu. We bring the theme parks in terms of their ability to promote and get behind a league or a property.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe\u2019re not going to judge ourselves based on any one individual platform. We\u2019re going to judge ourselves based on the totality of people consuming ESPN.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe cannot have everything,\u201d admitted ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro today of the sports rights universe and the newly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[27997,2398,156,12484,27998,27999,26822,111,139,69,437],"class_list":{"0":"post-28281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-bob-iger","9":"tag-disney","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-espn","12":"tag-fox-one","13":"tag-jimmy-pitaro","14":"tag-molly-qerim","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}