ESPN continues to succeed in the unintentional quest to destroy its audience. By furthering far Left interests, the network has shrunk its annual ESPYs award show audience for the sixth time in seven years. Saturday’s program barely pulled in more than a million viewers.
Millions of former viewers have written off ESPN and the ESPYs because, as Clay Travis (co-host of the Excellence In Broadcasting radio show) once said, the network is “more left wing than MSNBC and CNN combined.”
ESPN also has an annoying history of giving the Arthur Ashe Award for Courage to questionable recipients, such as Caitlyn Jenner (seen in above photo) in 2015, Michael Sam in 2014, Tommie Smith and John Carlos in 2008. No longer do truly heroic athletes like the late Pat Tillman receive the award.
Ashe (1943-1993) was the only black player to ever win the Wimbledon men’s singles tennis tournament. He tragically died of AIDs caused by a blood transfusion during heart bypass surgery.
Like other sports-related television programming obsessed with social justice activism, the ESPY’s have totally lost credibility. How bad is the train wreck’s viewership? This bad:
2015: 7.75 million
2016: 5.6 million
2017: 5.3 million
2018: 3.94 million
2019: 3.87 million
2020: 482,000
2021: 1.11 million
ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro has often claimed ESPN is not a political organization. The show’s blatant political partisanship says otherwise.
Following the shocking Ashe award selections of Sam and Jenner, the 2016 ESPYs featured black athletes promoting Black Lives Matter and ripping on America’s public safety officers.
In 2017, former First Lady Michelle Obama presented the Ashe award to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of Special Olympics. The Special Olympics are wonderful, and Shriver deserved the recognition. But former President Barack Obama had previously made an embarrassing putdown of Special Olympics. No politics involved here, President Pitaro, nope, none at all.
Former race car driver Danica Patrick hosted the 2018 debacle and rattled off anti-Trump jokes. Repeat: ESPN is NOT a political organization.
Just a year ago, soccer player and rabid Trump hater Megan Rapinoe hosted the ESPYs dumpster fire. She had also begged Joe Biden to name her as his running mate. No partisanship there, President Pitaro. Nah!
The 2020 program also featured Malcolm Jenkins, a social justice warrior who plays for the Chicago Bears. He called for change stemming from the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
This year’s Ashe award winner was Maya Moore, who sat out the last WNBA season to help get her now-husband Jonathan Irons out of a Missouri jail. He’d been sentenced to 50 years in prison on burglary and assault charges. Social justice activism is definitely the ticket to fame at ESPN.
Bobby Burack, who writes for Outkick, said the ESPYs began self-destructing in 2015 when ESPN turned it into “a divisive, exclusive gathering.” Since ESPN embraced Caitlyn Jenner as a hero, its award show has never been the same, Burack added.
It’s arguable that the ESPYs were partisan long before 2015, but television viewers are not buying what ESPN is selling.
