ESPN turned some heads when it announced that it had decided to cancel Barstool Van Talk, a weekly late night show staring Barstool Sports personalities Big Cat and PFT Commenter on ESPN2. It wasn’t necessarily a surprise that the show had gotten canceled — right before it aired, ESPN’s Sam Ponder unveiled some disturbing comments made about her on the site a few years back — but it was surprising that ESPN pulled the plug after one episode.
This all begs the question: Why? ESPN president John Skipper claimed he “erred in assuming we could distance our efforts from the Barstool site and its content,” but the show’s title literally had the word “Barstool” in it, so that seems like an argument that doesn’t hold water.
Richard Deitsch and Chris Chavez of Sports Illustrated got some insight into what went down within the halls of the Worldwide Leader in Sports, and as it turns out, it was a stream of emails from ESPN staffers who lobbied against the partnership that appeared to be the final straw.
At a certain point over the last week, Skipper became more aware of the historical content of Barstool Sports away from the popular Pardon My Take podcast, and specifically, the ugly comments made by Barstool founder and president Dave Portnoy in 2014 about ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown host Sam Ponder.
The ESPN president also received a number of emails last week (his emails are open to staffers) from employees who were upset at the partnership. Those familiar with his thinking said it had a heavy impact on him. That was in addition to those who expressed the same sentiment publicly—led by Ponder—how much they did not like the partnership between the two entities.
Per Dietsch and Chavez, while Barstool has its fans within the network, one ESPN employee praised Ponder by saying she displayed “Masterful timing, and a perfect use of the medium that has done nothing but plague this company” with her tweets about Barstool.
(Via Sports Illustrated)
