The network also operates offices and auxiliary studios in Miami, Orlando, New York City, Las Vegas, Seattle, Charlotte, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles.

However, the plan to base ESPN there was put on hold because of a local ordinance prohibiting buildings from bearing rooftop satellite dishes.

Taped in front of a small live audience inside the Bristol studios, it was broadcast to 1.4 million cable subscribers throughout the United States.

ESPN's next big step forward came when the channel acquired the rights to broadcast coverage of the early rounds of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.

The channel's tournament coverage also launched the broadcasting career of Dick Vitale, who at the time he joined ESPN had just been fired as head coach of the Detroit Pistons.

[6] Under Getty ownership, the channel was unable to compete for the television rights to major sports events contracts as its majority corporate parent would not provide the funding, leading ESPN to lose out for broadcast deals with the National Hockey League (to USA Network) and NCAA Division I college football (to TBS).

ESPN's Sunday Night Football games would become the highest-rated NFL telecasts for the next 17 years (before losing the rights to NBC in 2006).

ESPN began to shed viewers, more than 10 million over a period of several years in the 2010s even while paying large sums of money for the broadcast rights to properties like the NFL, NBA and College Football Playoff.

[14] On April 26, 2017, approximately 100 ESPN employees were notified that their positions with the sports network had been terminated, among them athletes-turned-analysts Trent Dilfer and Danny Kanell, and noted journalists like NFL beat reporter Ed Werder and Major League Baseball expert Jayson Stark.

[15] Further cost-cutting measures taken included moving the studio operations of ESPNU to Bristol from Charlotte, North Carolina,[16] reducing its longtime MLB studio show Baseball Tonight to Sundays as a lead-in to the primetime game and adding the MLB Network-produced Intentional Talk to ESPN2's daily lineup.

All other nationally televised games would air on TBS and TNT under a separate deal the league struck with Turner Sports the following month.

[23] Additionally, the company plans to launch a "flagship" standalone streaming offering, including the ESPN and ESPN2 linear channels, in late summer or fall 2025.

[30] In order to help offset the impact of COVID-19 on its business, Walt Disney CEO Bob Chapek indicated during a 4th quarter fiscal year 2021 earnings conference that the company would increase its presence in online sports betting, including in partnership with third parties.

It carried a broad mix of event coverage from conventional sports—including auto racing, college basketball and NHL hockey—to extreme sports—such as BMX, skateboarding and motocross.

[38] ESPNews is a subscription television network that was launched on November 1, 1996, originally focusing solely on sports news, highlights, and press conferences.

ESPNews also serves as an overflow feed due to programming conflicts caused by sporting events on the other ESPN networks.

Pardon the Interruption and Around the Horn began airing in HD on September 27, 2010, with the relocation of the production of both shows into the facility housing the Washington, D.C., bureau for ABC News.

[44] ESPN broadcasts HD programming in the 720p resolution format, because ABC executives proposed a progressive scan signal that resolves fluid and high-speed motion in sports better, particularly during slow-motion replays.

[46][47] In 2011, ESPNHD began to downplay its distinct promotional logo in preparation for the conversion of its standard definition feed from a 4:3 full-screen to a letterboxed format (via the application of the AFD #10 display flag), which occurred on June 1 of that year.

[54] It features events from the 20 sports sanctioned by the Texas athletic department, along with original programming (including historical, academic and cultural content).

ESPN owns and operates regional channels in Brazil, Caribbean, Latin America, Netherlands, Oceania and Sub-Saharan Africa.

[60] Some critics argue that ESPN's success is their ability to provide other enterprise and investigative sports news while competing with other hard sports-news-producing outlets such as Yahoo!

[61] Some scholars have challenged ESPN's journalistic integrity, calling for an expanded standard of professionalism to prevent biased coverage and conflicts of interest.

[62] On October 8, 2019, Deadspin reported that an internal memo was sent to ESPN employees instructing them to avoid any political discussions regarding the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong in the aftermath of a tweet by Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey.