ESPN Zone was a theme restaurant and entertainment center chain in the United States that included arcades, TV studios, and radio studios, operated by the Disney Regional Entertainment subsidiary of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts using the Disney-owned ESPN brand.

The ESPN Club sports bar, at Walt Disney World with 13,000 square feet of TV screens, was a modest attempt that came from those discussions, and drew enough attendance as a proof of concept.

A lack of financing ended this project that was done in conjunction with Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.[1] With Disney's purchase of Capital Cities/ABC in 1996, ESPN was a key part of the purchase, which Disney chair/CEO Michael Eisner then moved into additional brand extensions from biweekly sports magazine, ESPN-themed restaurants, video games to retail stores.

[4] With Levitt having the original idea in 1992, Eisner turned to him to head up Disney Regional Entertainment, the subsidiary that would start up and run the chain.

[1] The concept was originally called ESPN Grill when announced in October 1997, with a slate of major city locations scheduled to start with Baltimore, Maryland, in mid-1998 and Chicago in spring 1999.

U.S. federal district judge Catherine C. Blake, in a January 2013 decision, found that Disney and its local subsidiary violated the Act by failing to notify workers of the closing and underpaying them.

The ESPN Zone in New York City's Times Square was used as the location of the Monday Night Football halftime show for several years.

The weekly series The Sports Reporters was broadcast from the Times Square location every Sunday morning from its opening until its closing, at which point the show moved to ESPN's home base in Bristol, Connecticut.

The Baltimore winner, Jessica Mosley, unofficially broke the Guinness World Record by sitting and watching consecutive sports for an unprecedented 70 hours, and 45 seconds.