Le Batard, irreverent ESPN host, leaving network
ESPN announced Thursday that it will part ways with Dan Le Batard, a longtime TV and radio host with the network. Le Batard anchors a national radio show and a daily afternoon TV show and has long been one of the sports giant’s most prominent personalities.
Le Batard will be bought out of the remaining time of his contract. The decision was described as mutual in the announcement.
In a statement, ESPN executive Norby Williamson said, “It was mutually agreed that it was best for both sides to move on to new opportunities and we worked together closely to make that possible.”
Le Batard said in the release: “Gracias to ESPN for unleashing [ co- stars] Papi and Stugotz upon an unsuspecting America, and for lending its substantive credibility to our careening clown car . . . [ T] hank you, Disney and ESPN, for a quarter century of absurd blessings.”
Le Batard’s radio show stretched the bounds of a sports show, often sounding more like a comedy hour only tangentially related to sports, and featured a regular cast of co- hosts around Le Batard. In a 2018 Slate piece about the show, TV writer Mike Schur called it “the weirdest and funniest nonsports- focused sports radio show in America.” Le Batard’s TV show, “Highly Questionable,” also has featured a motley crew of co- hosts over the years, including his father. It also gave opportunities to a diverse group of up- andcomers at ESPN, including several prominent women at the network.
Le Batard joined ESPN The Magazine’s staff as a contributor in 1998 and has contributed to the network in some capacity ever since. Despite the long relationship, ESPN and Le Batard had been increasingly at odds since the company’s previous president, John Skipper, left the network in 2017. During the summer of 2019, Le Batard, the son of Cuban immigrants, questioned on his radio show the company’s prohibitions on political conversations after a crowd at a rally for President Donald Trump chanted, “Send her back! Send her back!” mimicking racist comments by Trump in reference to Somali- born Rep. Ilhan Omar, D- Minn.
“We here at ESPN don’t have the stomach for the fight,” Le Batard said then. “We don’t talk about what is happening unless there is some sort of weak, cowardly sports angle that we can run it through.”
That led to a face- to- face meeting with current president Jimmy Pitaro to discuss the incident and his future at ESPN. Pitaro has spent much of his tenure attempting to steer ESPN away from controversy — political and otherwise — and back toward a traditional sports network, though the political guardrails were mostly removed in the wake of nationwide protests after the killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police.
Last month, Le Batard took aim again at ESPN when it laid off one of his producers, one of 300 positions eliminated across the company. Le Batard called it “the greatest disrespect of my professional career that I got no notice, no collaboration,” and announced he would pay the producer out of his own salary.
Moving on from Le Batard — his last day on the network is Jan. 4 — and his contract is the latest shakeup at ESPN in a difficult year when the network went without live sports for several months, and parent company Disney saw its theme park and cruise businesses shut down because of the coronavirus. In addition to the layoffs, the largest in the company’s history, ESPN announced recently that two of its leading creative executives, Connor Schell and Libby Geist, will leave the network.