What People Are Saying About ESPN

"My girls look at the TV when I'm watching 'SportsCenter' and they see women staring back. That shows them that they can be champions, too."
-- President Barack Obama, about watching UConn win the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament (Associated Press, 04/27/09)

“When I was in high school, my desire was to be a sportscaster. ESPN was just kicking off, just getting off the ground, and I thought that’s what I was going to do in life, be one of the first woman sportscasters. Until I learned that you’d have to move to Bristol, Connecticut. It was far away. So instead, I had a daughter and named her Bristol.”

-- Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin (Esquire, March 2009)

"During the 1980s and 1990s, ESPN dramatically increased its rights holdings, eventually landing a piece of the NFL, the NBA and Major League Baseball and eroding the dominance of the networks. It added one studio show after another, and soon there was ESPN2, ESPN Classic, ESPNews and ESPNU. ESPN became what arguably is the biggest brand in sports."

-- David J. Halberstam (Miami Herald, 02/15/09)

"ESPN has become more than a sports media company. It has become a major and much loved brand and much of its future potential is supported by the brand value created on the watch of current President George Bodenheimer."

-- Sports Business International (October 2008)

"If a media company has a strong, identifiable brand and fiercely loyal viewers, it is well positioned to cut through today's cluttered multichannel, multiplatform media environment. And that is certainly the case with ESPN. It is recognized around the world and has faithful fans that associate its name with quality sports coverage."

-- Anna Carugati (World Screen Weekly, 10/23/08)

"ESPN is the sports information leader, and they do a great job."

-- Mike Kerns, Founder/CEO of Citizen Sports (Washington Times, 9/9/08)

"Some say the 1979 NCAA championship game between Larry Bird's Indiana State Sycamores and Magic Johnson's Michigan State Spartans revitalized college hoops. But the emergence of ESPN and (Dick) Vitale the following season gave the sport the spokesperson it lacked."

-- Bill Bradley (Sacramento Bee, 9/5/08)

"ESPN, three decades old, remains one of the media industry's biggest gold mines, with successful magazine and Internet operations to complement its suite of cable channels."

-- Brooks Barnes (New York Times, 9/5/08)

"Given that ESPN properties play a key role in shaping the contemporary intercollegiate athletics culture, there simply are no better vehicles to tell the stories of the extraordinary achievements and personalities of the men and women of the WAC (Western Athletic Conference) today."

-- Fresno State University athletic director Thomas Boeh (Fresno Bee, 9/4/08)

"Prior to the ascension of the World Wide Leader, the American sports television constellation was dim sky filled with few lights: Monday Night Football, two or three NFL games a week, a paltry serving of baseball and basketball, and whatever the Wide World of Sports crew wanted to do that week. … ESPN happened, and now it's all yours -- all of it, all the time."

-- Spencer Hall (The Sporting News blog, 6/18/08)

"The best sports reporting is currently being done by ESPN.com, ESPN Radio, and local sports radio stations that don't broadcast a team's games, and by bloggers. … the columnists on ESPN.com and in ESPN the Magazine are quite good - none better than Peter Gammons on baseball."

-- Charles Warner (The Huffington Post, 5/23/08)

"And then there's ESPN. The channel dominates a growing audience that still watches sports live, a huge attraction for advertisers in the age of digital-video recorders and TiVos."

-- Lauren Silva and Antony Currie (Wall Street Journal, 5/7/08)

"The breadth of ESPN’s offerings — TV networks, Web sites, a radio network, a magazine and a wireless business — is what sets it apart from other broadcasters. … The enormity of ESPN’s offering is breathtaking."

-- John Ourand (Sports Business Journal, 3/17/08)

"ESPN was multi-platform before most media companies started to use the word. ... George Bodenheimer and company have built the concept into everything the company does."

-- Staci D. Kramer, paidcontent.org (03/17/08)

"Keeping ahead of the game has been ESPN's signature play through the evolution of media, from its traditional TV base to print to its newer digital efforts."

-- Alice Z. Cuneo (Advertising Age, 3/17/08)

"When it comes to live programming, there is no better TV in America today than what you see every week on ESPN and Fox Sports. It's where practically all the best innovation and new ideas come from. … The academy should ask ABC to loan them a top-notch production team from ESPN and see if they can't visually revamp the show."

-- Patrick Goldstein, about the Oscars telecast (Los Angeles Times, 2/26/08)

"ESPN's pricing power with cable and satellite distributors is famous, and live sporting events' appeal to advertisers is more intense than ever, given the dwindling audience for scripted programming."

-- Michael Santolia (Barron's, 2/25/08)

“US sports network ESPN has continued its digital acquisition spree by acquiring former Emap-owned rugby website Scrum.com for an undisclosed sum.  The acquisition, which follows the purchase of cricketing website Cricinfo in June, marks the latest strategic move by ESPN to build its global online audience through buying niche websites.”

-- Mark Sweeeny (Guardian, UK, August 2007)

“Anyone who knows anything about sport will tell you that ESPN, the American network, is the big daddy of sports broadcasting. … The good news for South Africans is that the Americans have begun producing a SportsCenter exclusively for SA consumption.”

-- Clinton Van De Berg (Sunday Times, South Africa, August 2007)

“X-Games is paving the way for ESPN to become a global media player, and not just in the television area….(X Games) has evolved into a top-class sporting event in its own right, attracting the leading participants in each sport to compete for medals and prize money in an event that ranks only second to the Olympics for the majority of the participants.”

-- Media editor Ian Darby (Campaign magazine, UK, July 2007)

“The abundance, and the sheer mass, of sports programs on ESPN are exactly the characteristics of the international sports network that has become an international brand in itself.  The network provides sports addicts, those who do not make do with a few hours viewing over the weekend, a mind-boggling variety of sports broadcasting of all kinds, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

-- Nir Nathan (Globes newspaper, Israel, May 2007)  

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