ESPN’s ‘Inside the NBA’ Deal is Latest to Snatch Top Sports Ideas From Rivals

If he can’t beat them, ESPN chief Jimmy Pitaro is still willing to do business with them.

A creative deal that will bring what is perhaps America’s favorite sports studio show to Disney after years of it airing on Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT spotlights a growing willingness at ESPN to take a “curation” approach to game-day concepts and content. Some of the biggest deals at ESPN in recent years aren’t ones that start new formats or series, but rather the type that make ESPN a perch for sports personalities who have already proven popular somewhere else.

The new pact, unveiled formally Monday after leaking over the weekend, makes “Inside the NBA” an ESPN property as far as fans are concerned. To be sure, Warner Bros. Discovery’s TNT Sports will continue to produce the show from Atlanta over the term of the pact, which commences with the 2025-26 NBA season. But the show, led by Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and a close-knit team, will only be seen on ESPN and ABC, particularly around top events.

Fans may not see “the show “Inside” as often as has been the norm. It will turn up alongside all NBA games televised on ABC starting in 2026; during coverage of the NBA Finals, Conference Finals and the NBA Playoffs; and on Christmas Day and the first and last weeks of the season. In setting up such a schedule, ESPN is emulating “scarcity” strategies used by Fox Sports, MSNBC and Comedy Central. These three networks have figured out ways to keep top talent on the grid without oversaturating their schedules with them (and, presumably, not paying them as much as they would make for a more full-time arrangement.), At Fox, an MLB studio team consisting of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz only turns up for the league’s biggest events, like the World Series. MSNBC and Comedy Central, meanwhile, have developed concepts that have Rachel Maddow and Jon Stewart making regular appearances only on Mondays.

How often viewers see “Inside the NBA” may not matter as long as they can only see it via ESPN.

Warner Bros. Discovery is trying to develop a more general sports program that will use the “Inside” team and is allowed to come up with other programming ideas using Barkley, Shaq, et. al. After all, the company is still in the midst of long-term deals with all of the show’s talent. When it comes to hearing Kenny Smith or Ernie Johnson talk to the all-star duo about basketball, however, Warner is giving up the chance to tie that solely to TNT, where NBA games have driven millions of dollars in ad revenue.

ESPN may be known as the home of legendary concepts like “SportsCenter” and, more recently, the “ManningCast,” but it has become clear over the last few years that its executives and producers are keeping more than a casual eye on rival programs.

In the Spring of 2022, ESPN raided rival Fox Sports and brought top NFL announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman under the Disney umbrella to call “Monday Night Football.” ESPN did so after years of trying to build its own “MNF” team and remaining unsatisfied with the results (even if producers did come up with a mobile sideline cart called a “Boogermobile” in the process). In 2023, ESPN began airing the decidedly unorthodox “Pat McAfee Show” — on YouTube as well as linear TV — in a bid to bring in younger people who liked the freewheeling and outspoken host. ESPN has stuck by McAfee even as he has grappled with some of the conventions of being on a mainstay TV outlet, including letting loose a diatribe on air at a former senior ESPN executive.

To be sure, ESPN has plenty of personality under its own hood. Stephen A. Smith remains, perhaps, the network’s best-known figure and stands to gain opportunities to try his hand at other projects should his current contract renewal talks work out. Mike Greenberg, an old hand who first came to notice on the radio, is a mainstay presence on the morning schedule and was recently dispatched to host ESPN’s Sunday “NFL Countdown.” Malika Andrews is getting new traction at “NBA Today” and “NBA Countdown,” the latter of which will still appear during the regular season. And the company has in recent months hired standout athletes and coaches including Jason Kelce, Nick Saban and Bill Belichick.

Yet the interest in luring outsiders is something to watch.

Perhaps Pitaro and his team are trying to future-proof the business. A day appears to be coming when more sports fans will bundle their favorite game sources up in a single package. Indeed, Disney, Warner and Fox have a stand-alone service called Venu waiting to launch, so long as they can prove to a court that the new business isn’t anti-competitive. Subscribers to that service may not have as strong a feeling about ESPN versus Fox Sports versus TNT Sports. They’ll just want access to their games and their favorite commentators. ESPN’s parent company, Disney, already offers a bundle of Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+, and the primary selling point of that package is the wider scope of event-like programming a customer can access.

To gain access to Barkley and team, ESPN was willing to give Warner’s TNT Sports the rights to televise an exclusive slate of Big 12 football and men’s basketball games starting with the 2025 season. These games, however, were largely expected to stream on ESPN+ and may not be the biggest driver of audience for ESPN. ESPN previously won some new cash by giving TNT Sports a sublicense to televise two college football playoff games.

Whether ESPN can offload other parts of its game inventory to secure new talent remains unproven (and in the cases of other sports-media entities, probably unlikely). But the sports giant’s ability to go after outside work when the timing suits may prove helpful as more media companies are forced to look within for cost savings in an era when their footing is less sure.