Forecast: More Sports, Less Politics

I predict that this election season won't overshadow this football season

Last Thanksgiving I wrote that the culture war had died in sports and some of you, quite reasonably, countered that it would all come back by election time. Well, both conventions are finished, election season is in full swing and…in my unbiased opinion I still think I’m correct. ESPN continues to largely stick to sports and, unlike the 2015-2021 era, games aren’t getting derailed or overshadowed by political controversies. Every now and again a fight will flare up over whether a women’s sport remains biologically female, but whatever the social valence of that issue, these situations don’t disrupt what’s happening in the most popular leagues.

Over at ESPN the suits are fretting about the 2024 presidential election, though. They’re worried less about the ultimate outcome than about the impact of these next few months on ratings. This is a constant theme I’m hearing, and it’s a more pronounced concern than what I was privy to when I was actually working at ESPN. Perhaps we can chalk up the current fears to business being shakier at Disney/ESPN than in years past. Times are lean. There’s more of an acute need for advertisers to back sports in the fall, rather than get scared off because they believe they public will focus more on 270 electoral votes. I’m here to tell the ESPN suits and advertisers to take heart. Yes, the election will somewhat bite into your viewership and inflame passions to a degree, but there are indicators that this go-round isn’t as absorbing as past Trump tilts.