Dan Le Batard has been one of the more prominent voices at ESPN for a long time. The Dan Le Batard Show and Highly Questionable have been a staple at ESPN but there is now a breaking point between the two sides. Le Batard has made the decision to move on from ESPN.
Andrew Marchand of the New York Post was the first to report the news:
Below are some key quotes from his recent article that predicted this breakup was coming:
He doesn’t seem to like them much. They don’t seem to like him much. Le Batard and crew might as well move on to Spotify or SiriusXM or their own thing instead of both sides wasting each other’s time.
On Wednesday, Le Batard announced a very nice thing. Among the 300 people laid off last week by ESPN was one of his producers, Chris Cote. Le Batard said he was “blindsided” by the move and it was the “greatest disrespect of my professional career.” Le Batard is taking on Cote’s salary as his personal assistant with a raise, filling a position recently vacated.
Le Batard, who makes around $3.5 million and has indicated he has less than two years remaining on his contract, said that he was “wounded” by the move. His group, as he said on Wednesday, is a family.
Long story short, ESPN pissed Le Batard off when they fired one of his producers without telling him. That’s ESPN in a nutshell. It’s hard to blame Le Batard for resenting the company. ESPN fired hundreds of people recently. Le Batard did the courteous thing offering to pay for Cote himself.
ESPN also moved his TV show to a worse time slot, cut his radio show by an hour, and is moving his content behind the ESPN+ paywall. At some point, there was going to be a breaking point.
It remains to be seen what’s next for Le Batard. Marchand Spotify or SiriusXM as a possible landing spot. The only thing that is clear is that his crew will follow him wherever he goes.
