Former ESPN personality Dan Le Batard lines up next venture, but big decision still looms
Less than a week after leaving ESPN, Dan Le Batard already has a new venture lined up.
What the South Florida-based sports personality does not yet have lined up is a new home for his program.
Le Batard has decided to launch a new media company with former ESPN president John Skipper, according to a source. Skipper hired Le Batard at ESPN in 2011 and the two have remained close.
The source said Skipper would take the lead in finding a platform for Le Batard’s program, which blends sports, pop culture, occasional political talk, quirky topics and anything that Le Batard and co-host Jon Weiner wish to discuss.
Le Batard on Saturday declined to discuss the purpose of the new media company, what types of original content it would produce and platforms on which the content would air. But the company is expected to focus on sports.
Among the logical possibilities for his show: Spotify and Sirius XM Radio.
“Everybody wants us,” Le Batard said on Twitter.
But as of late this past week, Le Batard hadn’t lined up a new gig beyond the launching of the media column.
Le Batard, 52, and ESPN mutually agreed to part ways after more than eight years together.
On Monday, he made his final appearance on ESPN Radio and his final appearance on the TV show, Highly Questionable, that now continues without him.
Before Le Batard finds his next platform, The Dan Le Batard Show With Stugotz is continuing as a weekday podcast production.
On his final radio show, Le Batard said: “Wait until the audience gets a load of the website we’re going to unleash in a day or two.”
Le Batard said his radio show “never intended to be anything that was anything other than a fun, goofy Miami show. And when ESPN gave us the platforms and put these guys on television, they elevated us to a place where now we feel like we can go.... This whole thing feels a little bit like listening to your own eulogy. That is what the last couple of weeks have felt like as people have said goodbye to us as if we’re leaving Earth, not just this platform.”
When Weiner — on Monday’s final ESPN radio show — said “there’s no one listening on the radio. ... it’s why they’re firing us,” Le Batard said: “Does ‘Stugotz’ think we were fired? Does ‘Stugotz’ think nobody listens to us on the radio? I was absolutely not fired.”
On his final ESPN TV appearance, Le Batard said: “This isn’t quite the glamorous, crisscrossing spotlight show business ending I imagined: on a bad lighting Zoom call during a pandemic, 2:30 in the afternoon on ESPN2. But it’s finally time for me to go, to leave ESPN,... after one of the most improbable runs a TV show of any kind has ever had.”
He said co-hosting the TV show with his father, who retired from the program last year, has been the “greatest professional blessing of my life, having been able to share him with you.... Just know that I will stop and look around on my way out today like you do when moving out of a house where the family memories are. … I will be more grateful than sad.”
This story was originally published January 9, 2021 at 5:37 PM.
