Pat McAfee to Join ESPN, per Report

The former West Virginia and Colts punter will reportedly exit a nine-figure sponsorship deal.
Pat McAfee to Join ESPN, per Report
Pat McAfee to Join ESPN, per Report /

The Pat McAfee Show is reportedly set to get a new home.

Former West Virginia and Colts punter Pat McAfee will take his flagship program to ESPN beginning in the fall, according to a Tuesday afternoon report from Andrew Marchand of The New York Post.

The deal, said by Marchand to be worth “more than eight figures,” will reportedly extricate McAfee from his previous four-year, $120 million contract with FanDuel.

McAfee’s show “is expected to remain on YouTube in some form, but one or two hours of it could be on ESPN, where the network would more likely be able to make the math of McAfee’s deal work,” Marchand wrote. Disney is in the process of laying off 7,000 people as part of a massive corporate overhaul, including many at the network.

The Pat McAfee Show has existed in some form or fashion since McAfee retired from football in 2016, bouncing from Barstool Sports to McAfee’s own company to various syndication deals. The show inked a lucrative sponsorship deal with FanDuel in Dec. 2021, and a year later McAfee joined College GameDay on ESPN as a panelist.

McAfee was an All-American punter with the Mountaineers in 2008 and made the Pro Bowl with Indianapolis in 2014 and '16.


Published
Patrick Andres
PATRICK ANDRES

Patrick Andres is a staff writer on the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He joined SI in December 2022, having worked for The Blade, Athlon Sports, Fear the Sword and Diamond Digest. Andres has covered everything from zero-attendance Big Ten basketball to a seven-overtime college football game. He is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a double major in history .