ESPN.com is the official website of
ESPN
ESPN (an initialism of their original name, which was the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by the Walt Disney Company (80% and operational control) and Hearst Commu ...
. It is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a division of
ESPN Inc.
History
Since launching in April 1995 as ESPNET.SportsZone.com (ESPNET SportsZone), the website has developed numerous sections including: Page 2, SportsNation,
ESPN3,
ESPN Motion, My ESPN, ESPN Sports Travel, ESPN Video Games, ESPN Insider, ESPN.com's Fanboard, ESPN Fantasy Sports, ESPNU.com, and ESPN Search. ESPN.com also has partnerships with
MLB.com,
NBA.com,
NFL.com,
WNBA.com,
MLSsoccer.com,
NHL.com,
Baseball America,
Golf Digest,
Scouts Inc.,
Jayski.com,
USGA.org,
Sherdog.com, and
Masters.org.
It also has sections devoted to certain sports and leagues including: the
National Hockey League
The National Hockey League (NHL; , ''LNH'') is a professional ice hockey league in North America composed of 32 teams25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The NHL is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Cana ...
,
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is a Professional gridiron football, professional American football league in the United States. Composed of 32 teams, it is divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National ...
,
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball league composed of 30 teams, divided equally between the National League (baseball), National League (NL) and the American League (AL), with 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. MLB i ...
,
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...
,
NASCAR
The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR) is an American auto racing sanctioning and operating company that is best known for stock car racing. It is considered to be one of the top ranked motorsports organizations in ...
,
Indy Racing League,
NCAA
The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...
,
golf
Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various Golf club, clubs to hit a Golf ball, ball into a series of holes on a golf course, course in as few strokes as possible.
Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standa ...
,
soccer
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 Football player, players who almost exclusively use their feet to propel a Ball (association football), ball around a rectangular f ...
,
women's sports (ESPNW),
cricket
Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...
, and
eSports
Esports (), short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams. ...
. Each section contains pages devoted to: scores, teams, schedules, standings, players, transactions, news wires, injures, and columnists pages.
Columnists
Some notable current and former ESPN.com and ESPNW.com columnists are
Allison Glock,
Jemele Hill,
John Buccigross,
Chris Mortensen,
John Clayton,
Adam Schefter,
Andy Katz,
Bill Simmons,
Jayson Stark,
Buster Olney,
Paul Lukas,
Gene Wojciechowski,
Scoop Jackson,
Pat Forde,
Jim Caple,
Michael Smith, and in the last stages of his journalism career,
Hunter S. Thompson. The website was part of the
MSN portal from 2001 to 2004. ESPN launched a
Spanish language
Spanish () or Castilian () is a Romance languages, Romance language of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin spoken on the Iberian Peninsula of Europe. Today, it is a world language, gl ...
website in 2000,
ESPN Deportes.com. The content of some ESPN.com articles is argued to have been plagiarized.
ESPNW
ESPNW (stylized espnW) is a section on the ESPN.com website, focusing on women's sports stories and news. ESPNW's stated mission is to "inform and inspire female athletes and fans." The website covers a wide range of topics related to women in sports including women's soccer, martial arts, basketball, tennis, food and nutrition for athletes,
Title IX legislation, LGBTQF inclusion, poetry, personal essays and music for athletes. Coverage of men's sports is also included on the website. In 2019, personal essays by feminist self defense practitioner Rachel Piazza and gymnast Ellen Hagan were featured in their culture section. Since its inception ESPNW has included extensive coverage about women's soccer.
The 2011 Women's World Cup was only the 6th women's World Cup and the participation of the United States helped raise domestic awareness about the involvement for women in soccer, such as Mia Hamm. According to journalist Jack Bell, author of the ''New York Times'' article "Hamm Joining ESPNW for Women's World Cup", "in the women’s game, the world is catching up to the United States; in the men’s game, the United States is always playing catch up."
ESPNW hired well regarded female athletes to commentate on their newly formed network. The involvement of such important figures as Mia Hamm helped grow ESPNW's reputation among sports fans. Hamm helped popularize the online network when she worked as a commentator during the 2011 World Cup for ESPNW as well as ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPN3.
Local sites
ESPN started local chapters of its website in response to the decline of local sports coverage available as newspapers continue to go out of business across the country.
ESPN: The local leader in sports?
- Sports Business Daily, 14 September 2009 Each page covers local professional and college teams, hiring locally known writers, and in some cases making use of the city's ESPN Radio
ESPN Radio, which is alternatively branded platform-agnostically as ESPN Audio, is an American sports radio network and extension of the ESPN television network. It was launched on January 1, 1992, under the banner "SportsRadio ESPN". The netw ...
affiliate. In markets where the ABC Owned Television Stations owns a station, their sports coverage is incorporated with the corresponding ESPN local site. Some local sites have expanded into high school sports coverage.
Current
*ESPNBoston.com – with affiliate WEEI
*ESPNChicago.com – with WMVP and WLS-TV
*ESPNCleveland.com – with affiliates WKNR and WWGK
*ESPNDallas.com
*ESPNLosAngeles.com – with KSPN and KABC-TV
*ESPNNewYork.com – with WEPN-FM and WABC-TV
References
{{Webby Awards, cat=Sports, year=2001, type=People's Voice Winner
Internet properties established in 1993
ESPN media outlets