Pat McAfee claims ESPN executives are trying to sabotage his show

“There are folks actively trying to sabotage us from within ESPN,” McAfee said, via Awful Announcing. “More specifically I believe Norby Williamson is the guy attempting to sabotage our program. I’m not 100 percent sure. That is just seemingly the only human that has information, and then somehow that information gets leaked and it’s wrong and then it sets a narrative of what our show is. And then are we just going to combat that from a rat every single time? I don’t know.”

McAfee, the former NFL punter, signed a five-year deal worth around $85 million with the network this past May, per Andrew Marchand of the New York Post. Since Sept. 7, McAfee’s show has aired on ESPN every Monday-Friday from Noon-2 p.m. ET, with the third hour airing on ESPN+ and “The Pat McAfee Show” channel on YouTube.

Just a day before his comments about Williamson, Marchand published an article with updated ratings of McAfee’s show, which airs following the conclusion of “First Take.” According to Marchand, “First Take” is handing McAfee a 583,000-viewer lead-in, and McAfee is maintaining just 302,000, a 48 percent drop. In addition, McAfee is down 12% compared to the same window last year when “SportsCenter” aired in this timeslot, Marchand reported.

McAfee called the numbers incorrect and said that somebody leaked them as part of a sabotage attempt.

“Somebody tried to get ahead of our actual ratings release with wrong numbers 12 hours beforehand,” McAfee said. “That’s a sabotage attempt, and it’s been happening from some people who didn’t necessarily love the old addition of ‘The Pat McAfee Show’ to the ESPN family.” 

ESPN releases new data for “The Pat McAfee Show”

ESPN touted numbers from McAfee’s show in a press release Wednesday, saying the show brought in 1.7 million total reach per show across all platforms in month of December, up 21% from September. McAfee’s show garnered 886,000 average viewers per episode during the live airings across all platforms (ESPN, YouTube, TikTok).

McAfee was complimentary of other high-ranking executives at ESPN in his statement.

“It’s been a wild ride this season with ESPN. We’ve had the phenomenal opportunity to do what we love on a scale that we’ve never done before,” McAfee said. “Day to day it certainly feels like a lot of folks are watching our program, but I genuinely try not to focus on numbers too much because you’re only as good as your last show. Everything can change at any given moment, so we try and work hard and be good people. We’re insanely lucky that we have found ourselves in this position, we know that. We appreciate that. We try and do it right.

“So many cool moments happened this year because of our relationship with ESPN. Jimmy Pitaro has been incredibly hospitable and motivating. Burke Magnus has continued to be a strong ally. Senior vice president Mike Foss and Julie McKay have helped us do things we’d never been able to do as an independent operation.”