ESPN.com is the official website of

ESPN ESPN (originally an initialism for Entertainment and Sports Programming Network) is an American international basic cable sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., owned jointly by The Walt Disney Company (80%) and Hearst Communications (20%). The co ...

. It is owned by ESPN Internet Ventures, a division of

ESPN Inc. ESPN Inc. is an American multinational sports media conglomerate majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Hearst Communications as an equity stakeholder. For management and financial reporting purposes, the company is the main entity with ...

History

Since launching in April 1995 as ESPNET.SportsZone.com (ESPNET SportsZone), the website has developed numerous sections including: Page 2, SportsNation,

ESPN3 ESPN3 (formerly ESPN360 and ESPN3.com) is an online streaming service owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which operates the network, through its 80% controlling ownership interest) and Hearst Communications (w ...

, 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 MLB.com is the official site of Major League Baseball and is overseen by Major League Baseball Advanced Media, L.P. (a subsidiary of MLB). MLB.com is a source of baseball-related information, including baseball news, statistics, and sports column ...

, NBA.com,

NFL.com The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

, WNBA.com, MLSsoccer.com

NHL.com The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

Baseball America ''Baseball America'' is a sports enterprise that covers baseball at every level, including MLB, with a particular focus on up-and-coming players in the MiLB, college, high school, and international leagues. It is currently published in the form o ...

Golf Digest ''Golf Digest'' is a monthly golf magazine published by Warner Bros. Discovery through its sports unit under its Warner Bros. Discovery Golf division. It is a generalist golf publication covering recreational golf and men's and women's competiti ...

Scouts Inc. Scouts Inc. is a partner of ESPN Inc. that specializes in scouting and evaluating current and future players and teams in professional, college and high school sports. The content is provided on the ESPN television networks, ESPN Radio and ESPN in ...

, 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; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

National Football League The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...

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. The privately owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and hi ...

Indy Racing League The IndyCar Series, currently known as the NTT IndyCar Series under sponsorship, is the highest class of regional North American open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars in the United States, which has been conducted under the auspices of ...

, NCAA,

Golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping w ...

Soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is t ...

Women's sports The participation of women and girls in sports, physical Physical fitness, fitness and exercise, has been recorded to have existed throughout history. However, participation rates and activities vary in accordance with nation, era, geography, ...

(ESPNW),

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

, 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, individually or as teams. Although orga ...

. 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 Allison Glock (born in West Virginia) is an American non-fiction writer. Life She graduated from Indiana University, and from Syracuse University with an MA. Her work has appeared in ''The New York Times'', ''The New York Times Magazine'', ''Esq ...

Jemele Hill Jemele Juanita Hill (; born 1975) is an American sports journalist who writes for '' The Atlantic''. She worked nearly 12 years for sports conglomerate ESPN. She wrote a column for ESPN.com's Page 2 and formerly hosted ESPN's '' His and Hers''. ...

John Buccigross John Buccigross (; born January 27, 1966) is an American sportscaster. He has been an anchor for ESPN since 1996.

Chris Mortensen Chris Mortensen (born November 7, 1951) is an American journalist providing reports for ESPN's ''Sunday NFL Countdown'', ''Monday Night Countdown'', ''SportsCenter'', ESPN Radio, and ESPN.com. Early life Mortensen attended North Torrance H ...

, John Clayton, Adam Schefter, Andy Katz,

Bill Simmons William John Simmons III (born September 25, 1969) is an American sports analyst, author, podcaster, and former sports writer who is the founder and CEO of the sports and pop culture website '' The Ringer''. Simmons first gained attention with ...

Jayson Stark Jayson Stark (born July 19, 1951) is an American sportswriter and author who covers baseball for ''The Athletic''. He is most known for his time with '' The Philadelphia Inquirer'' and ESPN. Biography Stark grew up in Northeast Philadelphia an ...

Buster Olney Robert "Buster" Olney (born ) is an American sports journalist for ESPN, ''ESPN: The Magazine'', and ESPN.com. He previously covered the New York Giants and New York Yankees for ''The New York Times''. He is also a regular analyst for the E ...

Paul Lukas Paul Lukas (born Pál Lukács; 26 May 1894 – 15 August 1971) was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama for his performance in the film ''Watc ...

Gene Wojciechowski Gene Wojciechowski () is a sports writer, best known for his work with ESPN. Born in Salina, Kansas, Wojciechowski received a bachelor's degree in communications and journalism from the University of Tennessee and began his career as a sports w ...

, Scoop Jackson,

Pat Forde Pat Forde is a sports journalist who is a national columnist for ''Sports Illustrated''. He previously worked for ESPN, ''The Courier-Journal'' in Louisville, Kentucky, and ''Yahoo Sports''. Personal life and education Forde is a native of C ...

Jim Caple Jim Caple is a former columnist and senior writer for ESPN.com. He has worked previously with the ''Seattle Post-Intelligencer'' and the '' St. Paul Pioneer Press''. Caple attended R.A. Long High School in Longview, Washington. He graduated from ...

, Michael Smith, and in the last stages of his journalism career,

Hunter S. Thompson Hunter Stockton Thompson (July 18, 1937 – February 20, 2005) was an American journalist and author who founded the gonzo journalism movement. He rose to prominence with the publication of '' Hell's Angels'' (1967), a book for which he s ...

. The website was part of the

MSN MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft N ...

portal from 2001 to 2004. ESPN launched a

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in the ...

website in 2000, ESPN Deportes.com. The content of some ESPN.com articles is argued to have been plagiarized.

ESPNW

ESPNW’s 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 Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...

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 alternately platform-agnostically branded 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 original banner of "SportsRadio ESPN". ...

affiliate. In markets where the

ABC Owned Television Stations ABC Owned Television Stations is a division of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution operated by Disney Networks Group that oversees the owned-and-operated stations of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), a division of The Walt Disney C ...

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 WMVP (1000 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Chicago, Illinois, carrying a sports format. Owned by Good Karma Brands, the station serves the Chicago metro area as the market affiliate of ESPN Radio, the flagship station of the Chica ...

and

WLS-TV WLS-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios on North State ...

*ESPNCleveland.com – with affiliates

WKNR WKNR (850 AM) – branded as ''850 ESPN Cleveland'' – is a commercial sports radio station licensed to Cleveland, Ohio, serving Greater Cleveland. Owned by Good Karma Brands, WKNR is the Cleveland affiliate for ESPN Radio and the AM flagshi ...

and WWGK *ESPNDallas.com *ESPNLosAngeles.com – with KSPN and

KABC-TV KABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in Los Angeles, California, United States, serving as the West Coast flagship of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains stu ...

*ESPNNewYork.com – with

WEPN-FM WEPN-FM (98.7 Hertz, MHz) branded as ''ESPN New York'', is an sports radio, all-sports radio station city of license, licensed to New York City. The station is owned by Emmis Communications and its operations are controlled by Good Karma Br ...

and

WABC-TV WABC-TV (channel 7) is a television station in New York City, serving as the flagship of the ABC network. Owned and operated by the network's ABC Owned Television Stations division, the station maintains studios in the Lincoln Square neighbor ...

References

* {{Webby Awards, cat=Sports, year=2001, type=People's Voice Winner Internet properties established in 1993 ESPN media outlets