As ESPN deepens its ties with sports leagues, questions are circling once again about the network’s balance between its journalistic enterprise and focus on entertainment and keeping its league partners happy. And there may be no better example of that complex balance than a major investigative report into the MLBPA and Tony Clark.
Early on Thursday morning, in the middle of the World Series with interest in baseball at its annual peak, ESPN investigative reporter Don Van Natta Jr. and MLB ace Jeff Passan dropped a bombshell. They reported that a company called Players Way, owned by the MLBPA, was under federal investigation. It’s alleged that the organization collected millions of dollars with little to show for it.
The depth of the report is astonishing. And it builds the pressure on MLBPA chief Tony Clark, who is at the center of a storm of legal inquiries and allegations. Late last year, a whistleblower filed a complaint against Clark alleging nepotism and misuse of funds. The Players Way story only adds on to those troubles.
ESPN talked to 30 sources for the story, went through the questionable accounting for the organization, and even showed a picture of the mailbox in a strip mall that serves as its “company headquarters.” Clark introduced Players Way in a YouTube video five years ago, talking about all the “multidimensional platform” and “opportunities for mentorship” that Players Way would offer. However, the ESPN report found that it had only conducted a few “sparsely attended live events” while the union has put a reported $10 million into the company. ESPN also talked to sources who said that Players Way was “a landing spot for Clark’s loyalists” and “has operated without standard accounting practices and with no annual budgets circulated among senior finance officials. The last video produced by Players Way came in January 2022.
The detailed report and picture painted of deep corruption throughout the MLBPA is a massive story and brewing scandal. And given it has two of ESPN’s senior reporters in Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Passan, and it would stand to reason that it would serve ESPN well as a guiding light that the network is still pursuing hard-hitting stories and willing to cover their league partners with commitment, integrity, and ferocity.
But outside of the ESPN.com article, that simply did not happen. Even on ESPN.com’s front page, the story was not to be found in the highly prominent Top Headlines box a handful of hours after the story broke despite being one of the site’s highest profile stories of the day.
According to a closed captioning search, the MLBPA, Clark, and Players Way were not mentioned at all on ESPN or ESPN2 since the story broke on Thursday morning. In fact, the only mention of Tony Clark came during a 3 a.m. re-airing of the Boston Red Sox documentary Believers.
It’s a busy time in the sports calendar. We’re in the middle of football season, the basketball season just started, and baseball is reaching its climax with the World Series. There is no shortage of actual games and sports news to talk about. But as we saw with their coverage of the NBA gambling scandal, ESPN does not seem equipped to discuss actual journalism anymore. Outside the Lines was canceled long ago. The network has no legal analyst like Lester Munson or Roger Cossack to give insights anymore.
Instead, ESPN is relying on personalities to drive coverage of everything, whether it be Pat McAfee interviewing Jeff Landry in a bizarre fake cajun accent, Inside the NBA and Mike Greenberg joking about how ESPN always has to cover the Dallas Cowboys, or whatever Stephen A. Smith wants to opine about on First Take. When it came to the NBA gambling story that dominated the news last week, ESPN did not break with regularly scheduled programs, instead sticking with its daily lineup that produced plenty of awkward moments.
ESPN’s focus on the entertainment aspect in 2025 is what the network clearly feels like it needs to do to survive. But in the wake of their equity deal with the NFL where they are literally selling off part of the company to one of their league partners, there will always be skepticism over just how much ESPN feels can push the envelope journalistically and uncover stories like this in the future. And it won’t just be with the NFL, but other league partners that ESPN is willing to deepen their ties with. ESPN’s own deal with MLB is still being negotiated for next season and beyond after the network opted out of their current contract.
And here in the ESPN.com story on the MLBPA was the perfect example to showcase to a skeptical world that the heart of journalism is still beating at the network. To not give the story even a passing glance on Get Up, First Take, or SportsCenter is a missed opportunity.
Van Natta himself has vigorously defended journalism at ESPN to answer doubts over whether or not ESPN can cover sports fairly anymore. He needs the power and reach of his television network to help back him up.
About Matt Yoder