The Pat McAfee Show‘s new DraftKings partnership is taking an interesting early turn.
On Thursday, McAfee announced his show will be hosting a Family Feud-style competition between his cast and the cast of NFL Live next Thursday, June 11, at 1 p.m. ET on ESPN, dubbed Progrum Feud. That part is innocent enough. The catch is, this competition seems to be one grand marketing exercise for DraftKings’ new prediction market, DraftKings Predictions. Users in most states will be able to “trade” (read: wager) on the outcome of the contest.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN..
I will be hosting Progrum Feud next Thursday at 1PM EST..
The Progrum will be taking on the NFL Live squad in a Family Feud style game based on what sports fans across the country actually think..
Our friends @DraftKings have put up a prediction market… pic.twitter.com/nawJs54CMH
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) June 4, 2026
The announcement comes just days after McAfee’s show unveiled a new partnership with DraftKings, the official sportsbook and odds provider of ESPN. While promoting the event, McAfee displayed a map of the United States showing which states were available for “trading” and which states were available for a free version of the contest.
“Everybody in the United States of America is able to predict or trade on if they think [The Pat McAfee Show] or NFL Live will win Progrum Feud,” McAfee explained.
Progrum Feud and will feature Tone Digs, AJ Hawk, Boston Conner, Ty Schmit, and Darius Butler on Team McAfee, and Laura Rutledge, Dan Orlovsky, Mina Kimes, Adam Schefter, and Peter Schrager on Team NFL Live.
The event, which originated as McAfee’s idea and was approved by ESPN, comes at a time in which prediction markets are facing heavy criticism. Companies like Kalshi and Polymarket have been accused of circumventing state prohibitions on sports gambling, evidenced by the vast majority of trading volume on those platforms coming from sports prediction markets. There have also been numerous instances of alleged insider trading on prediction market platforms in recent months, adding to the scrutiny.
Nevertheless, traditional sportsbooks like DraftKings and FanDuel have rushed to create prediction markets of their own as Kalshi and Polymarket threaten to take market share away.
The decision by McAfee to host a made-for-prediction-markets event on his own ESPN show is a line that has not yet been crossed. Sports shows have long promoted traditional sportsbooks since states began legalizing sports betting following a 2018 Supreme Court ruling ending a federal ban on the practice. These shows will often highlight picks or parlays they believe have a chance to win. But creating a contest for the express purpose of having your show’s fans “trade” on the outcome of said contest is completely different.
It’s one thing for a sports show to promote sports betting; after all, viewers watching a sports show are probably already inclined to enjoy betting on sports. It’s another thing to create a contest that is tangentially tied to sports, and is essentially encouraging viewers to wager money on whether they think one show’s cast is better at Family Feud than the other.
McAfee himself is not participating in the contest, and he stressed that the survey responses were only known by a select few individuals, including the company that conducted the survey. There’s nothing nefarious going on from that perspective. If you choose to trade on this, it’ll be a fair fight. But this is a pretty blatant cash grab with some ethical concerns sprinkled in for good measure.
Consider what ESPN’s content president Burke Magnus has said of McAfee’s ability to reach a younger demo as recently as this week, and the decision to host this event becomes even more troubling. The Pat McAfee Show is tailored towards a younger audience than the rest of ESPN’s studio programming. It’s those same young men who are disproportionately impacted by problem gambling.
The event also opens the door for ESPN, or any network for that matter, to leverage their most popular personalities and create contests that are solely designed for viewers to trade on. Maybe Tonight Show viewers will soon be able to trade on whether Jimmy Fallon’s celebrity guests win one of the show’s mini-games. Whoopie Goldberg could start hosting trivia contests on The View for viewers to trade on.
If revenues from prediction markets help keep the lights on for a declining industry, these possibilities aren’t as far-fetched as they seem.
But really, the ultimate question is who, exactly, is this for? Are Pat McAfee Show fans truly thirsting to watch a mocked-up version of Family Feud? I’d argue, no.
This contest, mind you, will take place a mere two hours before the freakin’ World Cup kicks off. It’s the day after Game 4 of the NBA Finals. It’s the day of a potential Game 5 in the Stanley Cup Final. And instead of talking about any of that, ESPN viewers will be treated to a silly game show? Are we serving the sports fan here? Or are we serving the pocketbooks of DraftKings executives?
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.