Could a Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless Independent Production Really Work?

Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless have always been tied at the hip. They co-hosted a successful sports debate show and they’re the faces of a genre which the world has come to know as “Embrace Debate.”

Despite their minor misunderstanding last summer when SAS claimed that Bayless begged him to join First Take back in the day, the two have continuously been linked with each other for a potential reunion.

The New York Post reports ESPN attempted to get Bayless back for a show with Smith on ESPN+. And this week, Front Office Sports reports the pair could go independent and debate each other on YouTube in competition with the perch Pat McAfee has built for himself on the Google-owned platform. 

While McAfee’s company makes a ton of money from the ads displayed on his videos and gets major placement through YouTube’s algorithm, McAfee doesn’t work directly with Google. A huge chunk of his dough actually comes from an endorsement deal McAfee and friends signed with FanDuel worth a reported $120 million.

McAfee’s audience is used to engaging with him on social media and has grown accustomed to accessing him on YouTube. His television appearances are a great additive that certainly help. But he’s a social-first personality through and through. While Smith and Bayless are very active on social media and have rabid followings, it would be very hard to compete with McAfee and garner a similar kind of paycheck from a sportsbook or even reach the kind of audience McAfee gets. 

If Bayless and Smith have millions of followers, what would be so hard about it? The biggest issue is that most of their fans are used to seeing them on television. They both host some of the highest rated shows on their respective networks. Going to YouTube would mean giving up the possibility of reaching hundreds of thousands of people concurrently on a consistent basis.

Because they are television stalwarts, their audiences are much older than McAfee’s audience and may not make the transition to YouTube to consistently watch them in the same way they watch ESPN and Fox on their television sets. Smith and Bayless’ numbers on YouTube would end up perpetually being compared to their television numbers.

Losing ESPN and Fox also means losing facetime (Smith’s role on NBA Countdown) and mentions (ad reads for Bayless’ show during NFL games) during marquee games when millions and millions of people are tuning in. 

Now is it possible for them to make a digital move away from television at all? Yes. Smith is already in the process of building a social-first following as we speak. He owns his own podcast. A video version of the podcast also airs on his own YouTube channel that is not affiliated with ESPN.

It would undoubtedly be a success, but it just wouldn’t be able to match McAfee’s rate of success on the platforms (in the same way McAfee may not be as successful as Bayless or Smith if he had a daily TV show – different audiences with different desires and different ways of consuming content).

Part of the lure of moving to digital is the connection to sports gambling. It’s much easier to talk about bets and parlays on a platform that is your own and doesn’t have a direct relationship with the leagues.

The problem Bayless and Smith may face is that they aren’t well-known sports bettors who can corral a group of people to bet on a specific parlay. If they started to do so and lost viewers’ money, would they lose credibility? It’s easy to lose a meaningless debate. Losing a debate with money at stake? Much more risky.

Sportsbooks are also running out of marketing money to spend as the media industry faces an ad freeze due to economic uncertainty. The best case scenario for Smith and Bayless is to stay at their respective homes even after their contracts expire in 2025 and build separate digital homes slowly.

Don’t get it twisted. ESPN and Fox need both faces as well. Without Smith and Bayless, they lose their highest rated stars. 

Numbers never lie. Other than Wilbon and Kornheiser, no one garners higher linear TV numbers in sports television than Smith. And unlike Wilbon and Kornheiser, he fills out more hours of the day on ESPN’s schedule.

At Fox, Bayless is the highest rated show on the network. He builds on the morning show’s ratings that air before him. Without Bayless at Fox, it’s easy to see ratings for the shows that follow his collapsing even worse than where they stand now. And at the end of the day, when it comes to ad dollars, a linear television viewer is still worth more than a digital streaming viewer.

So how could Smith and Bayless ever potentially work together? Pair them up in a modern day sports iteration of “Battle of the Network Stars.” During major sporting events that each network is hosting, have a major primetime debate that is simulcasted on both networks and creates digital content for ESPN Plus and Tubi.

For example, the day before Game 1 of the NBA Finals, have SAS and Skip duke it out about various topics that they may or may not have talked about on their shows. The “battle” would include guests from both networks and the moderator would be determined by the sporting event in which the two hosts are debating at.

For example, if it’s the NBA Finals – Molly Qerim would serve as moderator since it’s an ESPN branded event. The next major event they would debate at is a Fox branded event like the World Series, NFL Week 1 or the NFC Championship and the moderator would be someone representing Fox like current “Undisputed” host Jen Hale.

Think of it like a major boxing matchup. It only happens once or twice a year and is centered around a major event that both Bayless and Smith can adequately argue about. Their battle also gives maximum attention and promotion to big sporting events for each network.

Ironically, ESPN and Fox have partnered up to create joint productions and ancillary programming revolving around major boxing bouts in the past. The two companies work together to figure out college sports conference schedules on a weekly basis and if prognosticators are correct, they will most likely be partners in promoting the College Football Playoff in the future.

There’s a precedent for the two sides working together. Coincidentally, Michael Strahan is a major personality who works for both network’s parent companies and Rupert Murdoch is a shareholder of Disney through the Disney/Fox merger of 2019.

The rival shows could even sign a deal to distribute content that’s already available for free on YouTube onto their company’s respective distribution avenues and split the revenue. “First Take” could launch its own channel on Tubi with an around-the-clock schedule of clips and episodes that are also available on YouTube while “Undisputed” could also get similar treatment in a hub that lives on Hulu and ESPN+.

ESPN and Fox split the revenue and use the channels to promote the bouts Skip and SAS have during major tentpole events. Bayless and Smith could even obtain some ownership and production stake in the debate showdowns for their respective companies and grow their digital empires within ESPN and Fox, not outside of it.