Saturday was a dark day for ESPN accounts on X.
The World Wide Leader seemingly paused all of its activity on the site as parent company Disney was one of several major companies who suspended their advertising on the social media platform following owner Elon Musk endorsing an anti-semitic conspiracy theory.
Notably, on a college football Saturday, the main ESPN account, College GameDay, ESPN CFB and SportsCenter accounts did not post on X, while ESPN’s Instagram and Facebook pages remained active throughout the day, as noted by Awful Announcing.
The ESPN CFB account did post a link to a story about Florida State QB Jordan Travis’s horrific injury at 10:14 p.m., which was shared by the SportsCenter account — which remains the only activity on either account since Nov. 17.
Accounts for the NBA on ESPN, NFL on ESPN and SEC Network were all silent on Saturday as well, with the NFL account posting a lone Adam Schefter report on Sunday as the only one between them.
ESPN’s main account reposted college football insider Pete Thamel’s report about Syracuse’s plan to dismiss coach Dino Babers on Sunday morning.
IBM, Amazon, NBCUniversal and Apple are among the companies halting their advertising on X following the backlash to Musk’s site.
On Thursday, watchdog group Media Matters for America published an article that accused X of running ads for Apple, Bravo, IBM, Oracle, and Xfinity next to “pro-nazi content.”
ESPN’s individual insiders — Schefter, Thamel, Marc Spears, Molly McGrath and others — posted on Saturday, while ESPN’s PR account and ESPN Deportes did as well.
Per Awful Announcing, the accounts for Disney affiliates Disney+, Marvel, National Geographic, Star Wars and Pixar have all not posted since Friday.