Le Batard discusses new working relationship with John Skipper: ‘This is just the start’

If you’ve been paying attention, Dan Le Batard has been subtly leaking his and his radio show’s ambitions on his own pirate platform since exiting ESPN. The functionally dysfunctional show — driven by Le Batard and disrupted by Stugotz — vaguely discussed their pending array of moves on today’s program in light of a joint statement with former ESPN President John Skipper, now of DAZN, regarding their latest media venture, Meadowlark.

“A guy (Skipper) who is very good at seeing value in things. A guy who takes very large swings in business. A pioneer across 10 years of making more money for ESPN than anyone ever has. The most powerful man in sports has seen value here in a way that will make him split time with another entity that is a multi-billion dollar sports rights company,” Le Batard said on his show today. “You now see that man working as CEO to build us and beyond.”

Le Batard went on to indicate that this is building a set of moves, not just with respect to Meadowlark, and wherever the show itself ends up is, at most, a penultimate checkpoint.

“This is the start-up,” he added. “This is what we’re showing people. The underbelly and the inner-workings of; we are presently starting up right in front of you. This, what we’re doing, pirate radio with our feeds. A CEO of our company has seen the value of us owning our own stuff and being able to sell it to somebody, that’s a part of the story. But the bigger part of the story is that this is about to be a legitimate company.

“There are gonna be announcements here over the next six weeks, eight weeks, 10 weeks. There are gonna be announcements about what it is that we’re doing. People want to know what we’re doing right now because it’s never been done like this before, Stugotz. Nobody’s just sitting out here floating at sea waiting for a CEO to come rescue them.”

The show still says they don’t know where they’re going, but Meadowlark, which was not referred to by name today on the air, is only one element of what’s to come. Stugotz only asks that anyone but the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand break the news.

“Just don’t give anything to Marchand. That guy, I mean, seriously,” he said, hitting all the Stugotz notes. “I’m gonna start reporting on Marchand’s life so he could see how it feels to have to explain to your parents that you’re no longer going to be at ESPN before you have the chance to explain it to your parents … that guy knows more about my life than I do! Marchand.”