Throughout its history, ESPN and its sister networks have been the targets of criticism for programming choices, biased coverage, conflict of interest, and controversies with individual broadcasters and analysts. Additionally, ESPN has been criticized for focusing too much on the Dallas Cowboys, LeBron James, Los Angeles and New York teams in general (particularly the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and New York Yankees), Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge, Lionel Messi, the Southeastern Conference (SEC), basketball and American football and very little on other sports such as Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Hockey League (NHL), and Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Other criticism has focused on issues of race and ethnicity in ESPN's varying mediated forms, as well as carriage fees and issues regarding the exportation of ESPN content.

Some critics argue that ESPN's success is their ability to provide other enterprise and investigative sports news while competing with other hard sports-news-producing outlets such as Yahoo! Sports and Fox Sports. Some scholars have challenged ESPN's journalistic integrity calling for an expanded standard of professionalism to prevent biased coverage and conflicts of interest. Mike Freeman's 2001 book ESPN: The Uncensored History, which alleged sexual harassment, drug use and gambling, was the first critical study of ESPN. And then in 2011, a detailed oral history about ESPN by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales called Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN was released.

ESPN has also been accused of overpaying for sports broadcasting rights, and that Wall Street analysts have raised concerns that this could be a major drain on Disney as a whole, since the amount of money that can be recuperated from retransmission consent fees and advertising is limited; Disney still profits from the ESPN division but as of 2015 was cutting the network's higher-priced content to ensure long-term profitability. In October 2015, ESPN laid off about 300 employees, citing the rights costs combined with the increasing trend of cord-cutting.

ESPN currently charges the highest retransmission consent fee of any major cable television network in the United States. In 2011, the main channel alone carried a monthly rate of $4.69 per subscriber (nearly five times the price of the next-costliest channel, TNT), with ESPN's other English language channels costing an additional $1.13 per subscriber; these prices rise on a nearly constant basis. By 2017, ESPN's fees had risen to over $7 for the main channel and roughly $3 for its sister outlets. As of 2024, the rate was $9.42 per subscriber, which was steady compared to the previous year and had risen more slowly than TNT and regional sports networks. Part of the cause of this high fee is the amount of money that ESPN pays for sports rights, particularly the NFL. In August 2011, ESPN agreed to pay the NFL $1.9 billion annually for the rights to carry Monday Night Football through 2021; this despite the fact that the broadcast networks pay approximately half that price for their packages, which include lucrative and highly watched contests such as the Super Bowl, conference championships and Thanksgiving games while ESPN's package does not (ESPN's package does include the NFL draft). Cable and satellite television providers condemned ESPN's most recent contract extension with the NFL and have contemplated moving the network to a higher programming tier to mitigate cost increases.

In 2012, ESPN reportedly paid about $7.3 billion over 12 years for the broadcasting rights to all seven bowl games of the College Football Playoff, an average of about $608 million per year. That includes $215 million per year which they previously agreed to air the Rose, Sugar and Orange bowls, plus $470–475 million annually for the rest of the package. Also in 2012, ESPN and Major League Baseball agreed to an eight-year extension, increasing ESPN's average yearly payment from about $360 million to approximately $700 million. In October 2014, ESPN signed a nine-year extension with the NBA, worth three times as much as the previous deal.

These deals were made when new sports channels like NBCSN and Fox Sports 1 emerged, and so analysts believe that ESPN deliberately drove the prices up as a defensive measure to block these competitors from acquiring live rights. Wall Street analysts have also raised concerns that the amount ESPN is paying for all of these rights could be a major drain on The Walt Disney Company as a whole, since the amount of money that can be recuperated from retransmission consent fees and advertising is limited; Disney still profits from the ESPN division but as of 2015 was cutting ESPN's higher-priced content to ensure long-term profitability. In October 2015, ESPN laid off about 300 employees, citing the rights costs combined with the increasing trend of cord-cutting. Another 100 employees, mostly in news gathering and including large numbers of public faces of the network, were laid off in April 2017.

John Skipper's time as President of ESPN was tumultuous. During Skipper's tenure (from January 2012 to December 2017) ESPN lost nearly 15% of its subscribers and laid off more than 500 employees. Additionally, ESPN's television ratings declined significantly across the board and ESPN endured criticism from some quarters over the declining quality of its programming.

ESPN has been accused of having a bias towards certain sports teams and a "love affair" with superstar players and big market franchises, particularly teams and superstars that play in Los Angeles and New York City. ESPN's ombudsman, Le Anne Schreiber, responded to these criticisms by saying that the industry is ratings-driven. Since MLB Network launched on January 1, 2009, Baseball Tonight has been the target of criticism because of its perceived bias in favor of certain teams such as the Boston Red Sox, New York Mets, and the New York Yankees, both based within driving distance of ESPN's studios in Bristol, Connecticut. One opinion was expressed by former major-leaguer Heath Bell: