ESPN has issued an apology in response to public critique after the broadcast of an ill-received Fantasy Football sketch showing a white male announcer auctioning off New York Giants wide reciever, Odell Beckham Jr. Originally aired on Monday night, a clip of ESPN2's Fantasy Sports Marathon began circulating on social media. The skit drew criticism for its resemblance to a slave auction.
Soooooo ESPN just did an "auction" sketch ???? pic.twitter.com/zvezCItems
— Jᴀsᴏɴ (@rjasonscales) August 14, 2017
When Beckham caught wind of the sketch, he had no words.
Speechless. https://t.co/CddZ917y4u
— Odell Beckham Jr (@OBJ_3) August 15, 2017
And you know #BlackTwitter was not here for it.
They hosted a slave auction on ESPN and mascaraed it as a NFL draft
— David (@DWash300) August 15, 2017
Not a good look ESPN.
So @espn who's idea was it to auction off football players ?? U guys might wanna address this optic sooner than later
— OldMan Ebro (@oldmanebro) August 15, 2017
After the fallout, ESPN released the following statement, "Auction drafts are a common part of fantasy football, and ESPN’s segments replicated an auction draft with a diverse slate of top professional football players,” the network said. “Without that context, we understand the optics could be portrayed as offensive, and we apologize.”
Wait…did they just hit us with the sorry you took our harmless sketch out of context and got yourself offended? Oh, okay then.
