Pros
Access to sporting events. Sports content is more fun to work with than, say, mortgage financing or actuarial accounting. The company has an extraordinary amount of money with which to pursue different initiatives. Also, with Disney as a parent organization, ESPN offers certain "built in" business synergies with a giant entertainment conglomerate that reaches millions of people every year. The end product that ESPN produces (television production of games as well as Sportscenter) is highly regarded and of pretty high quality (although getting more and more overproduced). Working at ESPN is also a great conversation starter at barbecues. People love to talk about ESPN....
Cons
Senior management is pretty incompetent overall. ESPN is a traditional top-heavy organization - too many VPs, SVPs and EVPs. Big egos with mediocre educational backgrounds constitute most of senior management. I've found that most senior management soaks in the perks of their titles - first class airline travel for anyone V.P. or higher, window offices, the ability to approve their own expense reports, great tickets to sporting events, etc. But in the end, most of them don't actually have any real deliverables. 80% of ESPN's revenue comes from deals that it struck with cable companies years and years ago. The senior management now could be cut by 2/3 and nobody would notice a thing in the end.
