I remember when ESPN started (IIRC, 1979 or so) ... you know, when I was still young and dinosaurs ruled the earth. And to be fair, it was a bold gamble to start a sports network to compete against the three major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) who had a had a virtual monopoly over the primary sports of football baseball, hockey, and basketball. Thus, the new network was tabbed the "Entertainment and Sports Network," aka, ESPN, as a possible dodge against not being able to survive only by broadcasting actual sports.
And they had to scramble for things to cover, since they started out with no contract affiliations with either the major pro leagues or the NCAA for football and basketball, including some very obscure events that even before the aforementioned age of the dinosaurs was covered on ABC's weekly program "The Wide World of Sports" (remember "the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat?).
Then IIRC ... circa 1982 the SEC, the University of Alabama, and possibly another major conference and school, won an anti-trust suit against the NCAA, which had previously had exclusive control over TV access rights, and had severely limited the number of games available for broadcast on any given Saturday. Can you even believe that prior to that SCOTUS decision, there was almost always only ONE CFB GAME broadcast nationally on a Saturday?!?
After that decision, the floodgates were open, and there was a bidding war for TV contracts. And eventually, ESPN reached agreements with various conferences and provided a actual sports programming to a vastly expanded market, which continues to this day. And then the NFL, the NHL, MLB, and the NBA eventually reached agreements with ESPN as well.
Of course, in recent years it seems that the "entertainment" facet of the network has achieved a more dominant place in ESPN's priority programming, as opposed to actual objective sports reporting. But isn't that the case with all networks, whether they purport to program entertainment, news, or sports? So-called "reality shows" are the ultimate result of this kind of thinking.