ESPN sorry for fantasy football sketch compared to slave auction as Kevin Durant and Odell Beckham Jnr respond
Segment features white auctioneer holding up sticks with faces of several black players to what appeared to be an assemblage of mostly white bidders
What it intended as an entertaining fantasy football scene, ESPN realised too late, at times bore an uncomfortable resemblance to a slave auction.
As part of its 28-hour multichannel, multiplatform “Fantasy Football Marathon” – an effort to play off the popularity of the game and spur interest in its own fantasy offerings – the sports channel had fantasy competitors bidding for NFL players both white and of colour.
Completing the outdoor scene was an auctioneer, which might have seemed like a lark back in the planning stages.
Some in the audience still might have seen it as fun or even funny and will complain they don’t know what the big deal was or is.
The sketch featured a white auctioneer holding up ice lolly sticks with faces of players to what appeared to be an assemblage of mostly white bidders.
For many viewers, it was a bad look, especially coming after a weekend of white supremacist-led violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.