Roland Martin didn’t wait long to respond after ESPN’s recent round of layoffs, which included high-profile Black commentators like Ryan Clark and Cam Newton, sparked a wave of social media posts calling for Black people to launch their own sports networks.
Martin fired back online, saying Black-owned news networks already exist; they just need support. In a late-night video posted to his platforms, the Roland Martin Unfiltered host pushed back hard, arguing the conversation was long on opinions and short on receipts.
“For the past 36 hours, I have watched numerous Black people… all weighing in” on the ESPN news, Martin said, before turning the question back on his audience: are the people calling for new networks actually watching, and paying for, the ones that already exist?
Martin laid out the receipts on his own operation. He launched Roland Martin Unfiltered on September 4, 2018, and pointed to an audience that spans nearly a dozen platforms, including roughly 1.95 million YouTube followers, 1.6 million on Facebook, 880,000 on Instagram, 750,000 on X and 110,000 on TikTok.
He was clear that the show isn’t backed by any of the major Black-owned media companies. “I’m not partnered with… Urban One, Kimless, Odyssey, iHeart, Sirius XM… Black Enterprise, Essence, Blavity,” he said, adding that he’d pitched all of them directly and been turned down. None of them, he noted, currently runs a daily news show.
Martin also talked about the financial reality behind eight years of independent programming. He said he launched the show with a single sponsor and $350,000 of his own money, subsidizing the network in its early years. The show didn’t turn a profit until March 2020, about a year and a half after launch.
He also broke down the show’s donor base: nearly 49,500 total contributors over eight years, with gifts ranging from $1 up to a single $30,000 donation.
Martin also detailed the uphill battle of securing advertising, the lifeline, he argued, of any sustainable media company, subscription or not. He described pitching major ad agencies including Publicis, WPP and IPG directly in New York, and recounted noticing a Novo Nordisk ad campaign aimed at Black audiences (he says he first saw it in an Anthony Anderson commercial on Fox News), then confronting GroupM about why that ad spend hadn’t come his way despite years of conversations.
His larger argument: streaming giants like Netflix, Prime Video, Peacock and Paramount+ all run ads on top of subscriptions, so the idea that Black-owned media should survive on goodwill alone doesn’t hold up.
Martin pointed to performance numbers to back up his frustration, citing 250,000 live viewers and a No. 5 ranking among all YouTube channels covering Donald Trump‘s 2025 address to Congress.
Martin challenges anyone posting about the need for new Black sports or news networks: “Do I watch the existing Black news shows? Do I contribute to the existing Black news shows?” He said he could pull up his donor database in real time to check names against it, and encouraged critics to do the same self-check before posting.
“Stop telling Black people to start sports networks if you aren’t even watching existing Black-owned digital shows and networks!” Martin captioned on Instagram.
Photo Credit: DepositPhotos.com
