“Less than 100” people lost their jobs Wednesday and Thursday, said Mike Soltys, an ESPN spokesman.

The layoffs were companywide and in jobs “across the board,” Soltys said, but he would not be more specific. He would not say how many of the job losses came from the company headquarters in Bristol.

ESPN employs 5,700 people worldwide, and 3,400 in Connecticut, most of those in Bristol.

The job eliminations will be counter-balanced, Soltys said, by new job creation for new initiatives.

He would not say whether any of the layoffs were related to job performance.

“Jobs were eliminated,” said Soltys.

As part of ESPN’s response to the troubled economy, ESPN shuffled some jobs from one department to another, according to Soltys. ESPN officials “don’t have a precise timeline” for creating new jobs, he said.

“Most of the affected positions will be re-purposed for us to grow in the areas such as creating new content or boosting our ad sales staff to increase revenue,” he said.

The workers who lost their jobs this week can apply for new ESPN jobs as they become available.

“Employees have known for months that changes were coming,” Soltys said, “but everyone feels compassion for friends and colleagues that were impacted.”

Even as the company handed out nearly 100 pink slips this week, construction continues on a new ESPN office building on the main campus, on a new data center and new cafeteria at the north campus in the former Superior Electric factory and at a nearby child-care facility for the children of ESPN workers.

“We are going to continue to manage our business efficiently, to come out of this business climate as a stronger company,” Soltys said.

When the re-shuffling at ESPN is finished — and Soltys could not say when that would be — the company should emerge with the same number of workers as it had before the layoffs, he said.

“We started the process with 3,400 Connecticut jobs. When we are done with our re-purposing, we will have 3,400 Connecticut jobs,” Soltys said. “Our overall company numbers will be approximately the same, too.”