The Rich Eisen Show is on the move, and it’s headed back to one of Eisen’s former employers. That would be ESPN. Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Monday that Eisen’s daily The Rich Eisen Show will move from Roku to ESPN’s platforms this fall.
Marchand writes that the show is set to be part of ESPN’s upcoming enhanced direct-to-consumer offering. But he noted that it could potentially air on ESPN Radio as well, and that it will move under a licensing deal along the lines of what ESPN does with The Pat McAfee Show:
Eisen will take “The Rich Eisen Show” from Roku to ESPN in the fall. There is a strong possibility that the program, which runs from noon to 3 p.m. ET, could also land on ESPN Radio, where it would be viewed as an anchor for the network, but those details are not yet ironed out. Similarly to “The Pat McAfee Show,” Eisen’s program will be licensed by ESPN, meaning he is expected to maintain ownership and editorial control. The terms of the deal are not yet known.
Interestingly enough, Eisen almost took this show to ESPN in the past. He told Ariel Helwani in 2022 the sides were in talks at one unspecified point and “I was ready to go.” Now, that’s indeed happening, and Eisen’s show looks set to be a major part of this new ESPN DTC launch.
Eisen worked at ESPN from 1996-2003 before joining NFL Network. He launched The Rich Eisen Show in 2014, first with DirecTV’s Audience Network. It soon landed on Fox Sports Radio as well. The show’s video broadcast moved to YouTube in 2020 around the Audience shutdown, then landed with NBCSN and eventually Peacock later that year, and then went to The Roku Channel in 2022.
Around the Roku move, The Rich Eisen Show shifted its radio home to SiriusXM. It then shifted to SiriusXM’s Infinity Sports Network in December, replacing The Jim Rome Show. The show also struck a deal with Yahoo Sports for a content hub last November, and has various other deals, including with airport and hotel-focused network Reach TV.
While all that appears to be decided yet here is that The Rich Eisen Show will move its video home to ESPN (presumably in that new streaming service), there could be several further dimensions to this as well. Eisen’s main media role is still with NFL Network, but ESPN remains in conversations about buying all of its parent division, NFL Media. The radio side of this would also be a big deal if that comes to fruition. And Eisen also has a podcast network featuring shows from him, Suzy Shuster and Amy Trask, and O’Shea Jackson Jr., TJ Jefferson, and Jim Jackson; that’s not specifically mentioned here, but could potentially be something else for him to work with ESPN parent Disney on.
Many ex-ESPN figures have made it clear they don’t want to return to that company. But that hasn’t been as much of a conversation with Eisen: while he’s made it clear he loves his NFL Network work, he’s generally had a lot of positive things to say about ESPN as well. And his 2022 revelation of past talks about bringing The Rich Eisen Show to ESPN certainly suggested him doing something with them again was a possibility. That’s now coming to pass, and we’ll see just what it winds up entailing.