Rachel Nichols announced her latest sports media venture on Wednesday.
In addition to her role at Showtime Sports, Nichols will be returning to the DMV area to headline a show on the rebranded Monumental Sports Network. The new network will be re-branding from NBC Sports Washington, the regional sports network that broadcasts Capitals, Wizards and Mystics games, in September.
Nichols took to Twitter on Wednesday, describing her new role as “talking to the players, politicians & celebs that make my hometown one of the most interesting places in the world.”
“She has great national presence and credibility, particularly in basketball, but she also has great familiarity across multiple other sports,” Zach Leonsis, president of media and new enterprises for Monumental, said in a recent video interview via The Washington Post. “I think it’s an awesome opportunity for her to come home, in a sense…I want our network to have a national look and feel, and I think Rachel really plays into that theme.”
While Nichols is now with Showtime Sports, is perhaps best known for her 16-year stint with ESPN. Nichols was pulled from ESPN programming in August 2021 following a year-plus of reporting and discussion over Nichols’ 2020 comments on Maria Taylor in a phone conversation that also wound up recorded on ESPN servers, the internal and external sharing of those comments, ESPN’s own actions in the wake of that (including replacing Nichols with Malika Andrews as the NBA Finals sideline reporter for ESPN/ABC) and more. She officially left ESPN in January 2022 after reaching a settlement over the year left on her contract.
This is sort of a homecoming for Nicholas, a native of Potomac, Md., who previously served as the Washington Capitals beat reporter for The Washington Post from 1996-99. Now, she’ll return to her roots, as she will host an interview series that will feature local athletes and celebrities in the Washington, D.C. area.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.