Drafting it: Sportscaster Rich Eisen on football and finances

NEW YORK : Here is a good rule of thumb for entrepreneurs: Opportunity does not always look like what you expect.

In fact, sometimes it looks like its exact opposite. It might come in the form of a phone call famed sportscaster Rich Eisen got while at the Los Angeles airport on Dec. 23, 2019, telling him his network was shutting down and his show was ending.

Getting bad news like that can make anyone feel like their world is falling apart. But for Eisen – who first came to prominence as an anchor with ESPN’s flagship show SportsCenter – it turned into a career pivot, mainly because he did not know what else to do.

“I hung up the phone and became the owner of my own business,” Eisen recalls about buying back his show from DirecTV, which was shuttering its Audience Network. “I honestly never thought I was going to own something, or hire employees, or deal with negotiations for a growing business. It’s been a heck of a challenge.”

Indeed, fast-forward a few years, and the 53-year-old finds himself with “a lot of spinning plates.” Those include hosting a three-hour daily talk show on streaming service The Roku Channel, dishing the scoop to 1.3 million Twitter followers and being on-air talent for the NFL Network for 20 years.

Eisen is particularly ubiquitous in April, in the weeks leading up to the National Football League’s annual draft, when it can seem like he is on people’s screens 24/7. This year’s edition will kick off April 27 in Kansas City, Missouri, and Eisen will be assuming hosting duties once again.

It is at moments like that – helming one of the NFL’s marquee events, watching early-round draft picks come into millions of dollars for the first time in their lives – that he thinks about how far his environment has