Rich Eisen went from SportsCenter to NFL Network to owning his show. Now he’s back at ESPN, betting ’90s nostalgia still sells

When Rich Eisen anchored SportsCenter for the first time in 22 years last August, ESPN brought back the show’s old-school graphics and music. The broadcast drew 708,000 viewers, 67% above SportsCenter’s average in that 11 p.m. ET slot, ESPN told Front Office Sports at the time.

The reaction online showed how much fans had missed it. Eisen told Fortune in a recent interview he came across a video of a young woman recording herself as the familiar open played. She was crying.

“It was a simpler time,” Eisen said. “People kind of wish it was like that again.”

That moment validated an idea Eisen had brought to ESPN when he returned: a nostalgia video podcast. This Was SportsCenter: Stories from the Set is a video podcast in which he reunites with former colleagues, with full access to ESPN’s video archive. The first season debuted in June on Disney+ and the ESPN app and featured Dan Patrick, Chris Berman, Mike Greenberg, Linda Cohn, Chris Fowler, and Craig Kilborn.

A second season with six new interviews is slated for 2027, Eisen said, adding he’s already lined up “some pretty interesting commitments.”

Eisen, 57, worked for ESPN from 1996 to 2003, mostly anchoring SportsCenter during the show’s cultural peak. He and co-anchor Stuart Scott became a popular anchor team in the late 1990s, even landing roles together in the 2000 Disney comedy The Kid. In its 2015 obituary for Scott, ESPN noted that the pair’s late-night SportsCenter became next-day water-cooler talk, thanks to their chemistry and the show’s repeated airings.

Because ESPN re-aired his late-night broadcast several times the next morning, his SportsCenter show reached more than 100 million homes, he told Fortune in 2024. Kids watched him before school, and many of them now have teenagers of their own. Eisen said he “literally put” that generation “on a school bus with Stuart Scott in the mornings.”

In 2003, Eisen left ESPN to become NFL Network’s first on-air hire. More than two decades later, he’s still there, hosting NFL GameDay Morning and anchoring the network’s draft and Super Bowl coverage. In 2014, while still at NFL Network, he also launched The Rich Eisen Show, a three-hour daily mix of sports and pop culture that aired on DirecTV’s Audience Network.

Then, in December 2019, DirecTV’s Audience Network was shutting down, and the show was about to lose its home. As Fortune previously reported, Eisen got the news two days before Christmas, along with the chance to take the show over himself. Overnight, the host became the owner. At the time, he said, it was “quite daunting.”

But as the business found new homes, eventually on Peacock and then Roku, it grew. Eisen hired a CFO and more staff, and he put the company’s revenue toward creating his own control room.

Through it all, he said, he’s stuck to one principle: “Creating an a–hole-free environment, because this life is too short and this business is too small.”

This December marks seven years since Eisen took over the show, meaning he’s now owned it longer than he spent as its contracted host under DirecTV. And last year, the show landed its biggest home yet: Eisen reunited with ESPN in a licensing deal that brought it to Disney+, ESPN’s streaming platforms, and ESPN Radio. It also airs on SiriusXM and is released as a podcast, while his team cuts full interviews for YouTube and clips for Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.