Elle Duncan left sports giant ESPN last month after nearly a decade to join Netflix as the streamer’s first sports anchor.
Her first tour of duty on Netflix: On this Friday’s “Skyscraper Live,” free solo climber Alex Honnold attempts to scale Taipei 101 (Taiwan’s tallest building at 1,667 feet) without any ropes or safety equipment. She says Duncan and his team of commentators will be “watching someone do something that could potentially cost them their life and at the same time trying to entertain people.”
Why did she leave ESPN? In short, Duncan said he did the best he could at the network, although opportunities were limited given ESPN’s deep talent pool. Netflix made her an attractive offer for a job that would allow her to expand beyond the sport itself. According to her, the Netflix show is “Sports Plus.”
“You know, I’ve done some really incredible and amazing things at ESPN that obviously tie into sports. But I’ve always been a utility player and I’ve always been proud of myself and tried to push and test my versatility,” Duncan told Variety. “So Netflix gave me the opportunity to stay with the sport that I love and am passionate about and do it on a big scale with big events. And it gave me the opportunity to branch out into things like sports-adjacent (‘Skyscraper Live’).”
On Netflix, Duncan said: “I think the sky is the limit.” The chance is to “do the opening game of MLB and then maybe become a candidate for a reality TV show.”
Duncan’s agent, Matt Olson, recently told Sports Business Journal that unlike ESPN, Netflix offers the ability for “Duncan to be number one (sports talent) there.” When asked if that meant she was now a big fish in a small pond, Duncan laughed.
“I never looked at it that way,” she says. “That wasn’t the ego boost that I needed to be in a place where I could be autonomous. And then when I kind of looked ahead to the next four years at ESPN, what they offered me was a four-year contract. It was like, ‘OK, where are the additional opportunities to continue to grow and expand? How can I keep women’s basketball, which I love, continue to play soccer, which is my favorite sport? How can I continue to grow into that kind of space?’
Duncan continued, “And ESPN is well-represented in all areas with really great talent. And just because I want to take on an additional role, it’s not my style at all to play politics or go into the office and try to convince management to make changes. And they’re good there. They’re not lacking in talent at ESPN.
“So when I was looking ahead, if I were to do the exact same thing for the next four years, would it be fulfilling? And I think ultimately I came to the conclusion, ‘No,'” she says.
Duncan said, “You know, I wanted to push myself and do more. And where was the best opportunity to do that? And it was Netflix.”
Last fall, Netflix hired Kate Jackson, one of ESPN’s Duncan producers, as director of sports broadcasts. “When she left, she joked like, ‘I’m going to pick you up,'” Duncan said. “So when we went into the negotiating table a few months later, we received a really, really strong offer from Netflix, who knew that one of the biggest draws was the opportunity outside of sports, but also the freedom and flexibility of the schedule.”
Netflix is “my main course,” Duncan explains. “They have the right to be the first to say no… They’re my day job, but they also know that I have a love and passion for women’s sport and it’s famously not part of their portfolio yet. So they’re really bullish on the fact that they want me to take on opportunities and projects that I’m passionate about, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my responsibility to them.”
Netflix has routinely denied any interest in acquiring sports rights, but it currently has deals in place with the NFL (to air two Christmas Day games in 2024 and 2025), Major League Baseball (to air this season’s opening night game and other events) and WWE’s Raw. Additionally, Netflix has signed a deal for exclusive U.S. rights to the 2027 and 2031 installments of the FIFA Women’s World Cup.
“They have such a huge commitment to the future of sports that they really wanted someone who would be the focal point of whatever the sporting event was,” Duncan says.
Duncan flew to Taipei last Saturday for “Skyscraper Live.” Joining her for live commentary will be professional rock climber Emily Harrington, YouTube creator Mark Rober (whose show CrunchLabs is available on Netflix), WWE star Seth Rollins and mountaineering commentator Pete Woods. This event will begin live streaming on Friday, January 23rd at 8:00 PM ET (9:00 AM PT).
Duncan’s two children, ages 5 and 7, were seriously impressed when they found out she would be working with Robar. “I’ve introduced these kids to all kinds of celebrities,” she says. When they found out his mother would be on the air with him, “they were upset,” Duncan said. “They couldn’t believe I was going to be on TV with Mark Rober.”
Of course, this is not your typical sporting event. “This is like pass or fail, life or death, right?” Duncan says. “This particular event is much more about storytelling…It’s about contextualizing a character who does seemingly crazy, life-threatening things. It’s like trying to humanize Alex as a person and trying to explain the art of climbing to an audience that doesn’t necessarily understand it.”
In December, Duncan visited Honnold at his home in Red Rock, Nevada, and portions of their conversation will be woven throughout the Skyscraper Live package. Another pre-recorded part: Duncan’s producer persuaded her to work on one particularly “interesting” part of the Taipei 101 climb. “They’re going to take me there – obviously not a free solo, but strap on!” she says. “It should work out. For me, it’s just survival.”
What happens if Honnold slips and falls? Duncan didn’t provide details, but said the team has “contingency plans for everything,” including severe weather and earthquakes.
In his short time at Netflix, Duncan said he already knows the company is willing to try new things. After all, Netflix is so new in the sports space that it doesn’t have an established strategy. Netflix “has a culture of transparency, talking things through, making decisions quickly, failing quickly, pivoting big, learning and moving on,” Duncan said. She’s staying in West Hartford, Conn. (near ESPN’s Bristol headquarters) “despite her new Netflix job allowing her to travel anywhere.”
Duncan joined ESPN in 2016 and led coverage of women’s college and professional basketball overall, including hosting the 6pm ET edition of “SportsCenter” and hosting “College Gameday” and “WNBA Countdown.”
She admitted that leaving ESPN was difficult. “Everywhere I went away in my career, it was a shame to go because of the people,” Duncan says. “But I was very at peace with that decision. You know, I didn’t really take that decision lightly. I waited. I considered every possible scenario. I prayed about it. I talked about it. I talked to my therapist about it. So when I had to say goodbye, I felt really, really good about the decision itself.”
