After ESPN Exit, Bomani Jones Starts New Media Life On His Own

Bomani Jones is bringing his podcast to Wave Sports + Entertainment, Front Office Sports has learned.

Starting October 23, the Emmy Award-winning commentator will relaunch “The Right Time with Bomani Jones” show on the WSE Network.

With an all-new live video format, Jones’ show will join other original WSE series such as “New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce,” “Podcast P with Paul George” and the newly launched “RG3 & The Ones,” with ESPN’s Robert Griffin III.

The former ESPNer’s show will air live on YouTube three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Looking ahead, he expects to go deep on the Deion Sanders phenomenon in college football, Victor Wembanyama’s impact on the new NBA season, and the ongoing Taylor Swift-Kelce soap opera.

“It’s very rare that something as big as the NFL looks up and is like, ‘Whoah, look guys, a growth opportunity,” Jones told Front Office Sports. 

“A whole new audience — not just an audience they don’t have — but young people. An audience that everybody in sports isn’t so sure they know how to get a hold of.”

In a preview video, Jones said he will be joined every Friday by ESPN analyst Domonique Foxworth for “Foxworth Fridays.”

Jones teased his podcast comeback a few weeks ago, according to Awful Announcing. What’s interesting about WSE is it started with athletes as commentators and is now adding sports media people like himself, noted Jones, not the other way around. 

WSE’s podcasts like “New Heights” with the Kelce brothers have taken off. The six-year old company now boast roughly 117 million followers globally.

“I obviously worked at a big legacy media company. But I’ve also done a lot of work at various points with smaller, what used to be called, new media operations. There’s a different energy that comes when you’re in a new media place,” Jones said.

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After a 20-year run at ESPN, Jones was among the on-air talents, including Vince Carter and Neil Everett, whose contracts were not renewed this summer.

But he retained the name of his podcast, related intellectual property, and most importantly, his RSS feed.

“So for people who are subscribed to this show already, it will be right there where it would have been otherwise if I had stayed (at ESPN),” he said. “That, for me, is the most attractive thing about making this move. At the end of the deal, I was able to keep the RSS feed.”

Jones previously hosted HBO’s late-night TV show, “Game Theory with Bomani Jones,” which was canceled this summer after two seasons.  

Jones knew a sports journalist hosting a late show on HBO was risky. After all, ex-ESPN colleague Bill Simmons weekly show, “Any Given Wednesday,” was canceled after less than one season in 2016.

“There’s nothing about that time that I spent doing that show that I look with any measure of regret whatsoever. It is the thing that I’m the most proudest that I got to do. It’s the thing that I was probably the happiest in the course of doing,” Jones said.