Elle Duncan, a well-known sports anchor, recently made a major career move by leaving ESPN after nearly 10 years to join Netflix as their first sports anchor. Her debut with Netflix will involve covering the daring free-solo climb of Alex Honnold as he attempts to scale the tallest building in Taiwan, Taipei 101, without any safety equipment.
Duncan explained that she decided to leave ESPN because she felt she had reached her limit in terms of growth and opportunities at the network. Netflix offered her a compelling opportunity to expand beyond traditional sports coverage and explore new avenues in the industry. She described the Netflix job as “sports plus,” allowing her to delve into sports-adjacent projects like the upcoming “Skyscraper Live.”
The move to Netflix gives Duncan the chance to showcase her versatility and explore different opportunities within the sports and entertainment industry. She expressed excitement about the potential for growth and new experiences at Netflix, where she sees endless possibilities for her career.
Duncan’s agent highlighted that Netflix offers her the opportunity to be the number one sports talent at the network, a position she did not hold at ESPN due to the extensive roster of talent. Despite being seen as a big fish in a small pond at Netflix, Duncan sees it as a chance to continue growing and expanding her career in new directions.
With Netflix’s increasing focus on sports content, including deals with major sports leagues and events, Duncan is positioned as a central figure for their sports coverage. She will have the freedom to pursue projects she is passionate about, including women’s sports, which is not currently part of Netflix’s portfolio.
For her first project with Netflix, Duncan traveled to Taipei to cover the “Skyscraper Live” event, where she will be joined by a team of commentators to provide live coverage of Alex Honnold’s dangerous climb. The event will be livestreamed on Netflix, showcasing Duncan’s expertise and passion for sports coverage.
Overall, Elle Duncan’s move to Netflix represents a new chapter in her career, filled with exciting opportunities and the potential for growth in the sports and entertainment industry. Her journey with Netflix promises to be an exciting and rewarding experience for both her and the viewers.
Meeting Mark Rober: A Memorable Experience for Duncan and Her Kids
“I’ve introduced these kids to every famous person,” she says. When they found out their mom was going to be on air with him, “They were shook,” Duncan says. “Like, they could not believe I was going to do TV with the Mark Rober.”
To state the obvious, it’s not a typical sporting event. “This is like pass or fail, life or death, right?” says Duncan. “This particular event is much more about the storytelling… This is really about contextualizing the kind of person that would do something so seemingly crazy and death-defying. Like trying to humanize Alex as a person, and trying to sort of explain the art of climbing to an audience that isn’t necessarily going to understand that.”
In December, Duncan visited Honnold at his home in Red Rock, Nevada, and some of those conversations will be weaved throughout the “Skyscraper Live” package. Another prerecorded bit: Duncan’s producers convinced her to tackle one of the particularly “interesting” parts of the Taipei 101 climb. “They’re going to have me go out there — strapped up, obviously, not free soloing!” she says. “It should go well. Which to me is just surviving.”
What happens if Honnold slips and falls? Without elaborating, Duncan says the team has “contingency plans for everything,” including for things like inclement weather or an earthquake.
In the short time she’s been at Netflix, Duncan says she has already seen that the company is willing to try new things. After all, because Netflix is so new to the sports field, it doesn’t have an established playbook. Netflix has “a culture of transparency, talking through things, making decisions quickly, failing fast, taking big swings, learning and moving on,” says Duncan. She’s staying in West Hartford, Connecticut (near ESPN’s Bristol headquarters), “despite the fact that with my new Netflix job, I can move anywhere.”
Duncan joined ESPN in 2016, where she hosted the 6 p.m. ET edition of “SportsCenter” and led coverage across women’s college and pro basketball, including hosting “College GameDay” and “WNBA Countdown.”
She concedes that it was hard to leave ESPN. “Every place that I have left in my career, I’ve been sad to go because of the people,” Duncan says. “But I was very much at peace with the decision. You know, I really did not take the decision lightly. I waited. I looked at every possible scenario. I prayed on 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.”
