Former ESPN Host Cari Champion Lands Big Job on Streaming Service

Cari Champion has landed a big job on Prime Video. According to the New York Post, Amazon will have its lineup of daily sports talk shows on Prime Video from morning to night, and Champion, who is known for her work on ESPN, will host a show called The Cari Champion Show. She will be joined by Madelyn Burke and Ben Lyons who will host Bonjour Sports Talk. The Cari Champion Show will air at 12 p.m. ET while Bonjour Sports Talk will air at 8 a.m. ET. 

Following Champion, Eitan Levine and Drexton Clemons will host Sports Talk Game Breakers which will then be followed by From the Desk of Master T from Tesfatsion. Stubbs hosts The Power Hour, and Hana Ostaapchuk and Jason Spells will host The Backup Plan. There will also be a show called The Greatest Hour of All-Time which will showcase the best of each day’s programming. 

“We think there is an opportunity for new emerging voices and a positive, uplifting take on sport,” Marie Donoghue, Amazon’s vice president of Global Sports Video told the New York Post. “We are dipping our toe. We’re testing and learning, but we are very excited about it.” Donoghue also mentioned that the shows will not have highlights, saying “We want to push the talent and the producers to take this approach and have more deeper and interesting conversations.”

Champion joined ESPN in 2012 and appeared on multiple shows on the network until she left in 2020. From August 2021 to February 2021, Champion co-hosted a Vice on TV series called Cari & Jemele (Won’t) Stick to Sports will Jemele Hill. In June 2020, Champion appeared on the NBC game show The Titans Games with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. At the time, PopCulture.com spoke to Champion about working with Johnson on the competition series. 

“When DJ walks in that area, he has ‘it’ and you can feel it, it’s palpable,” Champion said. And it’s not a cocky ‘it,’ it’s the reaction that people have to him, and he has towards them as well. It really does make or break their day, and they enjoy it. He reacts to that. He appreciates that. He consumes that energy because it really means something. At the same time, it doesn’t go to his head.”