Sports Illustrated host Robin Lundberg is getting out in front of his potential exit from the outlet. The former ESPN New York host launched his YouTube channel on Thursday.
“In the wake of some stuff that I’ve had going on in my life, I didn’t really know what to do, and this is what I know how to do,” Lundberg said in his first upload.
“It’s a tough situation to be in, and of course when something like that goes down, you start to wonder what’s gonna be next. And I don’t have the answers to that. I don’t,” he said.
Lundberg remembered back to being part of 2017 layoffs at ESPN and having to go to a wedding a few days later where a lot of his ESPN colleagues would be. Lundberg said it was advice he remembered getting from legendary voiceover artist Jim Cutler that helped spark his decision to give YouTube a try.
“He says to me, ‘I’m a huge fan of yours,'” Lundberg said. “He says, ‘You’ve got an edge. You’ve got something a lot of people here don’t have.'”
“He told me back then, ‘You should do YouTube,'” he added. “He said, ‘You should do YouTube,’ and I got the SI job so quickly. I got the SI job so quickly that I just never got on it.”
Robin Lundberg felt like he was so engulfed in making the most of his role at SI that he never gave much thought to getting into the YouTube space on his own.
“YouTube never jumped to mind as the thing I needed to get on and the thing I needed to do – until now,” he said. “Because I don’t know what to do. I’m just being real with you. I don’t know. I’m still employed, I’m still getting a paycheck. I don’t want to do anything to risk that. My family’s right upstairs.”
“In this time of uncertainty, I’m gonna do what I know how to do,” Lundberg added. “And I’m gonna follow Jim Cutler’s advice.”
