Hannah Storm joined ESPN in its heyday. The move to Bristol was more than worth her while as the Worldwide Leader offered the star reporter many of the biggest opportunities in sports. In 17 years with the company, Storm has hosted the NBA Finals, NFL Sunday pregame, Wimbledon, and the morning SportsCenter.
What ESPN did not offer was any other Hannah Storms. Bristol wasn’t unique in that way. Storm was used to covering men’s sports alongside male colleagues. But it was a noticeable change, after Storm spent time next to luminaries like Julie Chen and Ann Meyers before joining ESPN.
“I had like one female friend who was on the air, and that was Chris Evert because she was a tennis analyst,” Storm told Awful Announcing. “There just weren’t other women doing what I was doing.”
Recently, this has changed. Not with Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese, the $800 million NCAA championships TV deal, Livvy Dunne or NiJaree Canady. Before that.
Starting around the time of the WNBA Bubble, ESPN talent saw a wave cresting around women’s sports. Working for the dominant broadcaster for college and pro competitions, they rode it. As TV deals for the WNBA and NWSL grew, so did franchise valuations and sponsorships.
Like an avalanche of FOMO, fans took interest. Covering women’s sports was suddenly a more viable career path at ESPN.
The achingly long wait for some hosts and analysts meant they were ready when the dam opened. For studio coverage of the 2023 NCAA women’s basketball tournament, the network tried the trio of Elle Duncan, Chiney Ogwumike and Andraya Carter. All three were on the rise in Bristol, but had little experience working together. They more than met the moment of a March that saw Clark take Iowa to the title game, then find her foil in Reese.
Vibe Check, the new women’s sports studio show from ESPN and Disney+, was born slowly, then all at once. Though it is the brainchild of Duncan, Ogwumike and Carter, it belongs to Storm and Evert and all the women who preceded them at ESPN. The name is derived from a segment on the NCAA tourney show, but could just as well be a mission statement. In internet parlance, a vibe check gauges energy. But it can also be a sudden disruption, a confrontation of the existing equilibrium.
The show, which will air each Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 5 p.m. ET, is long overdue. Its hosts will not just carry over conversations from the women’s sports they cover, but bridge into broader conversations about all of sports among women. That means it is a place for not just women’s sports broadcasters, but ESPN’s deep bench of women across the network: Emily Kaplan, Mina Kimes, Jessica Mendoza.
“Vibe Check is an opportunity,” Storm said. “And you have to take those opportunities and run with them.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqHV8Bu4BGk&pp=ygUKdmliZSBjaGVjaw%3D%3D
In the premiere episode, the original trio takes center stage for a WNBA whiparound. Duncan, Ogwumike and Carter discuss expansion, WNBA All-Star starters, and early returns from the season. Then, they look back even further than Storm’s arrival at ESPN, to another forebear in Bristol. This interview, with former ESPN anchor Robin Roberts, is the standout of the premiere and the best example of what Vibe Check could ultimately become.
The living-room set, close-up photography and bright branding tell you ESPN wants this show to be different. But the network’s stubborn commitment to the structures of television, even for a show that will live on Disney+, makes it hard to achieve “different.” The Roberts interview charts a course for Vibe Check that is sillier and more patient. The conversation takes the hosts to new rooms and sets throughout campus and sets it apart even more from other ESPN fare. One could easily imagine a full-length episode with just an interview like this.
Vibe Check should borrow even more from podcasts. Duncan gave up hers to take on lead hosting duties for the new show, and that is where the industry is trending as more fans flock to YouTube and social media for sports content rather than cable television.
“I 100 percent thought of (The Elle Duncan Show) as like a proof of concept,” Duncan told Awful Announcing. “It was really fun and honestly really enlightening in that we started out with this idea of what we thought the show would be, and then the viewership told us that the show was turning into a women’s sports show.”
The viewership will ultimately tell ESPN what Vibe Check will be. Duncan and Storm imagine a show that crosses over all sports, hosts intimate interviews, and creates gimmicks and games. ESPN wants to take Vibe Check on the road and produce features for it. One 25-minute show probably can’t be all those things.
It is a work in progress.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be scrutinized. Aside from Futbol W on ESPN+, Vibe Check is the only regular women’s sports programming produced by the company. As part of ESPN’s continued incursion into Disney+, it is also a platform test case. Will audiences who subscribe to Disney+ for Marvel or Pixar movies tune into a women’s sports show?
“There are a lot of interested parties,” said Mike Ehrlich, ESPN’s senior director of digital production. “Our approach on this platform does blend (linear television and digital content).”
The WNBA All-Star starters are officially locked in 🔒✨
The Vibe Check squad played a little guessing game to reveal the lineup — see who made the cut 👀🏀
📺 Vibe Check is streaming exclusively on @DisneyPlus pic.twitter.com/rprY0Xix03
— ESPN (@espn) June 30, 2025
Vibe Check isn’t altogether different from an ESPN digital property like Hoop Streams or your average daily SportsCenter. From a content standpoint, it is ordinary. But because it is a first in this space for ESPN, it is more than that.
Before Vibe Check, women’s sports conversations at ESPN were often saved for spare segments, side project podcasts, and game broadcasts. Now, there is a space for them. Just for them.
The recent history of women’s sports suggests people will watch. Women’s sports bars are sprouting across the country. The chatter online is incessant. More of the top celebrities in sports are women than ever before.
But the broader history of how this industry works and how careers normally go has this Vibe Check crew determined to make the show a success. Anything short will feel like letting down the Robertses, the Storms, the Everts and many more.
“It’s super fun to come out to a crowd that’s chanting and to see you’re Fat Head picture out in the stands, all of that makes you feel great and the validation is fine,” Duncan said. “But what I love is looking at the experience through the lens of the people I work with, who have been in this space for a long time, whether because they played or coached, whatever it is. And to see it through them has been the greatest personal joy.
“Because … to see them when they hear that to get tickets to a women’s basketball game, students were sitting outside since yesterday in the cold, right? To see them, some of these people who had to perform at their best in front of empty gyms or sleep on gym floors because they didn’t have a budget for real hotels, to see them experience the explosion in popularity has been amazing.”
To have a long run and be a success for the company, Vibe Check has to be for women, for sports fans, for Disney+ subscribers and for advertisers. For the people who are making it to be a success, it simply has to have perspective.
Through one episode, it has the makings of a show that can do both.