For most former ESPN employees, continuing their careers after leaving The Worldwide Leader in Sports is challenging. A lucky few land jobs at other media companies, and even fewer succeed on their own.
Joon Lee is in the latter category. In true entrepreneurial spirit, he is working for himself as an independent sports journalist. Three years after being laid off from ESPN, he said his YouTube channel is thriving. He launched it in spring 2025 and now has more than 60,000 subscribers, aiming to reach 100,000 by summer’s end.
We recently caught up with Lee to discuss his YouTube business and life after ESPN.
Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
What is it like being your own boss?
Joon Lee: “It’s been a lot of work, but it’s been the most fun I’ve ever had in my career. I have the independence to talk about the topics I want to, the editorial freedom of being my own boss, and the ability to make those decisions. If I want to put together a documentary on Knicks fans and what they’ve been going through, I can just go out and shoot it. The turnaround from having an idea to publishing and putting it out there is very creatively invigorating and a lot of fun. I think that because I’m having fun, the audience is responding to it as well.”
What else do you enjoy?
“On top of having complete control over the editorial, I have complete control over the business. I own 100% of the business. I’ve got a contract sales team that’s helping me with sponsors and that kind of stuff. But having full control over the entire thing and over my future has been very empowering and very different from working for a publication as I did at ESPN or Bleacher Report.”
What has been your favorite story so far?
“I think having the opportunity to drive a NASCAR was definitely something that not only pushed me out of my comfort zone by literally doing it, but also by diving into a sport I haven’t necessarily followed super closely in the past. That was a lot of fun. I think it put me in a headspace to try a bunch of different stuff in the new year and take a new approach to handling the editorial and creative decisions behind the videos we’re making this year. I thought that was probably the most exhilarating, challenging thing I’ve done.”
Why go the YouTube route?
“If you look at my YouTube channel, you can see videos I made as a high schooler. I was reviewing tech products back in the day. This was in 2011 and 2012, when YouTube was blowing up. When I got to college, in my freshman year in 2013, I reached a fork in the road. I was like, OK, I’m either going to go all in on this tech-reviewing thing because it was starting to blow up, or I was seeing my friends in the space start building legit production companies, careers, and businesses out of their YouTube channels. This was in the early days of YouTube, before the idea of influencer or creator even existed. I was torn between ‘Should I try to pursue this tech YouTube thing, or should I try to pursue sports journalism?’ I just cared more about sports journalism, and I figured that YouTube would come back around.”
So this was always part of the plan?
“YouTube has always been my endgame. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do primarily, for the rest of my career. When I was a Bleacher Reporter at ESPN, it was what I cared about most in the long term because it combined my interests in long-form writing, video production, and all that. That was my goal, more than any of the numbers or view counts: to figure out how to make sure I could do sports on YouTube for the rest of my professional career and to give myself the foundation to do so. There are short-term goals, making sure I hit certain view counts and that a certain amount of revenue comes in so I can pay the bills. For me, it was always the big picture of trying to build a production company and eventually help other sports journalists make a similar leap that I’ve made.”
Three years ago I got laid off from ESPN.
Now I’m running a YouTube channel: profitable, 175K views a video, closing in on 60K subs.
Goal: 100K by end of summer.
If you believe sports journalism can be more — with no gambling ads — I’d love to take this journey together
— Joon Lee (@joonlee) June 16, 2026
What are some of the ways you prepared before launching last year?
“When I got laid off from ESPN in 2023, I had two years left on my contract. ESPN enforced a non-compete clause. I wanted to launch a YouTube channel after I got laid off, but I wasn’t allowed to. I reached out to a lot of my tech YouTube friends and got a sense of how they were running their businesses. One particular person who called me was tech YouTuber Austin Evans. He and Ken Bolido run a channel under Austin’s name. I went out to Los Angeles and Anaheim to get a sense of how they run their business. I think they’ve got a community of almost 20-something people now. I was talking to them. I got some great advice from other journalists who had made the leap.”
For people who haven’t experienced it, what is it like to be laid off?
“It was my dream job. It was earth-shattering. I got to ESPN at 23, and I got laid off at 26. It was a dream I held for a decade of my life. It was in my grasp, and then it slipped through my fingers because of a layoff. When you combine how much I worked toward being at ESPN for such a long time, how much I sacrificed in terms of my personal life to get to a position where I could do that at the time I did in my career.
“Thankfully, it gave me time to reinvest in my relationship, my fiancé, my family, and my friends. It was one of those moments that put life into perspective. In many ways, I think it prepared me to take a leap, to launch a small business and a YouTube channel, and to take on the financial and professional risks I’ve taken over the past 14 months or so.”
Did anyone in particular reach out to you to offer support?
“I would say, my family. I’m very much in debt to my therapist as well. From a professional standpoint, the three people who probably helped me the most are Tony Reali, Josh Bard, who was a producer on Around the Horn and a close friend of mine, a talented producer, and Bob Costas. A few months ago, Bob mentioned me on Brodie Brazil’s YouTube channel. Bob is someone I’ve started to lean on for advice and has given me a lot of perspective on navigating this career and on how to find balance between life and doing work that you’re passionate about and care about.”
Surreal hearing the GOAT Bob Costas say this about my independent sports journalism on YouTube.
He’s a huge inspiration for what we’re building. pic.twitter.com/RNgVyGrPcS
— Joon Lee (@joonlee) March 11, 2026
Can you explain your reasons for not accepting money from gambling or prediction markets?
“As a sports fan, as someone who watches sports night to night on my couch, there were just so many gambling ads. I saw the way it was not only changing the way people were talking about sports. They were talking about sports almost exclusively through the lens of odds and over/unders, that kind of stuff, but also the stories that it forced out the door and weren’t getting covered. Thinking about the advice that I got from my friends who were already successful on YouTube and had made the leap from a more traditional journalism background, I saw an opportunity to cover a lot of stories that weren’t being covered because of the conflicts of interest on the business side that a lot of corporate sports media were encountering over the last few years.”
What advice would you offer to someone who has been laid off?
“I spent many years financially planning to eventually go independent and launch a YouTube channel. So when I was laid off, I was prepared because I had been preparing to launch a YouTube channel and a production company, and to do all the work I’m doing right now. I think the industry is in such a shaky place in terms of job security that you see people who were at major companies, where layoffs previously seemed impossible. All these major institutions are wobbling right now. I think it’s important to be able to plan financially for that.”
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