Evil Geniuses, the North American esports organization, and Jacob Wolf are teaming up for the “Jacob Wolf’s [Evil] Free Agency Show presented by AT&T” on Monday on Twitch. Wolf, known for his League of Legends insider information when it comes to roster moves and team signings, was told by his now former employer, ESPN, that the annual show done with ESPN Esports was canceled. However, as it turns out, Evil Geniuses will partner with both Wolf and another now former ESPN staffer, producer Thomas Tischio, to once again bring the free agency show to viewers worldwide. The show will air at 3 PM PST on the Evil Geniuses Twitch channel.
Wolf, who mutually terminated his contract early with ESPN, is now a free agent himself and is working alongside Evil Geniuses as a contractor.
“I am excited to bring this show to League of Legends fans worldwide,” Wolf told The Esports Observer. “This is a fully journalistic and independent operation with the backend support of Evil Geniuses on the production side of things. We’ve taken measures that will keep the Evil Geniuses folks in the dark in terms of the actual roster movements and everything else, they will find out on the show just as anyone else. But, they are helping us build the back assets.”
Wolf will host this show after originally being under contract with ESPN until January of 2021. However, with the layoffs that recently hit ESPN, alongside Wolf’s desire to continue creating content around League of Legend news, ESPN and Wolf came to terms in ending the employment contract between the two last Friday. This allowed Wolf to host the show with Evil Geniuses.
And he wants to do more.
Now that he has time to reflect and what he learned during his time with ESPN, Wolf told TEO that he wants to do more than bring journalism to esports fans. He wants to start his own production company.
“I am working on setting up an entity for other collaboration projects in the future with a bunch of different companies that I’ve been talking to,” Wolf said. “I’m not there yet, but this show will be a great opportunity to work on the talent and production side of things which is what I really want to do.”
ESPN closing down its esports division wasn’t necessarily a surprise for Wolf, but the swiftness of the closure caught him and his colleagues off guard.
“I was a little blindsided by how quickly things at ESPN ended,” Wolf said. “None of us were told and none of us knew that we were not going to be published anymore until it was reported in the press. We had an inkling that that was the case, but it was not said to us explicitly. I found out on Friday that they weren’t renewing my deal and that was kind of the last full communication. I’m disappointed with how it ended.”
Now that Wolf is a free agent himself, he can use the popularity garnered over the previous five-plus years with ESPN to land his next gig.
“I’m kind of in the driver’s seat here. My agent and I are taking conversations over the next few weeks while taking some time off for Thanksgiving,” Wolf said. “I’ll be assessing what my full-time future gig looks like in early December and making a decision about what I am going to do before Christmas. I want to go into the Christmas holiday not worrying about what my job is for the new year.”
Where he will end up next hasn’t been decided, but sites such as the Washington Post’s Launcher, which coincidentally just released a job bulletin, and Dexerto appear to be the top choices so far. However, nothing has been set.
