ESPN is adding Lily Shimbashi, the founder of Sportsish, to its creator sector.
The Worldwide Leader reportedly is finalizing a two-year deal with the influencer to serve as a full-time creator for major events, according to Front Office Sports.
Shimbashi’s first assignment is the NFL Honors ceremony — the league’s annual awards show — where she will serve as ESPN’s lead red carpet content creator Thursday in Santa Clara, Calif.
She will create original Sportsish content across espnW and other social media platforms.
Shimbashi, youngest child of former Knicks president Dave Checketts, founded Sportsish — a content website geared toward women that seeks to bridge the gap between sports and pop culture through exclusive and original content, interviews and social media — in 2021.
ESPN reportedly envisions Shimbashi in a Katie Feeney-type role.
Feeny — who has 7.6 followers on TikTok, and 1.3 million more on Instagram — signed with ESPN as a sports and lifestyle content creator last August after graduating from Penn State University in the spring.
The 23-year-old Feeny serves as weekly contributor on “College Gameday,” “Sunday NFL Countdown,” and “Monday Night Countdown,” as well as the daily lead of “SportsCenter” on Snapchat.
Feeny and Sportsish share the same agency, Creative Artists Agency.
“I’m really excited to be associated with a company like ESPN,” Shimbashi told Front Office Sports on Radio Row Tuesday ahead of Super Bowl 2026 between the Seahawks and the Patriots on Sunday. “I always grew up wanting to be an ESPN reporter, and then I felt like there was a gap in mainstream sports media.
“So out of college, I kind of developed this business plan that became Sportsish, which is the company I’ve been building over the last five years. And slowly but surely, ESPN took note that we have an audience of female fans, and it’s a fandom that they’re trying to reach. And so now we are official partners, and I can’t wait to bring it to life.”
Shimbashi covered Formula 1 Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, for ESPN last October.
Before that she was a part of ESPN’s creator network and covered the 2025 ESPYs.
Shimbashi is based in New York City with her husband and their two kids.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
