Lisa Salters

Lisa Salters is a versatile and accomplished reporter with more than two decades of experience. She is a sideline reporter for two of ESPN’s biggest sports properties – the NFL’s Monday Night Football and NBA games on ESPN and ABC, as well as a co-host of the company’s award-winning E:60 newsmagazine.

Salters was named the sideline reporter for Monday Night Football in April 2012. She contributes to weekly game telecasts, as well as the NFL Wild Card and Pro Bowl games. During ESPN studio shows on Mondays leading up to MNF games, Salters provides team reports from the stadium. In 2020, Salters worked Super Bowl LIV – her first Super Bowl assignment – as the sideline reporter for ESPN’s international broadcast in Australia and New Zealand.

Salters regularly conducts interviews with NFL coaches and players as part of her MNF role. In 2018, she was widely praised for her exclusive interview with Kareem Hunt, who discussed his release by the Kansas City Chiefs after video of him assaulting a woman became public.

Salters has been part of NBA coverage on ESPN and ABC since 2005. Her role includes the high-profile NBA Saturday Primetime and NBA Sunday Showcase games. On Christmas Day 2017, Salters accomplished the rare feat of working an NBA game in New York in the afternoon, followed by a prime time MNF game in Philadelphia. She also worked similar marquee football and basketball holiday assignments in Oakland on consecutive days in 2018.

Salters originally joined ESPN as a general assignment reporter in March 2000. Prior to her current NFL and NBA assignments, she was the sideline reporter for ABC’s Saturday Night Football college football games for five seasons (2006-10).

Beyond covering high-profile events, Salters is co-host of ESPN’s acclaimed E:60 newsmagazine alongside Jeremy Schaap. She helped launch the series in 2007 as a featured correspondent before her promotion to co-host in 2019 when the program moved into its new monthly prime-time slot. A gifted storyteller, Salters has filed many memorable features over the past decade, including “Life as Matt” on transgender high school track and field athlete Matt Dawkins, which earned a 2017 Sports Emmy Award. Other accolades include a Gracie Award from the Association for Women in Radio and Television for best feature in 2009 and a Sports Emmy nomination for the touching story “Ray of Hope” on organ donation in 2008. Also, Salters traveled to China in 2019 for a story on former Baylor basketball star Isaiah Austin, and to Haiti for a powerful story on the U17 national women’s soccer team just months after the country was devastated by an earthquake in 2010.

Salters’ journalistic assignments for ESPN have brought her to major global events around the world. She covered the United States National Team during the 2002 FIFA World Cup in Korea/Japan. She reported from the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, and hosted ESPN’s coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. In addition, Salters covered sports-related stories in and around U.S. Central Command in Qatar for Outside the Lines, SportsCenter and ESPNEWS during the build-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom through the commencement of the war. She returned to the war zone in 2004 when ESPN brought SportsCenter to Camp Arifjan, a U.S. Army base in Kuwait.

Before arriving at ESPN, Salters worked for ABC News from 1995-2000. Based in Los Angeles, she was named the first West Coast correspondent for the ABC affiliate news service, NewsOne, in February 1995. She covered the O.J. Simpson civil and criminal trials, the Oklahoma City bombing trials, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and the crash of TWA flight 800, among other major stories for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings and other ABC News outlets.

Earlier in her career, Salters served as a general assignment reporter for WBAL-TV, the NBC affiliate in Baltimore, where she covered national and international news, including the conflicts in the African countries of Rwanda and Somalia. Salters returned to Rwanda in the spring of 2012 with The Girl Effect initiative to teach young girls about journalism.

In 2017, Salters was honored in her hometown as a member of the Montgomery County chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame. She served as Penn State’s Homecoming Grand Marshal in 2018 and during Super Bowl LIII week, she received an Excellence in Media Award at the Sports Power Brunch.

A native of King of Prussia, Pa., Salters graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in broadcast journalism. She played guard for the women’s basketball team from 1986-87 and is a cousin of Heisman Trophy winner and Dallas Cowboys Pro Football Hall of Fame running back Tony Dorsett.

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