Photo by ISIPhotos.com
By DAN KARELL
Since winning the American rights package to the English Premier League for 2013-2016 last fall, many people have wondered what direction NBC would take their coverage. On Tuesday morning, the network showed that they were more than serious.
At a press conference in New York City, NBC announced their plans for the upcoming Premier League season, where they’ll be showing all 380 matches live on multiple platforms as well as hiring announcers to broadcast the matches.
The network revealed that broadcaster Arlo White will become the lead play-by-play voice for NBC’s EPL coverage, set to begin this August. The current head broadcaster for MLS on NBC will partner with former England internationals Graeme Le Saux and Lee Dixon in the booth as analysts. The trio will be on-site for every match they broadcast. Gary Lineker will join the coverage team as a special contributor, and will occasionally host on-site coverage of the matches.
For coverage in the U.S., NBC announced that Robbie Mustoe and Robbie Earle would join host Rebecca Lowe as analysts from the NBC Sports studios in Stamford, Connecticut.
In addition, NBC outlined their coverage of EPL telecasts for the upcoming 2013-2014 season, saying that all 380 games will be live over a number of platforms. 20 matches during the season will be on nationally televised on NBC, 154 will be on NBC Sports Network, and the rest will either be on Spanish-language television channels or Premier League Extra Time, a set of overflow channels that will be available to customers free of cost if they have NBC Sports Network.
Every match will be streamed live on NBC Sports Live Extra, and on the final match day of the season on May 14, 2014, every game will be shown live on an NBC Universal channel, from NBC to Esquire and Syfy.
Finally, NBC announced that they would present over 600 hours of original and studio programming as part of their coverage. On Saturday following the matches there will be a two-hour show featuring extended highlights called Match of the Day, modeled off the original version from the BBC. On Sunday there will be another 90-minute highlight show, and then on Monday and Tuesday nights, cut-down matches of Manchester City and Manchester United (Mondays) and Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, and Tottenham (Tuesdays) will be shown in a two-hour program.
What do you make of this news? Are you excited about the prospects of every match being shown live on television and online? Do you like the choice of Arlo White as lead voice of the EPL on NBC?
Share your thoughts below.