Kate Abdo has hosted a myriad of live sports television during her broadcasting career and few have done so at a higher level of skill. She’s worked as a studio host in the United States for CBS, DAZN, Fox and Turner. She’s worked globally for Sky in Germany and the United Kingdom. As soccer fans in this country know, her fluency in four different languages (English, French, German and Spanish) makes her a unicorn among television presenters. My colleague Christopher Kamrani profiled Abdo last January about how, in the words of former U.S. national team player and CBS Sports soccer analyst Maurice Edu, “she’s just really, really good at her shit.”
But Abdo experienced something last week in Paris that was new to her, as well as to her on-air crew and production team — a 36-minute delay prior to the Champions League final in Paris between Real Madrid and Liverpool. Major championships such as the Super Bowl, NBA Finals or World Series, given all the financials at play between media rightsholders and in-stadium responsibilities, almost always go off at or very near the designated times. The delay on Saturday, in television terms, was massive, and there were many unanswered questions about what happened — and why it was happening – outside the Stade de France. The Athletic’s U.K. team has since reported in-depth on what was an absolute security mess, and questions continue to arise as of this writing.
It was a significant amount of time to fill in sports television terms, and this week I spoke to Abdo and CBS Sports senior creative director Pete Radovich Jr., who leads the Champions League production, about how it appeared from their end. Abdo was live on air with colleagues Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher and Micah Richards when security issues outside the stadium were happening. Radovich Jr. was in a CBS Sports production truck located slightly underneath the Stade de France, below the stadium concourse.
“It was all improvising,” Abdo said. “You don’t plan for delays. So that’s 36 minutes of air you weren’t expecting. The hardest thing for me in that position is trying to listen to and absorb what my producer is telling me so I can efficiently relay that to the audience whilst also trying to be tuned in to what the analysts on set are saying, so I can progress the conversation in a way that is meaningful. Never would a production go on air with 36 minutes of unplanned time.”
But that’s what happened. About 84 minutes into the scheduled 90-minute pregame show, Carragher, a former Liverpool player, noted there did not appear to be as many Liverpool fans in the stadium as Real Madrid fans. This was the initial foreshadowing CBS viewers received regarding something being off. “I don’t know what’s going on at the other end but it doesn’t seem like as many Liverpool fans in right now,” Carragher said. “Whether there are problems outside, I don’t know. Seems like it is absolute chaos outside.”
Abdo took the program to break. Upon returning from commercial, Abdo told the audience there would be a 15-minute delay to kickoff. That’s when the improvising started. “Liverpool fans seem to be struggling to get in,” Abdo said. “UEFA’s official line is that fans are arriving late and that is why it is pushed back.” The group moved to the impact of the delay on the players and then Henry said, echoing UEFA’s line at the moment, “I hope nothing bad is happening outside, first and foremost, but fans have to arrive on time.” Carragher challenged UEFA’s narrative, and that turned out to be an excellent instinct. “It’s not just the fans,” Carragher said. “I’ve been looking on social media and there is a lot of stuff going on outside the grounds … people getting tear-gassed and different things.” Henry reiterated he hoped nothing bad happened and then asked, “The Madrid fans are in. How come?” Abdo said, “I don’t know. We’re all supposing, aren’t we?”
Having watched the show live on Saturday, I was curious about two things. First, how aware were those on set and in the production truck about what was going on regarding those trying to get into the stadium? Second, I was really impressed by the easy chemistry of Abdo, Henry, Carragher and Richards; they have moments on-air that remind a viewer of the naturalness of Inside The NBA, and I wondered how that chemistry was formed.
Abdo said she first became aware that something was amiss with the Liverpool supporters around the time of the original scheduled kickoff (3:00 PM ET in the U.S). She said she told her line producer, Matt Curtis, that the on-air group needed to talk about the Liverpool stands not being full.
“We knew thousands of Liverpool fans had traveled, so we knew something was amiss if they weren’t in the stadium so close to kickoff,” Abdo said. “As much as I rely on my producer for guidance, they also rely on us in the stadium to be the eyes and ears there, because the whole production crew is in a truck in the TV compound and doesn’t get a sense of the atmosphere the way we do. … We had an official statement from UEFA which suggests that fans are simply late, contrasting with the reports on social media that there’s something more serious happening outside the grounds. So the producer is trying to tread a fine line, giving me whatever sparse information we have, whilst also trying to make sure we’re not just filling with what would be at best supposition or at worst slander.”
Radovich Jr. said that the production truck informed Abdo and Co. during a commercial of what he knew. He said CBS Sports had a person working inside the broadcast truck monitoring social media, so they had a sense of some of the chaos outside. “But we’re not going to report on just speculation and social media,” he said. “Shortly after the announced delay, you kind of got a sense of what was happening. There was a lot more activity outside the truck. You could hear commotion, helicopters and the smell like tear gas or something unusual. I’ve never smelled tear gas in my life, but some of the Brits I was working with immediately told me that that that was definitely a tear gas that we were smelling.”
UEFA did not reach out to CBS directly, Radovich Jr. said. So CBS were acquiring info from UEFA as we all were, through UEFA’s public information channels. Radovich Jr. said his production manager and technical manager were outside the production truck and saw some people hopping fences and being chased by police. At one point, the CBS Sports broadcast truck doors were locked to keep the people inside safe.
Around 3:00 PM ET, Abdo confirmed reports about tear gas being used around the grounds. “Fans struggling to get into the stadium, gates being closed, security issues, there seems to be an awful lot of problems,” Abdo said. “We don’t have the images. We are not out there … I am sure there are probably some images on social media. But we will keep you up to date here in terms of when this game is going to kick off and if we can get any cameras outside for you.” Abdo was transparent about not being fully sure what was happening outside the stadium. CBS did show viewers multiple aerial shots above the stadium.
Around 3:10 p.m. ET, now 10 minutes after the scheduled start, Carragher reiterated that the Liverpool side still had not filled, and Abdo said there were videos of people jumping the gates. Carragher said he was receiving messages about Liverpool supporters being tear-gassed and being put through narrow corridors to get inside. He called out the UEFA statement that the game was delayed to late-arriving fans and said, “I don’t buy exactly what UEFA is saying right now.” He also humanized what he was hearing, saying he was checking on his father and son, who had gotten into the stadium.
Roughly 20 minutes into the delay, CBS showed video of people jumping a fence and running up stadium steps as well as social media footage of massive queues of Liverpool supporters. They updated viewers with a tweet from longtime journalist Mark Pougatch, and Carragher once again called out UEFA for blaming Liverpool fans. He delivered the best moment of the pregame for me when he said with anger, “This PR machine right now about the fans coming late from UEFA is just getting absolute shot to pieces to people who are actually witnessing it outside.” By then, Henry no longer believed UEFA’s statement either. Said Henry: “What really happened? Nobody arrived late. They were there. You closed the gates. So can you come up with a proper statement and tell us what is happening.” (Watch this BBC reporter’s firsthand account.)
The setup CBS had at the Champions League is much different than, say, a Super Bowl, or any major sports broadcast CBS does stateside, where they have far more resources, including the likelihood of CBS News staffers nearby in some form. Radovich Jr. said CBS had five cameras total for its Champions League coverage, including three hard-cabled cameras (meaning cameras not designed to move) for the studio set. There was another hard-cabled camera in the announcer booth and another located pitch-side. He said media rights-holders for the Champions League do not have permission to use a roaming camera outside the stadium. Producers such as Radovich Jr. always do an autopsy of their coverage after their broadcast, and given what happened in Paris, he said he would examine all possibilities if a similar situation occurred heading forward, including whether there was any wiggle room contractually on having some kind of camera setup located outside the stadium. The 2023 Champions League Final will be held in Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul.
“None of our cameras here are capable of moving from where they are,” Radovich Jr. said. “We don’t have the rights to do that once our talent is in position. Everything is pretty strictly regulated. And, we are in a lockdown situation at that moment. No one’s going anywhere.”
Even if they had a hand-held camera, sending a game reporter to roam around outside would leave the possibility that the reporter might not get back in, and could be placed in a dangerous setting with very little support. Not an easy decision to make on the fly.
Abdo said her knowledge of what was going on outside the stadium while she was on air was limited to what Curtis was telling her through an earpiece.
“If you are live on camera, there is no opportunity to be on your phone scrolling Twitter and absorbing that information yourself,” she said. “If the images from social media are shown on air, I’m seeing them for the first time along with the audience. That can be difficult because our audience doesn’t want to watch me checking my Twitter, but they do expect me to be their source of information. The fact is linear TV can’t compete with social media for immediacy of news. And a network with the reputation of CBS also has a responsibility to make sure they are reporting a balanced and accurate picture of what’s happening. … The best we can do is react to what is being shown on social media, contrast that with what UEFA is saying, and allow the analysts to speak to how this affects the game, the players, to share their concerns about the images we’re seeing on social. In that kind of situation, we’re there to react with you.”
In 2021 Radovich Jr. directed a four-part, four-hour documentary on Inside The NBA called “The Inside Story,” which examined the evolution of the NBA show and its lead cast members. Radovich Jr., like me, thinks “Inside” is the greatest sports studio show in history. When he put together his Champions League pregame group, he said he naturally was impacted by the Inside crew. Every producer in sports television is trying to duplicate that chemistry. “In meetings, I am constantly encouraging everyone to be themselves,” Radovich said. “I think it’s something that everyone says in sports television — how we want we want our talent to be themselves. We take that to heart.”
Prior to the Champions League final, I had not watched a ton of the Abdo-led pregame show this year, which usually appears on Paramount+ and CBS Sports Network. But I had been struck by their chemistry when I did. Usually, that kind of on-air chemistry is forged off the air, via dinners and hanging out away from the set. Abdo said that hasn’t been the case here.
“We had our first ever dinner together the night before the final in Paris — no exaggeration,” Abdo said. “We started this show during a different era, when COVID was at its peak. It was at a time when any of us traveling to the set in London from abroad had to spend 10 days in quarantine before being able to go to the studio. It was when restaurants were closed and social mixing was restricted heavily by the British government. This was our first trip together in the two years we’ve been on air. I totally understand the idea of chemistry being created in the green room or away from the network building, and that good shows are built on that chemistry translating into the studio environment. In our case, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I do know I’ve never worked with a team with better chemistry. In this case that wasn’t developed; it was just an instant blessing.”
1. I consider this the most important podcast I’ve done in a long time. Episode 210 of the Sports Media Podcast features writer John Woodrow Cox, an enterprise reporter for The Washington Post who has focused on the impact of gun violence on children. Cox is also the author of a book on the subject, “Children Under Fire: An American Crisis.” In this podcast, Cox discusses his reporting on children experiencing gun violence; what school shootings do to the kids who survive them; how to interview kids who experience trauma; what solutions could work; should media outlets show what bullets do to bodies; why good guys with guns have routinely failed to stop bad guys with guns who are intent on murdering school children; the effect on reporters who report on gun violence, and more.
You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, and more.
2. For the sports viewership geeks out there, the NHL’s conference finals are going to provide interesting data. Turner is airing its first NHL conference finals series with coverage of the Western Conference Finals featuring the Oilers against the Avalanche. If looking at interest through a strictly neutral lens, this series should have far more national interest than the Eastern Conference Finals given its headlined by the best player in the sport (Edmonton’s Connor McDavid), one of the three best players in the sport (Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon), two of the best at their positions (Edmonton’s Leon Draisaitl and Cale Makar of the Avalanche) and additional All-Star caliber players around the ice such as Colorado’s Nazem Kadri and Mikko Rantanen). Plus, there’s great storylines, with McDavid trying to make his first Cup Final and this group of Avalanche players looking to win their first. But here’s the rub: The series includes a Canadian team, which means Turner will not get viewership from one home market. That’s significant. Colorado hasn’t been a big national draw viewership-wise. But more significant will be the Rangers playing in the Eastern Conference finals — ESPN is airing the Eastern Conference Final between New York and the Lightning. That should give ESPN’s numbers a boost strictly because the New York market will bring in more fans in aggregate. I’m interested to see which conference final does better. Sports competition (the NBA Finals are on this week) will also be a factor.
2a. Kenny Albert is calling the Western Conference Finals on TNT alongside analysts Eddie Olczyk, Keith Jones and Darren Pang. Nabil Karim and Meaghan Mikkelson will be reporters throughout the series. Sean McDonough will call Rangers-Lightning with analyst Ray Ferraro and reporter Emily Kaplan.
2b. Episode 208 of the Sports Media Podcast features a conversation with Tony Khan, the president, CEO and head of creative of All Elite Wrestling (AEW), a co-owner and the chief football strategy officer for the Jacksonville Jaguars, co-owner and GM of Fulham F.C., and owner and chairman of TruMedia Networks, an engineering firm used for data analytics.
In this podcast, Khan discusses his personal media consumption and how he consumes information about AEW; the importance of getting mainstream sports media coverage versus wrestling media and crossover media; how he looks at doing his own press; how he consumes AEW’s television viewership metrics and what he considers to be the most important metric in his evaluation; how the Discovery/WarnerMedia merger will impact AEW; how he sees streaming as it relates to his product and the wrestling business heading forward; AEW’s upcoming Double or Nothing PPV in Las Vegas; how he views the role of the announcers and how hands-on his he with his announcers during shows; AEW’s incredible tribute show to Brodie Lee; his thoughts on Conrad Thompson and Eric Bischoff debating AEW; MJF and the value of delivering a promo versus in-ring work; acquiring talent in pro sports versus professional wrestling; Urban Meyer as a college football studio analyst; how he views success with AEW in the long-term; and much more.
3. ESPN NBA announcer Mike Breen missed Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals on Sunday after testing positive for COVID-19. Breen was showing no symptoms early in the week. Tests are going on as of this writing and there is a very good possibility that Game 1 won’t have all of the regular on-air crew. Here is the NBA Finals broadcast schedule.
3a. ESPN announced it has signed Pelicans guard CJ McCollum to work as a multi-platform NBA analyst for the NBA Finals. He’ll appear as part of “NBA Finals: Celebrating 75,” ESPN2’s alternate presentation for NBA Finals Game 1.
• Baseball’s Unlikeliest Performance Enhancer: Cologne. By James Wagner of the New York Times.
• Shocking details of Liz Cambage’s pre-Olympic outburst finally revealed. By Matt Logue of Daily Telegraph. (Cambage denied the reports.)
• Another horrifying sexual-assault lawsuit underscores how deeply broken the hockey world is. By Mark Lazarus of The Athletic.
• Beneath Steve Kerr’s self-control is a life’s worth of outrage and grief. By Sally Jenkins of The Washington Post.
• Testing Positive in Zero-Covid China. By Louise Radnovsky of Wall Street Journal.
• Hilary Knight takes control: Her identity, her dreams and the fight for what’s next. By Meg Linehan of The Athletic.
• Champions League final: BBC reporter describes his experience entering the stadium.
• Connor McDavid is the best skater NHL’s skating greats have ever seen. By Daniel Nugent-Bowman and Dan Robson of The Athletic.
• New college grad Jack Devlin makes his family’s ‘dreams come true.’ By Michael Grange of Sportsnet (Ca.).
• The Classified Case of the Pro Wrestler Who Helped Beat the Nazis. By Jon Wertheim of Sports Illustrated.
• The coaching and parenting lessons I learned coaching my son’s pee-wee football team. By Bruce Feldman of The Athletic.
• What Bullets Do to Bodies. This piece by Jason Fagone from April 26, 2017 remains as relevant today as ever.
• They were smart, funny, loved. By Neil Sturdevant of the Uvalde Leader News.
• 78 Long Minutes. By Keith Collins, Albert Sun, Eleanor Lutz and Larry Buchanan of the New York Times .
• These maps and charts show how common gun violence is in America.By Ryan Huddle and Christina Prignano of The Boston Globe .
• How long are Americans sad and angry about mass shootings? Four days. By Patrick Sharkey of The Washington Post.
(Top photo: Mustafa Yalcin / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)