LONDON — There are precious few quiet moments on a game day along Fulham Road, in the southwest corner of England’s capital city.
But if you get there early enough, you can beat the tidal waves of noise that Chelsea fans send crashing down from the stands of Stamford Bridge.
It’s three hours before the home opener kicks off at one of England’s most venerable stadiums, built on a patch of land where big-time sports have been played since 1877. While blue-shirted supporters make their way from the subway to nearby shops and pubs, Lisa McLeod is already at work in an enclave behind the stadium.
McLeod oversees the English side of NBC Sports’ English Premier League soccer broadcasts. She coordinates what gets sent from stadiums back to the Stamford, Conn., studios where Rebecca Lowe wakes up thousands of Americans early on weekend mornings.
At the moment, she is seated inside a Winnebago-sized vehicle that is half-production truck, half-pregame relaxation lounge.
In that production half are Jon Charlton, who oversees NBC’s camera setup in the broadcast gantry; and John Harpham, a technology manager. In the lounge half are McLeod, play-by-play announcer Peter Drury, and color analyst Graeme Le Saux, who has just come inside after signing autographs for fans of the club where he was a hero in the 1990s.
The only noise comes from the bank of TVs showing the day’s early game, which is heading toward halftime. There’s time to chill out before the frenzy of Chelsea hosting Tottenham Hotspur, a grand city rivalry of two star-studded powers.
It only looks easy
Longtime American soccer fans know how remarkable it is that anyone in the country can watch every game from the world’s major leagues with a few clicks of a remote control, or taps on a phone. (And yes, with a few dollars spent on the cavalcade of streaming platforms that carry games.)
But getting the vibrant pictures and raucous sounds from the stadium to you still takes a lot of work, as it always has. It’s why those Stamford studios have every technological bell and whistle imaginable, put to use for the Premier League, Olympics, and the rest of NBC’s sports properties. Among them is a fiber-optic cable link that sends everything from that van back across the Atlantic Ocean in an instant.
If it all looks seamless from home, well …
“I wish it was seamless,” said McLeod, who has been part of NBC’s crew from the start of its Premier League broadcasting era in 2012.
The van is painted royal blue and bears the logos of the Premier League, NBC, and England’s Sky Sports. The last two of those are owned by Philadelphia-based Comcast, a relationship that has helped turn NBC’s Premier League coverage from very good into a juggernaut.
NBC is able to use Sky’s cameras when it needs them, such as when Drury and Le Saux did a segment from inside Chelsea’s locker room for the network’s pregame show that day. The networks also share some production staff.
But most times when NBC’s announcing team is at a game, the network only has one of its own cameras: the one the announcers look into from their broadcasting perch.
Everything else comes from other entities, and runs through McLeod’s truck to top producer Pierre Moossa’s studio in Stamford.
Comcast at the top
You may know that NBC has spent some $4.5 billion over the last decade to bring the Premier League to America. But Comcast’s purchase of Sky in 2018 brought it the entity that has done the most of any in the world to make English soccer world-famous. Sky was directly involved in the Premier League’s launch 30 years ago, and remains at the center of it now.
“It’s growing massively,” McLeod said. “It’s beyond all our wildest dreams.”
Drury has seen it all too, from his own up-close view. One of English soccer’s most famous voices has called games on radio and TV for a range of outlets since 1990. American viewers know him from his years on the Premier League’s international broadcasts, and in recent times as part of CBS’ UEFA men’s Champions League crew.
Now he is NBC’s lead play-by-play voice, which will often have him calling multiple games each weekend for the network. As America gets to further know him, he is getting to know America — and he knows he doesn’t need to do much introducing.
“It’s a mature football audience,” Drury told the Inquirer an interview at his seat in the broadcast gantry, high atop Stamford Bridge’s East Stand. “I call a football match the way I’ve always called a football match, because that is what America now expects. So in the most positive possible way, I really haven’t given it any special treatment.”
But he also knows that NBC gives its broadcasts special treatment, in ways that other TV networks can’t or wouldn’t do. For the season-opening Crystal Palace vs. Arsenal game, Drury got to do a pregame segment from the field with Le Saux and Lee Dixon. For Chelsea-Spurs, it was a piece taped in Chelsea’s locker room — the most exclusive of inner sanctums. Locker rooms in international soccer are never open to the media like they are in MLS and other American sports.
“[NBC] makes a real point of wanting to be right in the thick of it,” Drury said. “They really want to bring the American supporter right into the heart of it … I think it is absolutely fair to say that NBC are the first non-domestic, non-U.K., Premier League broadcaster who’ve gone to those lengths to get right to the heart of the game.”
Singing the Blues
Chelsea is one of the clubs that gets it. The proof is found not just at bars across America every weekend, but beneath the railings of Stamford Bridge’s upper deck. Among the dozens of banners from supporters’ clubs worldwide are a slew from the States: New York, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Austin, Ohio, California.
There was a quartet of regional shoutouts that a foreign visitor couldn’t help chuckling at: “American Southwest,” “Desert Texas Blues,” “Mid-Atlantic Blues,” and best of all “American Heartland.” (Officially, that’s a conglomerate of local supporters’ clubs that spans 15 states from Michigan to Montana.)
And yes, there was a bright “Philly Blues” banner in the East End. You might not see it on TV because it’s on the same side of the cameras, but it’s there, not far from the Matthew Harding Stand that hosts Chelsea’s most raucous supporters.
“Maybe not all of the English football community is as mature about its relationship with American fans as American fans have become with us,” Drury said. “The more Americans who are in the Premier League, the more that natural symbiosis is bound to grow. And alongside of that, the greater the ongoing realization that America has joined the party — and by the way, has joined the party for quite a long time now — the better for all of us.”
With just over an hour to go before kickoff, it’s time to leave Drury and Le Saux to get ready for their calls. Soon enough, the opening whistle would blow on an exceptional 2-2 tie. Tottenham equalized in second-half stoppage time, and the managers were in each other’s faces on the sidelines all day — including a big fracas after the final whistle. It went viral worldwide, from TV footage to journalists’ tweets from press seats just behind the benches.
It was a long way from quiet, and that’s just how everyone wanted it.
