There’s something different about these Olympics, and it’s not just E. coli on the triathlon course or a beach volleyball stadium at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. As both a lifelong fan of the Olympics and a media member covering the Games from the U.S., I can’t overstate how much my viewing experience has been enhanced by the emergence of Gold Zone, NBC’s NFL RedZone–style whip-around show taking us around Paris for 10 hours a day.
I also know I’m not alone here. If NBC were to pull the plug on this product for future Olympics, some fans would be as angry as if the IOC yanked track and field.
I wrote a little about Gold Zone before the Olympics, in the form of a Q&A with Scott Hanson, one of the program’s four daily hosts. I wasn’t planning on writing about it again, but then I consumed so much of the show that I felt like I couldn’t go 16 days without singing its praises.
“If at the end of the Games, people tell me, That felt like RedZone. Or, That gave me some RedZone–esque thrills, that will be mission accomplished,” Hanson told me in May. “If casual Olympics fans tell me at the end of the Games that they watched more Olympics than they ever have because of Gold Zone, that will be mission accomplished.”
Well, mission accomplished.
Gold Zone is not actually new, but this is the Olympics in which NBC has perfected it. Thanks to better technology, a greater acceptance of watching live sports on streaming platforms and a better time zone, this has been the Olympics when the show broke through.
The program has done many things right, and those four hosts (Hanson, Andrew Siciliano, Matt Iseman and Jac Collinsworth) belong on that list. Each has brought their own cadence to the show, and the regular daily handoffs keep the proceedings from getting monotonous—especially for those of us who just keep the show running all day.
I figured who better to explain the success of the show than one of those hosts, so I connected with Iseman, who tag-teams the first time slot of the day with Collinsworth. What I got when Iseman picked up the phone was … both Iseman and Collinsworth on speakerphone. It’s unclear when they’ve last left each other’s side.
The two hosts, who have spent the past 14 days encouraging fans to tweet photos of themselves watching Gold Zone, shared with me the routine of how they watch Gold Zone. Their daily ritual: They get off set, grab a bite to eat and then sit on a balcony in their Stamford, Conn., hotel and watch Siciliano and Hanson.
“Not for research,” Iseman says. “But because we’re fans of this. We love watching it.”
“I think it’s probably the most fun [time] that I’ve had on TV,” Collinsworth says. The pair were relatively fresh off the air and clearly still in a post-show buzz. They sounded just like they do on camera, jumping in to build off each other’s points and bursting with nuggets to share.
“We’ve both been saying, you will never watch the Olympics the same way again,” Iseman adds.
I think he’s right.
What hooked me on Gold Zone from the jump is that the show matches my sensibilities exactly. I’ve always thought outlets covering the Olympics could do a better job leaning into the more niche sports. People love it when a dressage horse or a badminton rally goes viral. But NBC’s prime-time coverage still focuses so much on the biggest sports and most famous athletes, with maybe a few highlights from elsewhere. Gold Zone’s multiscreen capabilities and longer runtime lend space to invest a bit of time just to see what might happen—as well as the good sense to know you can’t pull away when a wild ending in a France vs. Germany handball game falls in your lap. The show’s real secret sauce is how it figured out that mix.
Gold Zone prides itself on showing you every medal. This was made clear during “Gold Rush Weekend,” Days 8 and 9, when the hosts kept returning to a graphic that ticked off 49 medal events as they happened over 48 hours (it was 51 before bad weather in Tahiti delayed the surfing). But an event doesn’t have to be for a medal to capture the attention of our Olympics concierges. It’s been fun watching them seamlessly glide from fencing to archery to canoe slalom, sometimes learning the rules right along with viewers, without missing any of the truly crucial moments in swimming or gymnastics.
The show is also different at different times of day. Iseman and Collinsworth captain a true morning show. They appear at 7 a.m. to recap the early-morning action you may have missed, then talk about their coffee and show photos of pets watching Gold Zone. Siciliano and Hanson get more down to business during a time of day when more of the critical medal events seem to air in quick succession. The morning guys have time to fence against each other and bring in kids for a taekwondo demonstration. Hanson often feels like he’s still living in RedZone’s witching hour.
Iseman and Collinsworth come off like longtime buddies, but they had actually never met until three days before the first show. They seem to have become best friends faster than Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in Step Brothers.
Iseman says much of what you see on air has come together organically. “On Friday afternoon [before Day 1], Jac and I were talking, none of us knew what the show would be. You have an idea, but nobody’s tried to simultaneously stream up to 40 events at a time, in dozens of different sports, and have it make sense. In our heads, we’re just picturing, ‘My God, we might be stuck on speedwalking for an hour.’ Within about 15 minutes, we got it.”
They’ve remained nimble. There was a popular moment on Day 9 when a crew member came on air to break down a controversy in the women’s skeet shooting final. Iseman says it was Collinsworth who suggested they put him on air, after observing an animated discussion in the studio.
“There’s no rulebook for this,” Collinsworth says. “They made a point of telling [us] that. It makes you dip into your creative bag.”
Iseman says fans have made the show better, too. “We are on Twitter reading the feedback. The quadbox got better because people were saying, ‘Hey that logo’s too big.’ We agreed. We’ve jumped to the six-box, we dumped the decabox.”
They’ve also gotten more interactive as they’ve found their audience.
Collinsworth says when the show first started, they were hesitant to promote Gold Zone as its own hashtag. “It was like, ‘Nahhh let’s do #NBCOlympics, so we’re all on the same thing.’ But you could tell, 10 minutes into the first show, we didn’t have to [ask for] #GoldZone, we were already getting hit with it.”
People who’ve come of age during this era of RedZone and ManningCasts and putting the Super Bowl on Nickelodeon may not realize what a change this is, or what it used to be like for Olympics fans who wanted midday updates on wrestling and water polo.
Given the relative lack of interest in the Tokyo Games (thanks to a mix of COVID-19 protocols, empty stadiums and a poor time zone), I’m not sure if everyone quite remembers the extent to which criticizing NBC used to be its own Olympic sport.
I recently went back and read this Washington Post story from 2012 about how the #NBCFail hashtag went viral. The funny thing is, at the time NBC was streaming everything live. I know because I actually worked for NBC during those London Games, a one-month temp position where one of my jobs was to make sure the correct livestream links for the correct judo mats were in the correct spots on the NBCOlympics.com site.
But clearly not everyone knew everything was streaming live, as made clear in that story above. Now, Gold Zone makes life a lot easier than having to click a link that says, “Repechage, Finals: M Freestyle 55kg & 74kg.” (And Peacock does make it easier to find those types of specific offerings.)
After Peacock hosted multiple NFL games last season, including a Miami Dolphins at Kansas City Chiefs wild-card game, people know. In 2021, NBC angered some fans by putting USA men’s basketball exclusively on Peacock and only for paid subscribers. This time around, subscribers have gotten a lot more bang for their buck.
Whether you like it or not, it’s a reality of our world that streaming platforms are becoming essential for sports fans who want to watch everything. Peacock had that NFL playoff game. Netflix will have the NFL’s Christmas games. Apple TV+ has exclusive MLB windows. Amazon has Thursday Night Football and just bought rights to the NBA.
There are still millions and millions of people who like to sit down and watch the prime-time broadcast on regular old NBC. But for those who want to see everything live—those taking advantage of modern work-from-home philosophies or those who simply tolerate more screen time than they did in 2016—Gold Zone has been a game-changer.
As Iseman himself said, there’s no going back.
The Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 will be outstanding for Gold Zone and offer easy time slots to follow along. Brisbane, Australia, four years after that will be interesting, to see the appetite for overnight Gold Zone. Some of the Winter Olympics may be interesting as well.
But now that we’ve gotten a taste of Gold Zone at its best, the people who run it must find a way to make it work. They owe it to their country.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NBC’s ‘Gold Zone’ Has Perfected Live Olympics Coverage, and There’s No Going Back.
