As NBC’s lead Premier League play-by-play announcer, Arlo White has a unique perspective on the roaring success of Leicester City. His hometown club started the 2015-16 season with 5,000-to-1 odds to win the league yet finds itself in first place with just three games remaining in the season. “I’m still looking for the right words to sum up how incredible it really is,” White said while visiting NBC’s headquarters in New York City to fill in for “Premier League Live” host Rebecca Lowe while she is on maternity leave.
White, who joined the network in 2012, spoke to staff writer Ian Thomas about the growth of the network and its soccer coverage.
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White came to NBC from the Seattle Sounders.
Photo by: NBC SPORTS GROUP
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This year in the Premier League we’re seeing many of the smaller clubs, like Leicester, have great success compared even to perennial powers, like Chelsea. How does that affect you on the broadcasting side?
WHITE: Smaller teams have bigger profiles now. I think our challenge when teams like Chelsea are not pushing for the title is to ensure that their fans are still watching and that they’re still engaged, but that we also educate the layman fan that is expecting to see these big clubs and educate them when they see a team they don’t recognize that this isn’t a bad thing; this is an exciting thing.
I think the Premier League is the most competitive league in the world, and maybe we are set now for a new normal that there is going to be a bit of a flux at the top of the table, and those smaller clubs will challenge for the top four. This makes it more American in a way, because the system in England and world football typically is that there is no system and the same teams are usually at the top. This season we’ve seen much more parity like the NFL, so on any given Saturday a team can beat another team, and I think that has energized the Premier League and its fans.
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NBC is still somewhat of a new name when it comes to broadcasting the Premier League. Have you seen a shift in terms of the way clubs and the league approach the network over the last four years?
WHITE: Last year, when we brought the entire team [to the U.K.] so we had a studio, a pitch-side desk and also an announce team in the stadium as well, even local broadcasters think, “Goodness me: They’re taking this seriously.” And we’re very visible, with NBCSN on the desk, and fans over there realize how serious NBC and the Americans are taking it.
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White is now filling in as host of “Premier League Live.”
Photo by: NBC SPORTS GROUP
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We’re the conduit through which they can also reach the audience that they want to target. And it’s not just games, not just access to players for interviews; you’ve seen the shows that we’ve done, the download [documentary] shows with Southampton and Crystal Palace. These aren’t the most household names amongst football clubs around the world, but maybe they are more open [with us] because they have more to gain.
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Media access policies are quite different in the United States compared to Europe, where they’re traditionally very strict. How has that changed how you work, and do you see any changes in the future?
WHITE: When I was working MLS, we’d get to the town a day or two early for a game, and we’d sit and do production meetings with three players and a manager from either team, so at the end of it you’ve spoke with eight guys who are involved in the game. You know so much more about that game as a result. They’d even give you, because they could trust us, the starting 11s. You ask a British manager for a starting 11 the day before a game he would literally have you committed. You’d be thrown out.
The problem in England, of course, is the tabloid press, and the idea that they are trying to catch everyone out to get a back-page splash. It leads to tremendous suspicion between the two parties. So the players and managers want to speak with the media as little as possible, and it’s a shame. It’s almost the cart before the horse in England.
