Must a World Cup broadcast be on location? The BBC, for reasons of cost and environmental concerns, has rolled back to when tournaments were beamed back to the UK. Halcyon days of Brian Moore and Des Lynam accompanied by pundits in garish knitwear and beige furniture are long gone, if lamented. How to recapture their magic? Need it be a problem when the domestic market leader, Sky’s Monday Night Football, is broadcast from a business park near the M4?
ITV had the first two games – Mexico v South Africa and South Korea v Czechia – but its Brooklyn views of Lower Manhattan may yet fall victim to elements accentuated by those environmental issues. It also asks one of the World Cup’s leading questions: how dialled in is the American public? The distracting activity taking place behind Gary Neville, Ian Wright and Roy Keane suggests a city carrying out business as usual even while hot takes are cooked on the veranda.
The BBC’s opening broadcast, Canada against Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Friday night – begins with a montage. “Welcome back, we missed you,” says an American narrator, channelling the hospitality the US was formerly famous for. Over in Salford, Gabby Logan anchors before an LED backdrop of Toronto; this will alter according to the location of matches. Joining Wayne Rooney and Micah Richards, the latter cackling in self-deprecation after Logan digs him out for never having played in the tournament, is Olivier Giroud. The smouldering Frenchman, an actual World Cup winner, is full of bonhomie, if short on words. Unlike in Brooklyn, where ambient noise has caused problems, this quartet can hear each other perfectly.
Richards is commuting to New York for his Netflix assignments with Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger collective and manages to sneak mention of the departed enfant terrible. “Same initials, different person,” says Logan, moving things swiftly along. Lineker’s recent comment that – had he worked for the BBC during the World Cup – he “would have been in Salford in a green box” had been unhelpful.
Where ITV has opted for celebrity slop in the inexplicable inclusion of Man Vs Food’s Adam Richman, BBC journalistic muscles are flexed. Outside Source’s Ros Atkins fact-checks the real-world issues: Gianni Infantino’s Fifa, Trump, Iran, visas and ticket prices. “It’s not been a good look at all,” offers Richards, handed a hot potato but dealing skilfully enough with issues of inclusivity and cost. “We want to see the joy in everyone,” he concludes, diverting to Thursday’s scenes of Mexican celebration. Rooney, quiet on geopolitics, is happy to agree.
An hour of preamble takes in visits to the Scotland and England camps, the latter mercifully brief when it has too often been the fall-back for broadcasters short on material. Next: Bosnian history, featuring this organ’s Jonathan Wilson discussing the nation’s 1992 independence referendum in geography-teacher tweed.
By leaning into journalism and humanities, the BBC has chosen contrast with ITV’s star system, for whom Gabriel Clarke alone does the issue-led heavy lifting. Perhaps with good reason. Rooney’s and Richards’s research on Friday’s competing teams is quite obviously limited. “I’ve actually done American TV with him and he loves the game,” offers Richards of the Canada coach, Jesse Marsch. “It’s great for him,” shrugs Rooney on Luc de Fougerolles, the 20-year-old Canada defender.
Rooney stays equally noncommittal when critiquing Michael Bublé, singing in an opening ceremony the BBC has decided to not bother showing: “So so, he’s obviously popular.” Logan wisely decides not to canvas opinions of Alanis Morissette’s Canadian national anthem before the game is handed into the safe hands of Steve Wilson and Stephen Warnock.
Much BBC commentary will be done off-tube, though this commentary pairing is in Toronto, from where the iPlayer’s UHD service exposes a jarring number of empty seats for a host nation’s opener. Warnock asks: “Is that Ryan Reynolds?” The Wrexham co-owner is sat near Wayne’s World’s Mike Myers.
At half-time, the other Wayne takes a back seat, the BBC’s podcast star in lieu of Lineker low on energy. Instead, Richards assumes centre stage, jollying along Giroud. “Set pieces are so important,” Richards declares, dissecting Bosnia’s first-half goal. After Canada snatch a deserved draw, Rooney disapproves of Marsch’s frenzied drinks-break pep talk but admits: “He’s given them energy.”
The post-match appearance of Darren Cann, the former assistant referee, sets fire into the belly of Rooney at long last. “It’s not the first time we’ve disagreed,” he says. Logan, ever professional, dampens things down in the sign-off, during which Richards concludes: “How good is the World Cup?”
The conclusion from the opening shots of the battle of the terrestrial broadcasters is that if ITV retains the more punchy pundits the BBC’s production can offer merits made more achievable by working from home.
