Inside CBS’s Champions League coverage: ‘Thierry Henry gets asked about it more than Arsenal’

Pete Radovich, the coordinating producer of the UEFA Champions League coverage on CBS Sports, is reflecting on how he came to realise that the network’s Champions League Today studio now owns the global conversation on major nights of European football.

“Thierry Henry, in no uncertain terms, says he gets asked more about CBS now than Arsenal,” Radovich grins. “He will tell you that straight up. That to me is wild.

“This summer, I was in a taxi in Croatia. The driver asked me where I’m from. I told him New York. He’s like, ‘Oh, you’re into sports?’. I said yes and he said ‘My favourite sports show is in the U.S.’. A taxi driver in f****** Croatia! He’s saying ‘I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it; Thierry Henry, Kate Abdo, Micah Richards. It’s hilarious. I love that show. Have you ever seen it?’. And you just sit there and you’re like, ‘How in God’s name…?’.

“Four years ago, if you told me people outside of America would know our show, that is truly bigger than we could have ever dreamt. That’s the fun part. The hard part is staying relevant and getting better.”

The growth is reflected in numbers as well as anecdotes. CBS say their Champions League coverage garnered more than 3.5 billion video views across social media last season, the majority of which were from their Champions League Today studio show. It is anchored by Kate Abdo, the multilingual, 43-year-old British presenter, and merges insight and camaraderie with a panel comprised of the former Arsenal and Barcelona legend Henry, a Liverpool icon and Champions League winner in Jamie Carragher and ex-Manchester City defender Micah Richards, who is a Premier League winner.

This season represents the start of a six-year contract for Paramount Global, the owner of the CBS network, to broadcast UEFA club tournaments across the CBS network and its Paramount+ streaming service in the United States. It is one of the largest broadcast contracts in the sport, worth $1.5billion (£1.15bn) across six years. Paramount beat competition from Amazon to keep the UEFA competitions, including the Europa League and Conference League. David Berson, the president and CEO of CBS Sports, says the property is now considered one of the network’s “marquee assets”. He says: “We’re known for the NFL, Super Bowls, NBA Final Fours and the Masters and so on. The fact that we now put our soccer portfolio with the UEFA Champions League in that same discussion, that’s thrilling for us. It’s different. It’s exciting. It’s growing. It’s young-skewing (the average age of soccer viewers on Paramount+ is 37). It’s moved into that upper echelon of properties that help define who we are.”

It has certainly aided the growth of Paramount+. The Champions League was a “top five” driver of subscriptions throughout the 2023-24 season and it has been that way since the service launched in March 2021. CBS first broadcast the Champions League in 2020, when Turner Sports opted out of their UEFA contract after Paramount secured an initial three-year deal with UEFA beginning in the 2021-22 season. It allowed CBS to pick up the broadcast even earlier. The most recent contract will take CBS and UEFA through to 2030, representing a decade-long commitment and a period in which it is eminently possible that some UEFA club games may make their way across the Atlantic to the U.S. UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has previously said it is a possibility, while PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, the chair of the European Clubs’ Association, is a major advocate.

“I do think it’s real,” Berson says. “The powers that be recognise, by doing so, it can help further grow the game long-term. I think eventually you’re going to see more of this. They’re doing a lot of friendlies now. It’s intentional. I went to the Manchester City vs AC Milan game at the Yankee Stadium this summer and the crowd was incredible. The lines outside to get in. People wearing the uniforms, the jerseys. It’s truly remarkable; kids everywhere. They have to figure out how it works in the context of the actual schedule, but I would not be surprised because of the potential to get more fans in this country even more engaged in the product.”

Is it feasible within the current rights cycle? “Maybe — it is more their issue to figure out. We’d obviously welcome it. We’re not expecting it. It would be additive and something that can help showcase the sport to this country even more.”

As for another idea UEFA rather like — gaining access to some weekends for Champions League games — Berson says: “It would be desirable for us.”

He adds: “UEFA has more challenges to do that, but it’s appealing. We’re quite busy on weekends; there’s positives to that because the potential audience is typically bigger because people aren’t working. But you also start facing a lot more competition (from other sports). It’s pretty fun now with the excitement that it generates at a time of day when no one else is focused on sports, but some exposure on weekends could be of help as you move forward.”

Along with the Champions League, CBS has also recently secured rights to the EFL, while it has renewed deals for the NWSL and Serie A. It is becoming a destination for football fans in the U.S. and it is tempting to wonder whether CBS may have its eyes on even more premium content, such as the World Cup or the Premier League, when the next set of rights comes around.

“We’d love to have more,” Berson says. “It’s challenging because when you have the Champions League and all the UEFA products, the majority of the real fans of the sport are part of your service already. So how much incremental value will you get by adding some of the others? It doesn’t mean we won’t. The World Cup is tremendous. It’s different in that it is every four years versus 10 and a half months of every year, like the Champions League.

“I give props to NBC for the great job that they do with the EPL — they took a swing at this several years ago and proved their potential. Of course, we’d like to be the only destination, but when all media companies are committed to growing the sport, we all wind up benefiting. Frankly, it’s not that dissimilar from the tremendous success that we all have with the NFL. It’s not realistic that any one network could carry it all. We don’t have space or money for that. When we all get behind it, a rising tide lifts all boats. So you could make a similar point here on soccer.”

There will never be anything more powerful than the game itself when it comes to driving interest, but the studio show has made waves and headlines. Radovich, a Croatian-American whose cousin, Dragan Radovich, played for the Washington Diplomats alongside Johan Cruyff in the late 1970s, is a lifelong football fan. He is a former producer on Inside The NFL. “It was the longest-running show on cable television. Full stop. Not just sports, any show. And when I started working on that show, we had some fun because we were on tape, so you can take risks. It really conditioned me to push the envelope. Going live, obviously it’s a different animal. But you develop an understanding of what could work and when the alarms go off to tell you, ‘Hey, dial back here’. Inside The NBA is another inspiration. Kudos to them; they have their talent but also to the production for taking risks, sometimes crossing a line and having to deal with that.”

At its best, the Champions League studio show is playful, daring and funny, but also interspersed with sharp tactical analysis and powerful interventions, notably when Henry and Richards led a conversation about racism in European football in 2023 after abuse endured by Romelu Lukaku. The casting was intentional. Radovich wanted characters new to American television, which was true of Henry, Richards and Carragher.

“In the coaching world, a manager gets fired here and then suddenly they appear there. It’s just rotating and the wheel never changes. What I didn’t want for us to do was just bring in faces that have been on other networks over the years. It would have felt like every other show. Kate was the one exception and she was the first hire. I felt like she’d not cut through yet. Then it came down to Zoom calls — the story with Jamie Carragher was whether an American audience would understand him.

“And within the first two minutes of the conversation, I had to say, ‘Listen, I’m going to cut to it. Can you dial back the Scouse? Because that’s the concern here. Because if it’s a problem, then really we shouldn’t waste our time here’. Jamie said, ‘Of course, that’s not a problem — I’ve done television for Danish TV where English is a second language and I’m forced to dial it back’. So those are the kind of conversations that we were having. We wanted to feel new. We wanted to feel like something that people had not seen before. And then they had to be willing to have fun at their own expense.”

But there have also been moments of controversy. Last season, after Arsenal’s victory over Porto in the round of 16, Carragher appeared to question, in jest, Abdo’s loyalty to her now husband Malik Scott live on air. On social media, the matter rapidly “snowballed”, as Radovich puts it. Yet on the next broadcast, Abdo handled the matter to great acclaim.

She said: “This group has been together for three and a half years. I grew up with a brother and I feel like I have gained three more here. Let me introduce you to the group again; Thierry Henry; the golden child, can do no wrong, always says the right thing, sets the example to the rest of us. He is the big brother we all look up to. Then there is the middle child; Jamie Carragher, a chip on his shoulder, capable of saying anything for attention. Does he go too far sometimes? Absolutely. Does he apologise? Yes, he does. But all of us have that one annoying family member that we still love. Then there’s little bro; loud but loveable, Micah Richards, easy to pick on, impossible not to love.”

Abdo’s response immediately extinguished the flames. What did Radovich make of it all? “The first thing to say is everyone was surprised at the reaction that night; myself, Kate and Jamie included, because it was just banter gone wrong amongst friends, between a brother and sister. That night, when it started to snowball, we had discussions. It wasn’t alarms or questioning if we were going to be able to repair this. He misspoke. He felt bad. Kate wasn’t crazy about it, but none of it was like, ‘This could be the end’.

“The biggest reaction was surprise at how much play it got. So, there was never a moment in all of that time where I was like, ‘Wow, I don’t know if we can bounce back from this’. Not even for a split second because I knew internally we were all cool. It’s not for me to speak for Kate, but I can only speak to the conversations I had with Kate. She conveyed to me that she wasn’t crazy about the comment, but at the same time, we can get over this.”

Is all publicity good publicity for a studio show? “Well, you don’t want them talking about you like that. That’s never a good thing. Even the recovery, if you want to call it that, I don’t look at it as a good thing because that only happens with the bad. So you never want it to go bad. But you understand (the risk) when you play this game.

“Using a football analogy, you want to be aggressive in your game planning as a manager. That means if you want to press, press, press, you can get caught, right? We’re going to always press. And that’s how we’re going to score our goals and get our wins. But yes, on occasion you’re going to get countered or something’s going to go wrong. And you dust yourself off and get back at it. I can’t give the talent enough credit. They’re the ones who have to be able to be vulnerable on camera in front of millions of people on television and social media. It is not easy to put yourself out there like that. It only works because they’re willing to do that. But again, willing to do that with friends. They have to have that chemistry. They have to have that love for one another.

“We were on a group chat a couple of hours before the gold medal game for the Olympics in Paris (where Henry’s France Under-23 team lost 5-3 against Spain). And we’re exchanging texts with Thierry, saying ‘Good luck, we love you, we’re rooting for you’. And Thierry is responding. That’s special. That’s a family. It’s not just show up to work, punch the clock and go home and forget each other. There are legitimate friendships here.”

One of Radovich’s objectives is to bring American supporters closer to the European game. That means sometimes taking the show on the road, from the studio in London, and doing big matches on location. Last season, for Dortmund’s semi-final against Paris Saint-Germain in Germany, Carragher travelled to the game and once again captured the headlines. A few drinks with Dortmund fans escalated and he ended up watching the game in the famous “Yellow Wall”. By full time, he appeared rather merry as he filled the studio in on his day and then secured an interview with Jadon Sancho, on loan from Manchester United at the time. Carragher put his arm around him while asking questions to the English winger. Radovich calls it another moment of “pushing the limits”.

“We started our coverage during Covid,” he says. “There were a lot of restrictions. You have the greatest European club competition in the coolest cities, the coolest countries. You can go anywhere, but you can’t. It was like: ‘Here is this cake in front of you, but you can’t eat it’. So the minute we were told you could eat it, we went in head first, not even using our hands.

“The broadcasters that had it before us, whether it was a budget thing or whatever, there was virtually zero presence on site. Everything was done in a sterile studio back in America. ‘And here’s the game’. Our studio is in Europe, our talent is in Europe, and the games are in Europe. That visceral feeling of being pitchside at AC Milan vs Inter Milan for a Champions League semi-final — if had we been in London, you wouldn’t have Maldini coming over or Lukaku coming over. This is a financial investment for sure, but we feel that we’re getting so much in return.

“To UEFA’s credit, they see what’s happening in America. They understand what the audience wants. We’re probably a thorn in their side at times, but they also see the results and think, OK, that was painful at the time, but maybe there’s something here. So Jamie and Dortmund. That was an interesting day, but the result is that it’s now looked back on very fondly. At the time it was a little bit of a headache for everyone, but now when we look back, it’s like, ‘Was that so bad?’”

This season brings more games for CBS, as UEFA introduces the Swiss model for the Champions League group phase, meaning there will be eight rounds of fixtures. “There’s more jeopardy for longer,” Radovich says. “This is an absolute improvement. The debate is whether more matches are good or bad. That’s a completely different conversation. But from a television and a drama standpoint, from building an arc and keeping an audience longer, 100 per cent this is going to be better.”

For CBS, it will almost certainly mean more subscribers. Last season was their most-streamed Champions League campaign on Paramount+, with double-digit year-over-year growth in households and streaming minutes. The final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund was the third-most watched final on record in U.S. English-language television, averaging 2.3 million viewers. It was also the most-viewed final to not feature an English club. Their Golazo network had its most-streamed day of 2024.

Why do Americans like it so much? Radovich believes he has the answer.

“Americans believe that we have the best movies, the best television shows, the best musicians, the best Broadway shows. Anything related to entertainment, we already have the best of the best. So if you’re going to give me entertainment, if it’s not the best, I’m not interested. It’s that simple. We saw that a long time ago, back in the days of the New York Cosmos. The one time that the domestic league did work here was when, in theory, the best players, the Peles of the world, were playing here; George Best and Johan Cruyff.

“I know it’s oversimplified, but when you live here and when it comes to entertainment, basically you are spoiled. These are the best basketball players in the world? Yep. Best hockey players? Yep. Best baseball players? Yep. Best NFL players? Yep. Are these the best soccer players in the world (in MLS)? Um, not really. So, OK, what else have we got? The Champions League is the best of the best. Best clubs? Yep. Best players? Yep. Cool. I’ll give this a try. It’s that simple.”

(Top photo: CBS Sports/Paramount+ and Getty Images; design: Dan Goldfarb)