SOCCER

Soccer Broadcaster Pairs Proper English Accent With Unbridled American Verve

By 
Arlo White is beginning his third season as the lead announcer for NBC’s coverage of the Premier League, a job that combines his favorite sport with one of his favorite countries. NBC 
LEICESTER, England — The voice of English soccer in the United States did not hesitate — not even for a second — when asked for his favorite broadcasting memory.
“It was the Super Bowl in Arizona,” Arlo White began through a broad smile. “Giants-Patriots, Plaxico Burress in the end zone, a great pass from Eli Manning.”
He trailed off, no doubt seeing the confused look on the face of the visitor across the table.
“Oh,” he said. “I was there calling the game for BBC Radio.”
White laughed. He grew up here, in England’s East Midlands, but has always had an affinity for the United States. As a boy, he would tune his radio just right — he carved a spot on the dial with a penknife — so that he could hear Sunday football games being broadcast on Armed Forces Radio (the feed would occasionally cut out and be replaced by Belgian flute symphonies). Occasionally, he wondered if he might ever become the first British announcer to work full time calling American football games.
Now, several decades later, he is beginning his third season as the lead announcer for NBC’s coverage of the Premier League, a job that combines his favorite sport with one of his favorite countries. Now that NBC has retained the rights to the Premier League through 2022, White can also sleep easy in the knowledge it is a job he can continue to do for the foreseeable future.
“On the ground, I’m fortunate to be part of a group of talented, diligent and conscientious people on both sides of the pond,” White said. “We genuinely love Premier League football, and the long-term partnership with NBC Sports will only help it to thrive stateside.”
The partnership has been a success for NBC, in profile if not in profits, but it also has been beneficial to American soccer fans. While previous rights holders presented the league with varying levels of commitment, NBC Sports has made the league a centerpiece of its cable network NBCSN and has invested robustly in a digital platform that broadcasts every game.
A studio show, based in Stamford, Conn., has also been well received (another British import, Rebecca Lowe, is the host).
And then there is White. NBC could have used the international broadcast feeds on all its games — which often feature acclaimed announcers like Martin Tyler — but chose instead to produce its own broadcasts for the top games each weekend, with White as its signature voice.
It was not a decision taken lightly — there are significant costs involved in producing a remote production and paying for talent, and the game itself is almost always the main draw for viewers anyway. But the chairman of NBC Sports Group, Mark Lazarus, said he and other top executives felt White offered a rare combination: His British heritage (and accent) affords him an authenticity that many soccer viewers crave, while his attachment to American culture allows him to speak in a manner that makes more casual American fans feel as if they are not being lectured by a foreigner.
“Although he is British and has grown up with the sport,” Lazarus said, “what differentiates Arlo from others is that he’s spent time in the U.S., understands our culture and has developed the ability to connect with our audience.”
The two cultures intermingle in his commentary. Take, for example, that Super Bowl call: White does an excellent job covering all the necessary elements of Manning’s game-winning pass to Burress (and does it with soaring emotion), while also falling back on a British habit. When he gives the score, he says “the Giants lead, 16 points to 14,” much as he might say, “Arsenal leads, two goals to one.”
White’s fascination with America dates to his boyhood but turned into full-blown love after he visited relatives in Chicago when he was in grade school — a journey that included attending the first preseason game of the famed 1985 Bears. White recalled sitting near the tunnel as the players ran onto the field and reaching out to slap hands with Walter Payton.
That experience cemented his passion for the N.F.L., and White’s attraction to the United States led him to make an unusual career choice in 2010. He had worked the previous nine years for the BBC — a pinnacle destination for British broadcasters and a job that had allowed him to work on soccer, cricket and, yes, a few Super Bowls. But White opted to leave the stability of the BBC to move to Seattle and become the voice of Major League Soccer’s Seattle Sounders.
“People thought I was insane,” he said. “I literally had people coming up to me and saying, ‘Why would you leave for this folly?’ ”
White had done his research, though. He knew the passion for soccer in the Pacific Northwest and made an educated gamble on the growing popularity of the M.L.S. Two years later, after calling a successful run for the Sounders, White was named NBC’s lead broadcaster for national M.L.S. games, as well as those involving the United States men’s and women’s teams. That meant he worked the London Olympics, where the women’s team won the gold medal.
When NBC acquired the Premier League rights in 2013, White — who had just barely settled his family in Connecticut — was on the move again, this time returning to England, where he traveled all over the country (and occasionally into Wales), calling two games a weekend.
He has loved it. It is, he acknowledged, a bit odd that his wife has barely heard a word of his commentary — NBC’s digital platform is accessible only to users in the United States — and the small measure of fame he had working for the BBC is long since gone. Even walking around his hometown here, he is generally anonymous.

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But White has reveled in again being part of the most popular soccer league in the world. The weekends are often frantic, with the NBC crew many times traveling on what White called “the party van” from one match to another.
What will this season’s trips be like? White conceded that what had become a waiting game on the new rights deal was “very unsettling,” but he also tried to see it in a positive way.
“Everyone has had their best professional experience these past few years,” he said before the deal was announced, “which is why no one wants it to stop.”
This week, when he heard the news it would not, he was ecstatic. White will have to negotiate a new contract after his current deal ends this year, but both sides seem more than happy with the current situation.
And, perhaps just as important, White wants nothing more than to maintain his connection with the one country — outside his own — he adores most.
A version of this article appears in print on August 13, 2015, on page B14 of the New York edition with the headline: Soccer Broadcaster Uses Best of Both of His Worlds. Order Reprints|  Today's Paper|Subscribe