Rebecca Lowe has a confession to make.
“When things go wrong… I kind of love it,” smiles the British host of NBC Sports’ Premier League coverage in the U.S., speaking to The Athletic via Zoom from her home in northern California. “If it can go wrong, I want it to go wrong. I want to be challenged.
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“I like live TV. If it’s not live, I find it harder.”
From across the Atlantic, she receives a knowing nod and a hard agree from Kelly Cates, who fronts a large portion of Sky Sports’ Premier League coverage for the UK and Ireland, keeping the likes of Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Roy Keane in check:
“Definitely. Anything recorded, I hate it. I get so bored. Whereas if something is live, then whatever can go wrong, throw it at me, I don’t care.”
Lowe and Cates have known each other for more than a decade, having worked for the same broadcasters (Setanta Sports, then ESPN) from 2007-13. Since then, their lives have followed similar paths, but in different countries after Lowe relocated to the U.S. to take on presenting duties for NBC 10 years ago.
Now the two British women are leading Premier League coverage in two of the competition’s biggest territories.
They are the steady hands guiding fast-moving live shows that last several hours, tasked with eliciting the most interesting information from the pundits, ensuring everyone gets their say and keeping some of the game’s loosest cannons on track.
“Generally speaking, I find managers and players tend to be less unpredictable than the pundits,” says Cates, referring to the role she and Lowe also play in conducting pre- and post-match interviews.
“I know, first game of the season, we’re pitchside at Burnley (last Friday). And Gary (Neville) and Jamie (Carragher) will be excited because they’re back. They’ll be giddy and they’ll be messing about because it’s also a Friday night game, which is supposed to have a more relaxed feel.
“Then you really have to be ready for anything because they could come back with whatever. Especially Gary, who I love working with but he could be on some kind of political campaign at the time and throw something at you, and then you’re having to react to that as well.”
While Cates has become used to working alongside a variety of pundits, a cast which generally changes according to the teams playing in a particular match, in the U.S., Lowe is always alongside at least two of the same three former players: Robbie Earle, Robbie Mustoe and Tim Howard.
There are pros and cons to that consistency, says Lowe, who was also there at Turf Moor on Friday with all three for that opening game of the Premier League season (live on USA Network and the Spanish language channel Universo), the potential downside being that a new and relevant face can bring a freshness to the programme. Equally, keeping the team small yields a productive familiarity.
“I know every single thing about these guys,” Lowe says. “I know the body language. I know when Robbie Mustoe’s nostrils flare that he wants to come in and talk. Robbie Earle’s got a mouth thing he does. It helps the broadcast flow from my perspective because I always know whether they want to come in and talk.”
Plenty has changed in the world of football broadcasting since Lowe and Cates took their first steps into the industry at the BBC and Sky Sports News respectively. The tone of the coverage, says Cates, has become “slightly more relaxed” and “conversational”, because of the increase in YouTube channels, fan channels and fan podcasts:
“Also, football fans have access to a lot more detailed information now, so they are better informed than they’ve ever been. And they expect their analysts to be more informed than they are, and to tell them something that they don’t know.”
They also want honesty, says Lowe.
She points to the criticism former USWNT player Carli Lloyd received for comments she made about the performance of the current team at the ongoing Women’s World Cup, while working for Fox TV in the States. “I was very in praise of her (Lloyd) because, so often, I have seen pundits that don’t say a lot because they’ve just come out of the game and it’s very difficult when their friends are playing, which I understand.
“But you have to make a decision. Are you now a pundit? Or are you a former player? Because if you’re a pundit, you have to say what you think. That is what you’re being paid to do.”
The broadcasters doing the paying undoubtedly want that, too, as well as some entertainment. After all, it’s often what makes for the most entertaining clips that they know will gather traction on social media.
Last season, Cates was inadvertently involved in one of those after Liverpool’s 7-0 dismantling of Manchester United.
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Having expertly stayed on top of the post-match emotions of the ex-pros in the studio (two with Liverpool links in Graeme Souness and Carragher and two United old boys in Neville and Keane), Cates wrapped up the programme with the words: “They’ve beaten Manchester United 7-0, it’s a record for this fixture, Mo Salah is now Liverpool’s record Premier League goalscorer… And they didn’t even play that well.”
Her words (and the smile that accompanied them) were aimed at Neville, who had earlier claimed that Liverpool had merely “played alright, (in the) second half”. But they made waves for days afterwards on social media, with viewers split between those who appreciated the humour and those who most definitely did not.
“I didn’t think anything of it,” says Cates of the moment she delivered her closing line. “I usually try to do something nice with my end line but I’m also aware that most people have stopped watching by then. But then I saw it blow up a little bit. I always know before I go on social media, because I get texts from friends to say, ‘Oh, I saw this’, or whatever.
“Then you go on, and you’re like, ‘Ugh’, because anything that draws attention to you as a presenter is not good, generally speaking, because it’s very rarely positive. I’m not really aware of whether the reaction was positive or negative, because I tried to blank it out. I know what I meant by it. And I know how it was taken in the studio, and what the people around me who I trust think about it. So I don’t pay too much attention to that stuff.”
“It’s a discipline that you have to get better at,” says Lowe of the ability to glide above the noise social media can create.
While she has amassed almost 80,000 followers on Instagram, Lowe is not on Twitter, having tried it for three months in 2011 and it “just went horribly wrong”.
She says: “It was the first time in my life I received any kind of feedback that wasn’t from my bosses. I’m pretty strong, but I really, really struggled to the point where I had to come off because the abuse was so bad. It shook me for a long time. And it was contributory to the decision that I almost made to leave the industry.”
It wasn’t the only factor. There was also the abuse she felt, live and in person, when presenting from football grounds around England.
When Arsenal legend Thierry Henry made his return to their team, after almost five years playing in Spain and MLS, at home to Leeds United in 2012, Lowe was presenting at the Emirates Stadium for ESPN alongside former Arsenal defender Martin Keown and ex-Derby County and Wales midfielder Robbie Savage.
“They decided to put me on this pitchside desk in front of the 6,000 away fans, all of whom – women included – decided to sing an abusive chant very loudly for a long time while I was on air,” she says.
“At one point during a commercial break I looked at my phone and I had two messages; one from my mum saying, ‘Are you OK?’ She must have been mortified at home listening to that. And one from Kelly (Cates) saying the same thing.
“It drives me nuts to think about it now. If that had been racism, homophobia, rightly so that would have been all over the papers, but because it’s just funny for a girl, it’s fine. No one blinked at all — except my mum and Kelly.”
There was one lower-league stadium where Lowe says she had to have a security guard accompany her because the abuse was so bad.
“There wasn’t a ground I went to when it didn’t happen. At the time it’s uncomfortable, but nobody was helping. So I wasn’t going to complain about it. Because if I complain about it, maybe they take me off the job. It’s only now, 10 years later, when I start thinking about it, (I can see) it was really bad.”
Has that changed?
“I’d be surprised if that happened now,” says Cates. “I think now it would probably be individual comments rather than a whole stand shouting it. Certainly on the surface, things have changed. I think there are probably quite a few people who still think that way, but have received enough education to know not to say it out loud.”
“There’s also more women (at games),” says Lowe. “Kelly and I stood out like sore thumbs at these grounds in the tunnel area and outside by the fans. Now there’s more women, it’s just not as big a thing.”
Since moving to America, Lowe says she has felt far less of the toxicity that impacted her so acutely on Twitter.
“I feel that it’s a different approach, because football is not a religion over here. It’s entertainment and it’s fun. People are very into their (respective football) teams, but we can hold a Fan Fest (when NBC Sports takes its Premier League coverage on the road and broadcasts live from various locations around the U.S.) and have Arsenal and Tottenham fans standing next to each other sharing a beer and there’s no problems.
“You couldn’t do that in the UK. There’s just a different way that football is perceived and felt. Maybe for that reason, there isn’t quite the vitriol (in America) that potentially there is in England and certainly that I felt for 10 years there. So now I get less of it, and I’m really grateful for that.”
Cates has been on Twitter since 2009, amassing 167,000 followers and using both the quality filters and the block button to good effect. Her ability to ignore the noise is, she says, partly because of her tendency to be self-critical.
“I know inside what’s gone well and what’s gone badly… That’s the thing; it’s just opinion. There’s only a certain level of competence you can get to in a job, after which in a job like ours, it just comes down to whether or not people like watching you – their own personal preference. And you can’t change that.”
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Perhaps partly owing to her background (daughter of Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish, she grew up surrounded by “football people”), Cates says she “never felt uncomfortable being a woman in football in terms of my right to be there.” That’s despite the fact it was a “much more sexist environment”, in the early days, “but it was quite open sexism that felt a little bit easier to deal with.
“Now, everybody thinks that they understand all the issues, and, ‘We’re across that now’. Despite the fact that everybody in football who’s making a decision is pretty much a middle-aged white guy, ‘We’re across all the issues, we’ve read a book, we’ve listened to a podcast, and we know how you guys all feel about that’.
“And so I think that there is a real issue that women, people of colour, anybody who’s not a straight white guy in front of camera is a version that is acceptable to that kind of person.”
This is something Cates says she’s been thinking about quite a bit, warning that it’s “not a fully-formed thought” just yet.
“My point is, it’s a certain type of person that gets on air. And it’s a kind of person who is an acceptable version of their otherness to the same type of person who’s making a decision as for the decades previously, pretty much – it’s changing slightly.
“I think there’s a responsibility in how we are on air. A responsibility to behave in a certain way, and I’ve not quite worked out what that is yet, but there’s a responsibility to carry yourself in a certain way, to interact with the, usually male, pundits in a certain way…”
Cates goes on to talk about appearance, and how earlier in her career she made the mistake of standing pitchside in “inappropriate shoes that got sodden and sunk into the grass.” Now she says she chooses to mostly wear trainers or flat shoes, or chunky boots and a big coat in the winter months, “because I’m not going to freeze my arse off to stand there in a dress and heels in November”.
“I definitely did it,” she says. “I’ve definitely been that person. And I still see female reporters doing it now. But a lot of that is about male gaze. And it is about being the kind of woman who men find acceptable, or who men want to see on television. A lot of it is about those ingrained ideas of what a woman on telly should look like.”
Lowe is mentoring some young journalists who have completed communications journalism degrees, one of whom is already well on the road to achieving her dream of being an NFL sideline reporter.
“She’s excellent at what she does,” says Lowe. “The problem is, she’s beautiful.
“When she got her first job, I said to her, ‘This is gonna sound a bit odd, but one of the things I really want you to do is to think through your hair and your clothes. You must always remember that the most important thing about you is what you’re saying, and how you carry yourself’.
“This is just my opinion. But I said to her, ‘If you want people to listen to what you’re saying, and give you the credibility that you deserve with your talents as a journalist, then you’ve got to make sure that you’ve got the big coat and the chunky boots’.
“You can look nice, I’m not not saying dress like a nun. But unfortunately, the male gaze is what it is. And I think that we have to try and address that a little bit so that women can make it and be really respected for what they do.”
There are undoubtedly more women presenting sport than ever before, but if we are still having these conversations over how they look and dress, has anything really changed? And do male presenters have these thoughts/concerns?
“It’s markedly different for men,” says Lowe. “I love a good outfit as much as the next woman. I just think it’s an added thing for a female host to think about and ensure she’s getting right. It certainly is for me. I don’t see how that would ever change.”
Cates agrees that outfit choices are more “straightforward” for men. Though she points out that there has often been discussion around what the pundits are wearing, whether it’s the famous “pundit trainers” that every male guest seemed to have at one stage, or the striped Thom Browne suits Micah Richards and Daniel Sturridge wore in the Sky Sports studio earlier this year.
“Maybe there’s just more choice for women, so it’s easier to either get that wrong or just make it more distracting, I’m not sure,” says Cates. “I think generally people are just more interested in what women wear than in what men wear.
“There are so many layers to how important a woman’s appearance is and why people care about it in a way that they don’t with men.”
Clearly, there are still differences in the way male and female presenters are treated and viewed. Maybe there always will be, because it’s something that stretches far beyond the world of sport.
But after 20-plus years in the industry, Cates and Lowe have reached the point where they feel “comfortable” in their roles and have “slightly less imposter syndrome”, as the latter puts it. And fully embrace the chaos that comes with live TV.
“That’s not to say that I’m complacent about it,” says Cates. “But I feel like it’s my world now. I know all the different things that are required. And it’s just down to me whether or not I do it.”
(Top photos: NBC Sports/Sky Sports; design: Sam Richardson)
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