{"id":466859,"date":"2026-02-08T17:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T17:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/466859\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T17:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T17:46:09","slug":"channel-5-aims-for-super-bowl-touch-down-in-the-u-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/466859\/","title":{"rendered":"Channel 5 Aims for Super Bowl Touch Down in the U.K."},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLast summer the NFL made a groundbreaking free-to-air broadcast deal with British broadcaster Channel 5<\/a> (a subsidiary of Skydance-owned Paramount) with the aim of growing interest in the sport across the pond.<\/p>\n

\n\tHosted by Dermot O\u2019Leary, Sam Quek and Osi Umenyiora and produced by Hungry Bear Media, the first season has seen a typical NFL game interspersed with punditry, quizzes and audience games to appeal to families as well as longtime fans. While the response has been mixed (\u201cthe initial reaction from hardcore NFL fans was very much split,\u201d admits Hungry Bear exec producer Luke Shiach) viewers have warmed up as the season has worn on, spurred partly by an understanding that the format needs to be family-friendly to attract U.K. audiences \u2013 something Taylor Swift has helped with too, incidentally.<\/p>\n

\n\tAhead of Channel 5\u2019s \u201cNFL: Big Game Night,\u201d which will broadcast the Super Bowl<\/a> LX live from San Fancisco from 10.30pm U.K. time on Sunday Feb. 8, Shiach sat down with Variety to talk about what it\u2019s been like to bring the NFL to the U.K., what the team has planned for Sunday and, of course, the Swift effect.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat has the response been from U.K. viewers so far?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe big problem for the NFL gaining traction in the U.K. is it\u2019s very stop-starty with ad breaks built into the actual game mechanics for the U.S. TV market. So across a game, I think it\u2019s like 28 or 30 ad breaks. We don\u2019t have as many ad break requirements on British TV \u2014 in fact, we\u2019re not allowed them \u2014 so rather than filling those ad breaks with regular punditry, [we thought] what if you kept the audience entertained with a studio game show entertainment format. We piloted it, it went well. [The NFL] loved the craziness of it, the zaniness\u2026 and so that\u2019s what we\u2019ve done for the whole season. The initial reaction from hardcore NFL fans was very much split between \u201cBrilliant, we\u2019ve got free games to watch\u201d but they hated the [studio] games \u2014 they felt patronized \u2014 whereas very, very quickly we got really good feedback from families, parents. Dads who would sneak off and watch it previously on their own were suddenly finding that their kids would watch it. But slowly the NFL chat rooms and Reddit groups became a little bit more positive. And then as we got more towards the business end of the season, we slightly toned down the games and the zaniness and the competitions.<\/p>\n

\t\tGiven the play can stop at any point, what is that like from a production perspective?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the season, it\u2019s been unbelievable. We never know when there\u2019s going to be a break, because it\u2019s dictated by the match. We\u2019re in the gallery listening to the U.S. gallery, because we take the U.S. feed. Often that\u2019s chaos. Sometimes they\u2019re fighting about whether they\u2019re going to a break or staying on the field. We\u2019re following them. We\u2019ve got Dermot on the floor going, \u201cAre we coming to the studio, or are we going to punditry, or are we going to a break? What are we doing?\u201d And we\u2019ll sometimes have no notice, and literally, we\u2019ll say, \u201cDermot coming to you in 10 seconds and you\u2019ve got a minute to fill,\u201d or \u201cWe\u2019ve got a highlight or a replay, let\u2019s talk about that.\u201d And then he\u2019s got stats to get through and guests to bring in and then we\u2019ve got to shut it down and get back to the play before we miss a snap, because we were told if you missed the beginning of a play, people get furious. So it\u2019s been an unbelievable process.<\/p>\n

\t\tWhat do you have planned for Super Bowl Sunday?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIf everything goes to plan, it\u2019s going to be amazing. We\u2019re in San Fran at the moment, shooting VTs. We\u2019ve got Sam Quek with us, we had access to the Pro Bowl. The [gameshow] game we\u2019ve played in every episode is called \u201cNFL or\u2026?\u201d NFL players have unbelievable names. Americans have unbelievable names. And we found out that you can play a game called \u201cNFL or\u2026?\u201d anything. So the first one we did was \u201cNFL [player] or rapper?\u201d But what we found out was it was even better when you did \u201cNFL player or British [gas] station?\u201d or \u201cNFL player or Shakespeare character?\u201d or \u201cNFL player or paint color?\u201d So that has become our sort of signature game. And so we played it with these absolute superstars like Dak Prescott and Cameron Dicker and Brandon Aubrey. We did \u201cNFL or Britain?\u201d So Gretna Green, is he an NFL player or a place in Britain?<\/p>\n

\t\tThe Super Bowl is such a huge cultural moment in the U.S. Do you think you can turn it into something similar for the U.K.?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tListen, I don\u2019t know if we\u2019ll ever get to the American level, because it\u2019s taken 100 years or whatever, but definitely the aspiration is to move it from being a niche cultural event that\u2019s quite interesting to becoming something where people put it in their calendar and go [to a] Super Bowl watch party.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of trying to grow the British interest, this year we\u2019ve been given a really, really helpful calling card, which is that the defensive coordinator for the Seahawks is a Brit, Adam Durde. We got a sit-down interview with him on Monday with Sam, so that will feature in our run up. He\u2019s such a lovely guy.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe other thing that I think is quite good for a British audience is seeing themselves in the broadcast. So we\u2019ve got the NFL official watch party in Walthamstow [\u2026] and we\u2019ll try and drop that in so during a break in play Dermot will go, \u201cWhat a touchdown! Let\u2019s see how it was celebrated back in London.\u201d So we\u2019ll get a shot of, hopefully, people throwing their beer in the air.<\/p>\n

\t\tHow helpful has Taylor Swift been in expanding the NFL audience in the U.K.?\t<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s such a process to try and introduce a new culture to an existing culture and we\u2019ve got so many big sports in the U.K. Taylor Swift definitely has helped plant the seed of NFL, anecdotally. We tried to cotton on to the Taylor Swift effect. We had a Kansas City Chiefs game, so we got a Taylor Swift lookalike booked, and we planted her in a special part of the audience. We had a little allusion to her at the end of the show. We never named her. We just sort of subtly said, \u201cOoh, a big Travis Kelsey fan.\u201d We hoped we\u2019d get a few Swifties joining us \u2014 I don\u2019t know if it worked!<\/p>\n

\n\tThis interview has been edited and condensed for space and clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last summer the NFL made a groundbreaking free-to-air broadcast deal with British broadcaster Channel 5 (a subsidiary of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":466860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,32149,134,7508,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-466859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-channel-5","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-super-bowl","13":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/466860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}