This year marks Prime Video’s first season of coverage of the National Women’s Soccer League. As part of the NWSL’s media deals signed last fall, Prime Video’s parent company Amazon acquired 27 matches per year: a season-opening kickoff match, 25 Friday night regular-season matches, and one playoff quarterfinal match.
There have been some interesting developments with that package so far. As we approach the midpoint of the 2024 season, ahead of the league’s CBA-mandated midyear break (from July 8-14) and subsequent league play break for the Olympics (July 15-August 18, albeit with some NWSL x LIGA MX Femenil Summer Cup matches during that time), Prime Video play-by-play announcer Mike Watts and senior coordinating producer Betsy Riley spoke to AA about how their company’s first year of NWSL coverage has gone to date.
Prime Video has two further matches ahead of that break, featuring the Houston Dash at the Kansas City Current at 8 p.m. ET Friday and the Portland Thorns at the San Diego Wave next Friday (July 5) at 10 p.m. ET. Watts, who’s been calling NWSL games since 2014 (the third year of the league’s existence), said he’s thrilled with the resources Prime Video has invested into covering the league and the people they’ve brought in to do that.
“These people are unbelievable to work with,” Watts said. “If you look at the Emmy cast list from earlier this year, so many of those people are around this production, around this truck. I mean, it’s high-level professionals with an immense commitment to what we’re doing. And I don’t want to get in the business of sort of comparing one to the other, but they’ve given us the resources to go out and really try and change the paradigm of coverage of the NWSL.”
Watts said working with these kinds of teammates and resources has been tremendous for him.
“That’s been really exhilarating, freeing. The opportunity to really go at this from a lot of unique angles with people that put in the extra effort and genuinely care about this package is as exciting a place in my career as I’ve ever been. It’s really unbelievable how they’ve sort of set us up to succeed with this.”
Riley said as a company new to broadcasting the NWSL, it was crucial for Amazon to bring in experienced and known voices such as Watts, primary match analyst Lori Lindsey, and match and sideline analyst Lianne Sanderson.
“When we enter any sport, we want to first and foremost establish credibility and trust with the fans. And for us, there’s no greater way to do that than by picking talent that already has earned the trust of the hardcore fans. And Mike Watts was a no-brainer in that regard. We love, I love, the way Mike Watts calls a soccer game. And it certainly helps that he has a ton of history with this league. I think he and Lori and Lianne really helped us get out of the gate strong with credibility and trust.”
Riley said those figures, as well as sideline analyst and contributor Kealia Watt and sideline reporter Britney Eurton, have proven able to connect with the league’s players and coaches. And she said Prime Video’s commitment to onsite production , and to meeting with players and coaches in person on days before matches, has also been vital there.
“For us, it really came down to wanting to elevate the experience and produce a best-in-class game production. And so having Mike, Lori, Lianne, Kealia when Kealia is with us, Britney Eurton when she’s with us, having them on site and with the ability to walk the pitch pregame, to go to training sessions on Thursday, to meet with the teams and coaches in person, that allows us to bring our fans closer to the sport they love.
“It’s really simple. You know, you’re putting your your eyes and ears and mouths of the game, the people who are charged with communicating what the game is all about to our fans, you’re putting them closer to it. And I think we’ve seen really good results.”
Riley said the players’ respect for these figures is often quite apparent.
“I joke that when Lianne goes to a practice on a Thursday, it’s like ‘The mayor has arrived.’ People stop, all the players come over, they chat with her. It’s really similar with Lori: Lori, Lianne and Kealia played with these women, sometimes for decades. In the case of Lianne and Marta, they go back decades.
“Lori recently did an interview with Amy Rodriguez, A-Rod, and they played together. Kealia, of course, has played, she’s obviously freshest off the field. She has played with these women. There are teammates, or foes in some cases. I think giving them the opportunity to walk the pitch, to talk to the players, the coaches in person really allows us to storytell at a different level.”
Riley said it wasn’t necessarily obvious players would embrace the Prime Video crew the way they have, though.
“I think anytime you’re new to something, there are unknowns. People don’t know what to expect. And you’re working to to earn that trust. We have to earn the trust from our fans, and we also have to earn the trust of the teams, the leagues. We walk into stadiums sometimes for the first time.”
But Riley said the response they’ve received from the league and players has been incredible.
“We feel like we have found something really special with this league, where there’s a real openness. When we show up at training on a Thursday, they’re excited to see us. You know, I think this league has shown, the athletes, the coaches and the league itself, they’ve really shown us the willingness to sort of put themselves out there in the national spotlight in the way that we seek to.
“And I say that because soccer managers traditionally are pretty closed off with information, they don’t like to tell you much. And we’ve asked them to trust us with starting lineups so that we can prepare appropriately, we’ve asked them to give us their time with production meetings, so that we can talk to the players and prepare appropriately. And they’ve really responded well to those requests. We’ve gone back and forth on a couple of things, but I’ve been incredibly impressed with the league, the teams, the coaches and the players and their ability and willingness to work with us so that we can put on a first-rate broadcast.”
Watts said that level of production and access is a remarkable change from where things were when he started calling the NWSL almost a decade ago. He said that shows the growth of the league and the increased commitment from all of its broadcast partners.
“When I first started calling games in this league, it was out of a a sprinter van. It was all on a team-by-team basis at a college soccer stadium in Piscataway. And now we’re in genuine, true soccer stadiums across the country. Fan interest and the atmosphere at games is double, triple, quadruple depending on the market you’re in.
“And from a broadcast perspective, it’s night and day from 2014 when Sky Blue FC took a chance on a 21-year-old rising senior at Fordham to where we’re at now where you consistently have U.S. Soccer Hall of Famer JP Dellacamera on games and U.S. National Team stars that are on games. Across the board, the investment that was made—and it’s not just Amazon, it’s everybody pulling together on this from the NWSL on the league side to CBS and Ion all the way through ultimately to Amazon—the amount of resources they’ve put into has been commensurate with the league taking that next step.”
Riley said the NWSL’s level of play at this point is why it’s worth investing these kinds of resources in.
“I think it starts with the product itself. The product is the soccer on the field, and it’s great. It is great soccer, it’s really exciting. You have the best many of the best players in America, but beyond that, many of the best players globally, playing here. And so I think it starts there; it’s a really compelling sporting event. And it is at times like a ping-pong match. It’s very different from some sorts of European soccer, but it is up and down the field, and on any given Friday night, both teams usually have a chance because crazy things tend to happen in the NWSL.
“That makes games really competitive, which again is fun to watch. You might be sitting on the edge of your seat for 90-plus minutes, which is just really exciting. So I think for us at Prime Video, it starts with the product on the field and the sport on the field. And we know it’s it’s really a first-class product in that regard.”
Watts said he thinks the league’s new broadcast deals illustrate the growth it’s experienced, but also the wider amount of growing attention for women’s sports .
“You can see in the broadcast deals that were made last year that obviously there was both that investment coming to fruition, but also a genuine interest in continuing to build what’s been this exploding industry: women’s sports, women’s soccer, but also just soccer. It’s unrecognizable where we were when I first started calling games in this league compared to where we are right now. It’s unfathomable.”
And Watts said the resources Prime Video has invested here are further proof of how far the league has come.
“The effort that Amazon has put in to not only selecting the commentators, but finding people that care about this league as much as I do, as they do, but the extent to which they’ve gone the extra mile in every minute detail has been eye-opening for me. And I really would be remiss not to say that, from producers coming with unique ideas and fresh eyes to having an all-star cast in terms of our our analysts and reporters with Lori and Lianne and Kealia and Britney and [guest analyst] Heather O’Reilly next week.”
Watts said he still sometimes finds it hard to believe that he’s in this spot.
“It’s wild to me that they’re like ‘Go ahead and let it rip out there,’ to me. I’m sort of pinching myself a little bit to the extent I get the benefit of sort of being surrounded by an all-star cast every week. I just have to play point guard and pass the ball. It’s pretty wild.”
Prime Video will feature the Houston Dash at the Kansas City Current on Friday, June 28 at 8 p.m. ET and the Portland Thorns at the San Diego Wave Friday, July 5 at 10 p.m. ET.
The post Prime Video’s Mike Watts, Betsy Riley talk ‘unfathomable’ growth of NWSL, evolution of women’s soccer broadcasting appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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