4 Tips for Your First Sports Broadcast
Watching sports with the family isn’t an uncommon activity in American households. Doing this can cause a child to fall in love with a sport and grow up wanting to play it. However, others become more fascinated with a different aspect—they love the broadcast team commentating or conducting interviews throughout the event. Sports broadcasting is not an easy industry to break into, but with the right passion and knowledge, it’s certainly possible. Whether you’re interviewing the players after each game or giving play-by-play commentary, these are the four tips for your first sports broadcast.
Know the Terms
Even if you’ve grown up loving a sport, you should double-check the meaning of all the terms to ensure you’re using them correctly. It goes without saying that confidently saying something incorrectly is very embarrassing, especially on live TV. Just give yourself a quick refresher with an online guide prior to your first broadcast. This is even more important if your first broadcast involves a sport that you’re unfamiliar with, or at least less familiar with than other sports.
Know the Players
When addressing players, not knowing their names can cause a few problems. First off, you can’t pause in the middle of a broadcast and Google the roster for the match that night. It’s both unprofessional and unproductive. However, you can do that prior to the game. In fact, you should know the player line-up like the back of your hand by the time you have the mic in front of you.
Secondly, similar to the tip above, calling out incorrect player names during a game or in an interview is a boatload of embarrassment. You’ll confuse viewers and make yourself seem less familiar with your field of work than you should be.
Know the Rules and Regulations
When people play sports with family and friends at home, it’s not always in accordance with professional standards. That’s why you need to know the professional rules and regulations of the game before your first broadcast. Nobody likes a referee who makes a bad call, and the same goes for sports broadcasters. If you’re providing commentary for a game and making false claims in regard to legal or illegal plays, viewers and industry veterans alike won’t take you seriously.
Know Your Equipment
Whether you’ll be behind a desk or on the sidelines, you need to be familiar with your gear. There is a wide range of sports broadcast equipment that is vital to ensuring the event goes off without a hitch. When you show up for day one, you shouldn’t be fumbling with a lav mic as if you’ve never seen it before, even if you haven’t. Find out what equipment you’ll be around day-in and day-out and learn all of its parts, functions, and handling requirements.
The first day at a new job is always stressful. At the end of the day—as is made evident by these four tips for your first sports broadcast—knowing what you’re talking about is key.
