Stade de France was the site to the biggest Rugby sevens event in history. France men’s won their first gold medal of the Olympic games in Rugby and USA women’s won the the bronze medal in a nail-biting last second try. But what happens behind the scenes for NBC Sports to pull this off? Here is my story of working as a statistician for the 2024 Paris Olympics in Rugby Sevens.
My Station
Where I would find all the stats per game and prepare the talent for their games
NBC had an undertaking with the Paris Olympics. Alot of logistics and content to be shown. Most of the content was created, not in Paris, but in Stamford, Connecticut, home of NBC Sports. There, all the technical work would happen to show the viewers all the events taking place during the Olympics. What the viewers did not know, is that there were two feeds happening: The World Feed (Peacock) and the Network Feed (NBC, USA, etc). This way viewers can watch each event start to finish by streaming (Peacock), but when they wanted to go on network TV, they used different off-tube commentary to move in and out of events, and commercial content. I was working with the off-tube crew for the Rugby Sevens events.
Pictured: Rupert Cox (play by play), Abby Gustaitis (color), Bill Boland (producer) & me.
Our production crew worked on specific games during the Rugby Sevens men’s and women’s matches. Games that would draw more viewership. For the talent, they wish they could have been inside Stade de France with the roaring 65,000+ fans going crazy for Rugby Sevens. But for NBC, this was a cost-effective option with the amount of events taken place during the Olympics. Trust me, I wish I was in Paris as well!, but the off-tube production was just as exciting with a good team working around you.
NBC Interviewing Phaidra Knight (color) for all the women’s matches
Our days would fluctuate depending on how the Olympic games were going and the different story lines taking place. Also depended on how the USA teams did. Unfortunately, the USA men got knocked out of the tournament early on in knock-out play. The men’s tournament did end with France winning the gold with the biggest story line was World Rugby Player of the Year, Antoine Dupont, playing for France and being the X-factor to lead them to Gold. After the men’s tournament ended, it moved straight to the women, which was even more electric!
I don’t think the US audience was prepared for how well the USA women would perform. With no time remaining, Spiff Sedrick breaks a tackle and stiff-arm her away to the game-winning try and for Bronze! It was the single most exciting USA Rugby play in history. The sudden rise of Rugby Sevens and USA Rugby player Ilona Maher (now over 3.5 million followers on social media, most of any rugby player ever) caught the attention of many US viewers. One even pledged 4 million dollars to the growth of USA Rugby.
Working the 2024 Paris Olympics will be one I will remember for some time. It takes a village at NBC Sports to put it all together for the viewing audience. Everyone there was hard-working and helpful. A top-class organization with everyone having the same goal in mind. Deliver the audience, high-quality sports content!
Looking forward to the next Olympics in LA 2028!