2018 FIFA World Cup: Telemundo Deportes President Ray Warren on Making a Big First Impression Spanish-language U.S. broadcaster makes highly anticipated World Cup debut By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital Thursday, June 14, 2018 - 11:01 am
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After 2,428 days, Telemundo Deportes' FIFA World Cup moment has arrived.
On Oct. 21, 2011, Telemundo shook up the Spanish-language sports-media-rights landscape in this country and landed the rights to its first World Cup package. Many long-time veterans of the network celebrated that day and are ready today to kick off the biggest sports event in the world on their air.
Telemundo Deportes President Ray Warren isn't one of those people; he joined the company in his current role in September 2016. However, he'll be the first to admit that he was brought on largely to usher in the World Cup era for the network.
And Telemundo isn't shying away from making an epic first impression. The NBCUniversal-owned domestic Spanish-language broadcaster has deployed 64 production engineers and an additional 25 dedicated Telemundo camera crews at various points throughout Moscow and Russia, including the IBC, the network's Red Square studio set, and the stadiums. A total of 150 dedicated personnel are working at the IBC, with 40 dedicated to the set in Red Square.
Telemundo Deportes Ray Warren: There's definitely aligning of stars here.
Then there's the complete global effort: Telemundo is leveraging at-home workflows much the way sibling NBC does for the Olympic Games. Eighteen technical-production and editing facilities will touch this World Cup in some way for Telemundo, including the new Telemundo Center in Miami; Telemundo Hialeah; NBC Sports Group's facility in Stamford, CT; 30 Rock in NYC; NBCU Technology Center in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; and Comcast Media Center in Colorado.
Last week, prior to Warren's departure for Russia (where he will spend the entirety of the tournament), SVG caught up with him on the eve of, perhaps, the biggest event in the history of his network.
When you look around at the people you work with and with this event, what's the feeling like around the offices right now?
I've been in this business for a long time. When I got here, we had about 600-something days to go, and the fact that we are here right now is crazy. We've been doing a lot of gatherings of Telemundo employees, and I asked, How many people have been here for seven years?' A whole bunch of hands went up. Those people have been waiting a very long time for this moment. It's stunning to a lot of people who have been in the Spanish-language and digital-television business.
I have a history working in the RSN [regional-sports-network] side of the business, and I've always said there's no better fan than the local sports fan. Nobody wears CSI: Miami pajamas to bed or paints their face with the logo of American Idol. For me, the World Cup is like regional sports networks for the planet Earth. Countries become the regional sports network. People root in Argentina the way Cubs fans do in Chicago. To be involved in this is just a dream for me, frankly. It's a really fun and exciting time here.
The power of domestic Spanish-language sports fans has been noted. The network serves them exceptionally well, and, with the demographic, there are lots of positive feelings about your network headed into this World Cup. It feels a bit like a coronation for the U.S. Spanish-language soccer fan. Would you agree?
The stars have aligned very nicely. So, yes, I can't disagree.
The Spanish-language audience is a growing audience and is younger. It's bolstered by immigration, though there's a bit of a freeze there in our current climate that won't be forever, hopefully. We've got a young, mobile, multicultural audience.
We're going to be able to reach them across all platforms, so I think, in some ways, the time shift [won't hurt us]. Would we like it to be primetime? Yes, because, sure, we'd have higher viewing numbers there, but no, because, for Telemundo, which, for the first time ever, in 2017 won the primetime ratings race against our stiffest competitor, we'll be able to have World Cup all day and our primetime lineup all night. We'll be promoting primetime during the World Cup and the World Cup during our primetime. That's not too bad, either.
The one thing that I think is also occurring is, there is a rise in the U.S. across all ethnicities, and soccer is just in a better place. It's got a bigger mind share than it may have had in 2014 or 2010. I think other ethnicities are seeing more Spanish-language soccer because they watch Liga MX or La Liga.
There's definitely aligning of stars here, but let's be clear: we aren't taking anything for granted. I'm not for a second not thinking about it all the time, worrying about it to some degree, and praying to the Nielsen gods that they get it right because we feel like we are in a really good place. But you never know!
What's it like working with your NBC partners? There's a lot of cooperation going on. There are plenty of differences but some big similarities between a World Cup and an Olympics: a host broadcaster, an IBC, an onsite set, leveraging at-home workflows. In what ways has working with NBC Sports and NBC Olympics helped you prepare for what this event might be like?
It's been a great collaboration. The fact that I've worked at both Stamford and [30 Rock] in the past established a lot of connective tissue, but there was already a lot of that between NBC and Telemundo. Telemundo has been doing the Olympics since 2004.
One of the things that helped us the most, honestly, was that they were in Russia in 2014 for [the Sochi Olympics]. That was good fort
