NBC Sports’ Mike Tirico will be pulling double-duty on the two biggest sporting events of the year.
Tirico will host NBC Sports’ coverage of the Beijing Winter Olympics and Super Bowl 56 next month, it was announced Thursday. Tirico will begin hosting the Olympics on-site in Beijing from the opening night of NBC’s coverage on February 3 through the following Thursday before traveling to Los Angeles for Super Bowl weekend. While in L.A., he will host the Olympics from outside SoFi Stadium all three nights — including Super Bowl Sunday, when he will anchor NBC’s postgame Olympics lead-out.
Following Super Bowl Sunday, Tirico will presumably fly back to Beijing for the next night of Olympics coverage, though that was not specified in NBC’s press release. Per the Associated Press, NBC has not determined yet whether Tirico will travel back to Beijing for the remainder of the Olympics.
NBC’s previous Super Bowl in 2018 also occurred in a Winter Olympic year. That year, Tirico stayed in PyeongChang for the Games and Bob Costas was slated to fill in for him on the Super Bowl. Costas was eventually taken off that assignment because he made critical comments about the NFL’s handling of concussions and the hosting role fell to Liam McHugh. Had Tirico not been set for double-duty this time around, it is likely the Super Bowl hosting assignment would have fallen to Maria Taylor.
The dual hosting role is without much precedent. The Super Bowl has not previously occurred during a Winter Olympics. Having said that, Tirico is not the first host to travel internationally from one event to another and back. When TNT held rights to Wimbledon and the NBA Draft in the early 2000s, host Ernie Johnson would fly from London to New York for the Draft and then return for the remainder of the tennis tournament.
It is worth noting that in the current era of testing and isolation, it would not take much for NBC’s plans to fall through — especially given the particularly strict policies in China.
[News from NBC Sports]
