As one of NBC’s lead soccer voices, here’s how Jon Champion stays close to the U.S. from afar

The veteran broadcaster's voice remains familiar through NBC's Premier League and Olympics broadcasts, and he still feels a strong connection to this country from his native England.

Jon Champion (left) with Robbie Earle (center) and Tim Howard (right) during a NBC Sports English Premier League soccer studio show in Stamford, Connecticut on December 21, 2024Read moreNBC Sports

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published Jan. 10, 2025, 2:45 p.m. ET

Jon Champion’s voice was familiar to many American soccer fans long before he moved here for ESPN in 2019. But he became especially well-known during his four-year stint as the network’s lead play-by-play caller on MLS and U.S. men’s national team games.

When those rights went elsewhere after 2022, fans who appreciated Champion’s crisp, intelligent commentary wondered what he might do next. The answer was a move back to his native England, but he didn’t move far down the dial. NBC hired him to be one of its top Premier League commentators in the summer of 2023, then last year made him the network’s lead voice for its women’s soccer coverage at the Olympic Games in Paris.

The summer culminated in history for the U.S. women, with a record fifth Olympic gold medal. And Champion’s calls of Trinity Rodman, Sophia Smith, and Mallory Swanson’s big goals put him right back in the American spotlight where he’d long been.

It felt familiar, even from an ocean away.

“I feel the connection,” he told the Inquirer in a recent interview, coincidentally a few days after a quick trip to Connecticut to sub in as host of NBC’s Premier League studio show. It was his first time in the United States since returning to England, and he wasn’t far from his old Boston base.

The afterglow from the Olympics was still alive, specifically for Comcast-owned NBC but also for Champion, personally.

“There are tentpole moments to everyone’s career, and I think the U.S. winning the gold medal [in the] Olympics would be one of mine,” he said. “The emotion with [U.S. manager] Emma [Hayes], who obviously I knew from before and [reconnected] with. And seeing on someone like [analyst and former American player Julie] Foudy’s face just what it meant to see the team back on top of the world meant an awful lot.”

Champion had a sense of what the U.S. women’s team meant to American soccer fans. But he hadn’t called their games with ESPN, so the Olympics served as his foray into the fandom.The gold medal game on NBC’s broadcast network drew over 10 million viewers, and Sophia Smith’s semifinal-winning goal vs. Germany opened that night’s prime-time show.

“There was no mistaking it,” Champion said. “I never probably appreciated quite the enormity of what the U.S. women’s national team means to the nation as a whole and the way that it cuts through in a way that other soccer teams and properties perhaps don’t. I was left in absolutely no doubt about that, even after the first game, just with the response on social media — both good and bad.”

Premier League, Champions League, and more

Champion still keeps in touch with old friends from his MLS days. Last month, he met up with a pair of Englishmen in MLS who were home for the holidays, Seattle player-turned-assistant Andy Rose and Minnesota ex-manager Adrian Heath. There are regular chats with former ESPN broadcast partner Taylor Twellman, now Apple’s lead game analyst, and Champion watches MLS games when his work and time differences allow.

But he’s pretty busy these days, and for good reason. On Saturdays, Champion calls a world feed broadcast of a Premier League game, and then on Sunday, he does his weekly call at 11:30 a.m. Philadelphia time game — generally one of the weekend’s marquee contests — for NBC. On weekdays, he works for Amazon’s Prime Video in the United Kingdom calling UEFA men’s Champions League and Premier League games. And he’s still on ESPN sometimes, calling FA Cup and Spanish La Liga contests.

Champion now has 30 years of Champions League coverage under his belt, and 40 years as a broadcaster overall. He has relished it all, going back to his start as a teenager on local radio in Harrogate, in Yorkshire, where he grew up. (Leeds, the current home of Medford’s Brenden Aaronson, is just down the road.)

“I’ve been so lucky,” Champion said. “The next men’s World Cup will be number 10. I’ve done every one since Italy 1990... along with four Olympics and sundry European Championships, various other big events, Rugby World Cups in both League and Union [the sport’s two forms], Cricket World Cups. I’ve gotten to see the world many times over on someone else’s dollar. So to say I’ve been fortunate would be putting it mildly.”

That next World Cup, which he’ll call for English broadcast network ITV, will bring him back to the U.S. in 2026. So might this summer’s Club World Cup if he’s hired to do it. He’ll be ready, and happy to pick the restaurants.

For now, Champion turns to the rest of a Premier League season that has been one of the wildest in recent memory. Four-time reigning champion Manchester City has crashed, Manchester United sits out of the top 10 for the first time in a decade, and customary underdogs Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth have soared up the standings.

First-place Liverpool looks primed for its first title since 2020 – and its first with fans in the stands since 1990, before the Premier League existed. But beyond that, things are wide open for Arsenal, Chelsea, Newcastle United and more.

“The decline of Manchester City is the thing that’s perplexing me most at the moment,” Champion said, who is far from alone in that sentiment. “I think there’s always a point at which a great team reaches the top of the hill and starts to go down the other side, But it’s I’ve never seen a decline so dramatic or rapid as this, and I’m not quite sure where they bottom out, and how.”

As fun as it is to visit the big teams with their fancy amenities, Champion relishes visits to the smaller teams just as much. Last season it was Luton Town, whose 10,300-seat stadium is jammed so tightly into a residential neighborhood that the entrance to the away fans’ section cuts between rowhomes’ backyards.

This season, Ipswich Town’s 181-year-old Portman Road stadium is back in the Premier League for the first time since 2004. (Union fans may recall the club nearly signed Julián Carranza before earning promotion, but he didn’t want to go there.)

“The great thing about the Premier League is the stories at all levels,” Champion says. “That’s been really nice, to see the other side of it. Because it’s very easy to get hooked on the glamor teams of the Premier League, but without the others, there wouldn’t be a Premier League.”