SerpApi.Org
Those who tuned in for Fox’s four-hour World Cup final pregame show on Sunday witnessed Rebecca Lowe and the rest of the network’s studio crew travel by land, air, and sea to make it from Brooklyn Bridge Park to MetLife Stadium in time for kickoff. What viewers might not have realized is how the intricate plan to transport the crew almost went entirely wrong.
Fox began coverage of the World Cup final with Lowe, Thierry Henry, Zlatan Ibrahimović, and Alexi Lalas live from a set located in Brooklyn Bridge Park, providing a stunning backdrop for the network’s 2026 World Cup swan song. Midway through the show, the crew would leave the set, take a ferry across the East River, drive to a helipad, and chopper to another helipad located near MetLife Stadium, where Spain and Argentina would kick off at 3 p.m. ET.
That itinerary did not go as planned.
Lowe, appearing on the After The Whistle podcast, explained how she and her colleagues got massively delayed, causing them to wonder if they’d even make it to the final at all.
“We had to get from Brooklyn Bridge Park all the way to MetLife while we were on air. So we started with a boat from the ferry stop over the East River to another pier, into a car to take us a couple of piers down to the heliport,” Lowe explained. “Now, I’ve been on a helicopter once, and I swore I’d never go on one again, but then Fox Sports employed me for the World Cup, and I said, ‘Sure, that sounds great.’
“So, we get in the helicopter. It’s supposed to be seven minutes. Wasn’t seven minutes, it was 30 minutes. And let’s just say, Zlatan, God bless him, didn’t say a single word. I was pretty close to that as well, pretty scared, not going to lie. We were circling. I kept seeing the Yankee Stadium again and again and again. …Terrifying, and it’s very bumpy up there, and it was horrible. Alexi Lalas, I’ve never seen him happier. Out the window, pointing out all the amazing sights and sounds, I was like, ‘This guy.’
“We eventually land at the wrong helipad. So now we’re at a random- by the way, we had to be back on air at 1:15. We eventually get out, we film our little link, and eventually realize we’re not at Teterboro, I think is it called? We’re in Kearny, New Jersey. We didn’t know where we were. We were supposed to meet a police escort, a couple of cars, to take us then to MetLife. Well, they were at Teterboro. So now we’re calling them, they come to get us, that’s 15 minutes. We’re filming another piece just saying, ‘We don’t know where we are.’
“And at this point, I’m thinking, ‘Are we going to make it?’ And at this point, we’re about an hour and a half before kickoff of a World Cup final, and I’m thinking, ‘I’ve done this World Cup for 39 days, and I’m not going to get to do the final because I’m going to be in a car on the New Jersey Turnpike.’
“So at this point … we have to be on air for 1:54. So we get into the police escort, we were going 105 miles an hour. 105. And it was very scary. So that was the helicopter — scary. Then we had the police escort — scary. Then we finally get there, we circle the stadium a couple times because no one knows how to get into this place. Pull up, we go under, we get on the elevator, it’s now 1:51. I go on the set at 1:52. We go on air at 1:54.”
It seems like Murphy’s Law hit the Fox Sports World Cup studio at the worst possible time. Luckily, the team was able to make it to the stadium about an hour before the match started, and the only collateral damage from the entire affair was missing an interview with Timothée Chalamet. Oh, well. That’ll just have to wait until 2030.
The post Rebecca Lowe details how helicopter ride nearly derailed entire Fox World Cup broadcast appeared first on Awful Announcing.
