Meet the Brit who's the face of the Premier League — in America

Times

a day ago

It's late July when the NBC football presenter Rebecca Lowe pops up on my laptop screen from a hotel room in Chicago to discuss the return of the Premier League.
She has already been on the road, covering a series of friendlies, for weeks. There are clothes scattered on the floor behind her and a suitcase is flung open. Lowe, 44, wearing workout gear, looks like she's just come from the gym — or is on her way there.
Born and raised in London, Lowe still sounds very English as she races through her career covering the Premier League for 12 years in America. But as she talks about the game, interchangeably calling it 'football' and 'soccer', it's clear the US has left its mark.
'I said 'football' for years,' Lowe said. 'Then I had a child who now plays soccer. So now I say 'soccer' at home, which has bled into my actual work. I was recently on air and referred to the Premier League as the 'most popular soccer league in the world'.
'I thought to myself: 'You've changed.''
This change has been warmly welcomed in America, where Lowe has established herself as the face of 'soccer' thanks to her work at NBC. Since becoming lead studio host in 2013, she has won universal praise for her work — to the point where she is stopped in the street nearly every week by fans 'who just want to talk about football', she said with a smile.
Though she may not be massively famous in the UK, over here she's a star. More people watch her programme than the National Hockey League, which averaged 440,000 viewers per game last season. From 2024 to 2025, her NBC show has attracted about 510,000 viewers per episode — double the audience from when the network acquired the US Premier League rights 12 years ago. And with the World Cup set to kick off in America next summer, Lowe said she believed the Premier League was 'going to become even more mainstream' in the US.
'The next generation — my son's generation — are just soccer-obsessed. All of them. You see kids, they're all in Premier League shirts everywhere. At school, when I drop them off. Then the dads are in Premier League shirts. It's so different even from five years ago. So the pace is so, so quick. The World Cup is going to help even more.' (The recent Women's Euros final drew 1.35 million viewers in America, double the previous final in 2022.)
It could have been a very different story for Lowe. Before moving Stateside, she worked for BBC Sport and ESPN, but had grown disillusioned with her industry and was close to quitting, worn down by the 'thankless' slog of pitchside reporting and the sexist abuse she received from football fans.
'That's all I got for ten years,' she says. 'I hated it.'
But since NBC tapped her to be the lead host of their Premier League coverage in America, forcing her to relocate to the US, she said she had experienced none of that.
'I've never had a problem — not once — with people questioning me and my role, which is why I love it so much here.'
As a young girl, Lowe wanted to become an actress. But football — and journalism — is in her blood. Her dad, the former BBC News presenter Chris Lowe, used to take her and her brother, Alex, a rugby journalist for The Times, to Selhurst Park to watch Crystal Palace for most home games. The first match Lowe saw was Crystal Palace versus Everton in the 1989-90 season. It was 'no place for a nine-year-old girl', she said — but still, she was hooked. Of the fans' passion and the rush that always followed a goal, she said 'there is nothing better'.
Still, Lowe went on to study drama at university, and did not consider sports journalism until she was graduating in 2002, when she entered — and won — a BBC Talent Search for a football reporter. (She chose not to mention that her dad was a BBC presenter in her application.)
But she was so nervous before her first live report for BBC Final Score, covering a match between Nottingham Forest and Reading, that she did not eat for two days. 'I remember walking to the press room and the whole room turning around to look at me because I was the only woman,' she said. 'I had to go to the women's toilets — which took a while to find — and give myself a pep talk. I didn't believe I could do it.'
Lowe felt more relaxed conducting player interviews. One of her earliest was with the former England international Peter Crouch. At the time he was playing for Southampton but Lowe knew him from her youth when she and friends would walk to school and exchange 'eye contact, but nothing more' with Crouch and his mates.
'There was whispering and all of that. But no one ever spoke to anybody. It was hilarious. Valentine's Day cards were even swapped — though I never sent one to Peter. This went on for about six years,' she says, laughing. 'We laughed about it when I went down to Southampton's training ground.'
From 2009 to 2013, Lowe worked as a reporter for ESPN until NBC tapped her as their lead host — a dream position, although it meant she had to film at the network's Connecticut studio.
At the time, her boyfriend Paul Buckle was the manager of Luton Town, which he had just taken to the Conference Premier play-off final at Wembley. But he agreed to give up the job to support Lowe's career. They married and moved to Connecticut in 2013.
'I'm not sure there's a lot of men who would do that,' she said.
Two years later, Paul was offered a job as head coach of Sacramento Republic FC, a club in the USL Championship, one tier below MLS. This time it was Lowe's turn to support him, so they moved to near Lake Tahoe, California, so he could take the job — nearly 3,000 miles away from Connecticut. Pregnant with their son at the time, Lowe thought: 'Well, if he can move to America for me, I can move to California.'
Lowe has been based on the West Coast ever since. Every weekend, she makes the gruelling cross-country journey to Connecticut to cover the Premier League alongside a range of hosts, including the ex-Jamaica international Robbie Earle and the former US goalkeeper Tim Howard.
On Friday mornings, she drops her nine-year-old boy off at school, then races to San Francisco to catch a flight to New York, before finally checking into a hotel near NBC's Connecticut studio. Then she is up at 3.30am on Saturdays to start the show at 7am. After broadcasting again on Sunday mornings, she flies back to California that night.
'I never adjust to the times, but everything is incredibly regimented,' she said.
Lowe believes her network's coverage has helped to grow the game in the US, where 14.1 million people aged six or older play soccer, up 23 per cent since 2018. She is also proud of how her adopted nation has come to embrace the sport. Football was less tribal and 'angry' in the US, largely because it is treated as entertainment, not a religion, she said.
'The flip side of that is you don't always get the atmosphere, but then it's a really nice place to take your kids,' Lowe adds.
When asked if she'll ever return to the UK, Lowe replied 'never say never'. But she admitted it would be difficult after more than a decade in a country where she said success is openly celebrated.
'Americans like success for themselves, for other people, for the country. I don't know if English people are the same,' she says. 'I think I would find England quite difficult now, because this is a very safe space for me. People just lift one another up a lot here.'
A return home could mean she could rival her brother, Alex, as one of the major voices in British sport, I suggest.
But, I ask her, who's the better journalist?
'Alex, definitely,' she said, laughing. 'I'm just winging it over here.'