It’s highly unusual to see a halftime show’s set evacuated because of police using tear gas on protesters across the river, but that’s what happened to ESPN’s Euro 2016 coverage Tuesday during the Hungary-Austria match. ESPN was using its planned Seine-side set location for the first time, as flooding in Paris forced them to relocate to an alternate indoor set in the city for the first few days, but nearby labor protests and the police reaction to them forced the network to evacuate the set and air a halftime show based from Bristol instead. Here’s David Lloyd’s announcement of the change:
As Lloyd says, tear gas fired across the river forced ESPN to clear the set, but all of their personnel are safe, including on-air analysts Steve Bower, Kasey Keller, and Abby Wambach. Here’s an image of what the set looked like earlier in the day, from World Soccer Talk:
The Bristol-based halftime show wasn’t bad for short notice, either, and it featured Ian Darke and Taylor Twellman giving an on-the-ground preview of Tuesday’s later Portugal-Iceland game from Saint-Etienne, so there was still some content from France. We’ll see if ESPN is able to return to their outdoor set location later in the day, or if they’ll need to return to the alternate set for further coverage.
Update: ESPN was able to return to the Seine-side set just ahead of the Portugal-Iceland match.
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About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.