With the advent of NBC’s Football Night In America, and the Sunday Night broadcast of top NFL games, including playoffs and Super Bowls, Bob Costas adds another chapter to his long and diverse career in sports television. Bob joins MLB Network as one of television's most honored studio hosts. He now serves as a studio host for MLB Network’s Studio 42 with Bob Costas as lead play-by-play announcer. Bob also appears on MLB Tonight and Hot Stove.
Bob has been with NBC Sports since 1979 and has also hosted HBO Sports and Entertainment programs since 2001. He has covered every major sport, but is perhaps most identified with the Olympics and baseball. He anchored NBC’s primetime coverage of the last five Summer Olympics - Barcelona 1992, Atlanta 1996, Sydney 2000, Athens 2004, and Beijing 2008. He also hosted The Winter Games in Torino, Italy 2006. Bob’s first Olympic experience came in Seoul, Korea in 1988, where he served as the late-night host. He is scheduled to host NBC’s coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games and the 2012 London Summer Games.
From 1983 through 1989, Bob teamed with Tony Kubek on NBC’s Baseball Game of the Week telecasts. He hosted the network’s NFL Live Pre-Game Show for nine years (1984-1992), stepping aside following Super Bowl XXVII. Costas has been involved in the coverage of six League Championship Series and five World Series for NBC Sports. He has hosted four Super Bowls.
In the 90’s, Costas returned to baseball, handling play-by-play for NBC’s All-Star, Playoff and World Series telecasts. He teamed first with Bob Uecker and Joe Morgan, and then Morgan alone, for these games. Costas’ reputation within baseball is long standing, dating to his Game of The Week partnership with Tony Kubek. His frequent and passionate commentary about the game’s history, appeal and ongoing problems, has earned him the respect and admiration of millions of fans. His book, Fair Ball, A Fan’s Case For Baseball, earned excellent reviews, remained on The New York Times bestseller list for several weeks and influenced the ongoing discussion of the game’s direction.
Bob was the play-by-play voice of the NBA On NBC from 1997 through the 1999-2000 season. For many years prior, he had been the host of NBC’s NBA coverage. He was also a contributing interviewer and essayist on NBC’s NFL Pre-Game Show, the program he previously hosted for nine years.
In February 2001, HBO launched the critically praised and Emmy Award-winning show On The Record With Bob Costas, subsequently re-named Costas Now. In the Fall of 2007, Bob returned for his seventh year as the host of the long-running Inside The NFL. On Inside The NFL, he teams with Dan Marino, Cris Collinsworth and Cris Carter, to form a lively and popular team.
Costas has won nineteen Emmy Awards-fifteen for “Outstanding Sports Host” or “Play-By-Play”, two for writing, one for his late night interview show, Later….With Bob Costas and one for “Feature Reporting”. Uniquely, Bob has been nominated for Emmys in five different categories: Play-By-Play, Hosting, Writing, Interviewing (for Later….With Bob Costas) and Journalism.
Bob has been named “National Sportscaster Of The Year” an unprecedented eight times by his peers-in 1985, 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1997 and 2000.
In 1988, Bob began to diversify beyond sports broadcasting. He served as a substitute host for Bryant Gumbel on NBC’s Today Show, then went on to host his own late night program, Later….With Bob Costas. This Emmy Award-winning show featured in-depth interviews exploring the lives of newsmakers, entertainers and personalities from varied backgrounds. After a 5 ½ year run, Bob left Later in 1994. He still contributes occasional interviews and commentary to NBC’s Today Showand Nightly News program.
At age twenty-two, Bob landed a job at KMOX Radio in St. Louis, Missouri, one of America’s most prominent radio stations. He broadcast a wide variety of live play-by-play and studio programs from 1974 through 1981. One of his primary assignments during this time was announcing the play-by-play for the ABA’s Spirits of St. Louis team. He was also the radio voice of the University of Missouri Basketball games.
Bob’s love of radio led him back to the medium in 1986 when he inaugurated the very popular syndicated program Costas Coast To Coast. The weekly, two hour program ran for ten years, until 1996. Now, over a decade later, Clear Channel Radio has asked Bob to bring the program back, and Coast To Coast returned in September of 2006 with the same weekly two hour mix of interviews and commentary that made it so well received during its first run.
Bob Costas is a native of Queens, New York and grew up on Long Island. He attended Syracuse University in New York, where he majored in Communications. He began his professional career at WSYR-TV and Radio in 1973 while studying at Syracuse.
Bob Costas, Emmy Award-Winning sports broadcaster, is available through IMG Speakers bureau for speaking engagements. Bob Costas is also available for moderating and emceeing/hosting opportunities, celebrity appearances, corporate hospitality events, meet and greets, and much more. Please contact IMG Speakers at 212-774-6735 or speakers@imgworld.com for more information on booking Bob Costas.
