2024 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Tommy Roy, a Passion for Sports and Storytelling

Leading up to the 2024 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame ceremony on Dec. 17 at the New York Hilton, SVG is profiling the 10 inductees in this year’s class. For more information, CLICK HERE.

Odds are, you have not seen Tommy Roy actually doing his craft in a production truck. But a look at the list of memorable sports moments he has crafted will definitely jog some vivid memories:

The Dream Team at the 1992 Olympics. Michael Phelps capturing eight golds in swimming in Beijing (and any Olympic swimming event broadcast by NBC since 2004). NBC Sports golf coverage for the past 19 years, including numerous U.S. Opens, Ryder Cups, and 19 THE PLAYERS Championships. Michael Jordan’s first three NBA Championships. Watching sports greats finally achieve a championship, like Nebraska Cornhusker coach Tom Osborne winning the 1984 Orange Bowl or John Elway and the Denver Broncos winning Super Bowl XXXII. Even OJ Simpson’s car chase in 1994 during the 1994 NBA Finals, when NBC Sports legend Dick Ebersol called for a two-box to show both the chase and the game between the New York Knicks and Houston Rockets.

“That was a surreal night,” recalls Roy of a night that was surreal for just about everyone else as well. But what isn’t surreal is how his memorable events and storytelling have resonated with others.

“When I look at Tommy’s body of work, I’m absolutely gobsmacked,” says Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Fred Gaudelli, executive producer, NFL, NBC Sports. “The man has produced Super Bowls, NBA Finals, major venues at the Olympics, and of course almost every major golf tournament the sport has known. That alone makes you say, ‘Wow,’ but it’s the quality of the presentations in all those disparate events that makes him an all-time great.”

Fellow inductee Mark Lazarus, chairman, NBC Universal Media Group, has known Tommy for 25 years and worked with him for the past 14. “There isn’t a better or more prepared producer and leader,” he says. “He makes every show and product he touches better — and resets industry standards in the process.”

Likewise, Molly Solomon, executive producer/president, NBC Olympics Production, has worked on dozens, if not hundreds, of events with Tommy. “He is a one-of-a-kind producer,” she says. “His résumé is unmatched: producing Super Bowls, NBA Finals, golf’s major championships, Ryder Cups, Olympic Primetime, and every one of Michael Phelps’s Olympic swimming medals. Who has the versatility to achieve that? He is the best live-sports producer I’ve ever worked with.”

Born in Dearborn, MI, in 1958, Roy was 2 when the family moved to Arizona, where his father was a golf pro. When Roy was 20 and on winter break from college, his father helped him land his first job in the industry: the Tucson Open was in town, and Roy’s father got him a job there, although what he would be doing at the event was unknown.

“They said I could either work in one of the portable bars on the golf course or take coffee to the NBC cameraman,” he recalls. “I had no knowledge or interest in the TV business whatsoever, but I knew the guy that had done this particular job the year before, and I knew that he was paid by both the golf course and NBC.”

Getting coffee gave him a chance to step inside the TV-production unit, and Roy knew instantly that working in a truck on a sports production was something he wanted to be part of. “They were on the air. I saw the excitement and electricity and knew that that’s what I wanted to do. I also thought I could thrive in that environment, so I went home and told my mom what I wanted to do. Sure enough, it worked out.”

And how. Roy has won 29 Sports Emmys, and his résumé also includes Super Bowls, Olympic studio shows, Wimbledon, the French Open, the Triple Crown, and NASCAR’s Daytona 500.

Although he has captured Sports Emmys for many types of events, his most consistent connection with sports fans is through golf. He oversees NBC’s coverage of PGA TOUR events as well as the PLAYERS Championship, the U.S. Open, and the Open Championship.

PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan describes Roy as a giant of sports broadcasting, noting that, over his 40+-year career, he has brought some the biggest moments in sports into living rooms. “He has been instrumental in the evolution of televised golf, and his in-the-moment storytelling ability combined with his passion and reverence for our game and its complexities is on full display in every telecast.”

Adds NBC Sports President Rick Cordella, “Tommy has been an incredible leader of our golf productions for decades, and everything else he has touched — most notably, swimming at the Olympics — sets new standards for excellence. He’s among the most respected and well-liked people in our business, a true Hall of Famer in every respect.”

Good Fortune

Getting his first event out of the way at the Tucson Open, Roy was able to take the next step quickly. The Bob Hope Desert Classic in Palm Springs was the very next week, and NBC invited him to work as a runner. Since it was still winter break, he leaped at the chance.

“After that tournament,” he recalls, “they asked if I could do the rest of the spring tour, which meant I would have to drop out of school for the semester. It didn’t go over very well with my parents that I was dropping out of school to do this. I did take another semester off to do more golf, but I did get my degree.”

By the time he graduated, Roy was a freelance PA for NBC Sports and had worked on football games, basketball games, and, of course, more golf. He also had the good fortune to catch the eye of Executive Producer Don Ohlmeyer, who hired him to be a PA in New York City. That offer came together very quickly, with Roy skipping finals to fly across country for the interview, then back to Arizona, and then back to New York City for his first day at work the following Monday.

“I got in the office, and they said they needed me to go over to Nice for the Tour de France,” says Roy. “I knew nothing about bicycle racing, and I didn’t speak any French. Then, while I was there, Major League Baseball went on strike, and, suddenly, NBC had three hours to fill every Saturday. So NBC acquired low-level sporting events in Europe, and I ended up staying the whole summer in Europe, working on things like motorcycle racing and horse jumping.”

After spending 18 months as a PA, Roy became an associate producer in 1983 and was promoted to producer 2½ years later. It was then that he also had the chance to work with two other Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famers: Mike Weisman, who was NBC Sports executive producer, and John Filippelli, who was producing NFL studio shows.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” Roy says of his mentors, “just totally so fortunate to have that happen. Don showed me how a big-time producer acts in the truck and with people and how he carries himself. Mike was so creative and knew how to handle the press in terms of publicity. And Flip taught me that you have to have fun, because, so many times, you’re in these super-pressurized situations; Flip would make it fun with a joke that would always make you smile. I try to do that, too, when we’re doing these really long golf shows.”

In those early years, Roy met Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Ebersol, who was working at SNL. Roy’s girlfriend at the time worked at SNL, and Roy would visit her. “Dick always made it a point to come over and say hello to me when I was there, and we became friends,” says Roy. “[In 1989], he became president of NBC Sports, and I was the only person on the sports staff that he knew. I was very fortunate that happened because he trusted me to do a lot of projects for him. When we acquired the rights to the NBA, he made me the first producer of the NBA on NBC.”

Ebersol, adds Roy, was the best of the best in terms of what a TV executive and leader should be. “His storytelling philosophy is so important, and it worked its way into our coverage of all sports.”

And Roy’s own philosophy? Make unknown athletes known to the viewers at home.

“You have to give a reason to root for them,” he explains, “like, when we first started covering Tiger Woods, it was a lot of personalization about him. When I do a golf tournament now and 156 players are entered, before you know it, there are three or four guys that you never heard of, and we need to tell their stories and give everyone at home a reason to care, or not care, about them.”

Roy raised the bar at NBC Sports, and, in the same way that Roy wanted to be like his mentors, NBC team members today feel that way about him, Solomon says. “You want to be just like him. He pushed the team to think creatively about storytelling and how to translate it on-screen during a live event. He espoused the ‘make them care’ ethos that Dick Ebersol championed, and he brings events to life.”

Roy and the Olympics

The late ’80s at NBC Sports gave Roy a chance to work Olympic Games. “The first Olympics that I did was 1988 in Seoul,” he says. “I produced the late-night show, and my host was Bob Costas. That was great. By the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, I was the NBA on NBC producer, so it just made sense for me to produce basketball and coverage of the original Dream Team. That experience was just off the charts.”

By the time the Olympics got to Atlanta in 1996, Roy found himself in the role of co-executive producer, sitting in front of Ebersol for the primetime coverage of those Games. For Athens 2004, Roy returned to live coverage of swimming. That also was the year U.S. swimming legend Michael Phelps made his debut, and that began Roy’s passion for producing Olympic-swimming coverage.

“Dick wanted to make sure that the swimming was done right,” he says. “I have produced the swimming for every single Summer Olympics since then.”

Over the years, Roy and the team have developed what he calls a very scripted approach to covering Olympic swimming. When the swimmers walk out to go to their lanes, he and the team know whom they are going to show, whom they want to talk about, and how they want to set up the race.

“[Analyst] Rowdy Gaines is so good at knowing what likely is going to happen in the actual race,” Roy says. “We will also have a replay sequence planned out: who to show doing their turn and then the finish. I will say, about a third of the time, we throw those plans out the window as things change, but we’re prepared for those things, and, if I do say so myself, it’s off-the-charts good. Yes, we were very lucky to have a chance to cover Michael Phelps in Beijing when he won eight consecutive golds.”

Roy long ago traded in Arizona for a home in Ponte Vedra, FL, where he lives with his wife, Anne, who also has industry connections: they met while she was an NBC page, and she worked as an AD for the Today show and then on CBS morning shows. Today, she works for PGA on the ESPN+ streaming package.

They have two children: Billy, 28, works in finance in New York City, and Kelly, 27, lives in Jacksonville and works for the WNBA marketing department.

What’s next for Roy? More golf and more producing.

Solomon says he revolutionized golf production, elevating it from a sleepy, slow production to a dynamic, fast-paced, storytelling-driven narrative punctuated by innovative replay sequences in the big moment. “There’s nothing like being in Tommy’s truck at a golf tournament. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Thursday afternoon or the back nine on a Sunday. Tommy’s intensity is the same — and he challenges you to mirror his excellence and passion.”

Roy loves the adrenaline rush of being on-air. “I just love doing this stuff. What we do is something good that allows people to escape their troubles, watch a sporting event, and root for their favorite team. I like the fact that I’m able to help do that.”

Adds Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Drew Esocoff, director, Sunday Night Football, NBC Sports, “Nobody exudes more joy doing their job than Tommy Roy does. His joy of sports translates into the show he produces.”