Real Sports on HBO aired its series finale on Tuesday night, and longtime host Bryant Gumbel sees the end of something that will likely never be replicated in the sports media space.
Gumbel was featured in a recent interview with The Washington Post, and Bryant didn’t want to try and define the show’s legacy. He felt like legacies were reserved for politicians and world leaders.
Still, Gumbel feels like when people think of Real Sports, they’ll think of hard-hitting enterprise journalism.
“I think the show is going to be remembered as a show that tried to do sports journalism the right way and tried to treat fans, athletes, and sports with a degree of respect,” he said.
As the news cycle and the consumption habits of viewers has evolved, Gumbel recognized that the long-form storytelling format of the show just doesn’t resonate with audiences like it used to. Bryant said there likely won’t be another iteration of Real Sports.
“You never say never, but I don’t foresee it,” he said. “First, it was a very expensive show to do. Second, most outlets have some kind of a contractual relationship with a sports league that would prevent them from doing an honest kind of show. I also think the public appetite has changed.”
Gumbel even said the way athletes want their stories told has changed over time. He said it used to be if an athlete got in trouble or wanted their name in headlines, they would sit down for an interview with Gumbel and other journalists who would treat it with the seriousness the story deserved. It’s not like that anymore.
“There are so many more outlets available to the modern athlete to get his story out, free of clarification, free of justification,” Gumbel said. “He can go to the Players’ Tribune; he can go to his own social media.”
As for the idea of Real Sports carrying on without Bryant Gumbel as host, the 75-year-old said Warner Bros. Discovery executives he’s met with never would entertain it.
“None of them wanted to answer,” he said. “I don’t know. I suspect they didn’t view that as a viable option.”
