'Truck is hot': How Sunday Night Soccer Comes to Life on Apple TV

The I-5 Corridor went behind the scenes to see how the sausage is made with MLS' new showcase on Apple.

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PORTLAND — I wasn’t planning on another Sunday Night Soccer story.

It was back in March when I chatted with broadcaster Jake Zivin, who has become the face of the new “big game” centerpiece of Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass package.

The broadcast, featuring Zivin and analyst Taylor Twellman each Sunday evening, promised better coverage with “enhanced production and studio programming” that would beam out to more than 100 countries.

“I’m really glad that with Sunday Night Soccer, we can shine a spotlight on teams and places that deserve it,” Zivin said in a Corridor Q&A prior to Portland’s game with Houston and a broadcast that highlighted the best of Rose City with a video package of sideline reporter Andrew Wiebe touring around Providence Park before the match. “Providence Park is one-of-a-kind in its history and I’m excited to showcase that to a global audience.”

The Timbers won 3-1, the broadcast went off without a hitch and we all moved on…until I got an email from former Pac-12 VP of Comms Kirk Reynolds, who is now working with MLS and had an idea for Sunday Night Soccer’s return to Portland on June 8.

What did I think about spending Sunday Night Soccer behind the scenes? Hang out in the truck? Spend some time in the booth? See what it takes for this so-called enhanced coverage to be put together every week?

Look, I’m a sucker for access. You give me a different way to cover a game — in the doldrums of the MLS season — and I’m all over it.

So while you may have already read my account of Portland’s 2-1 win over St. Louis, here’s a log of everything I experienced tagging along with the production crew.

This is the making of Sunday Night Soccer.

The Production Meeting: 1:05 p.m.

I might have had a different response to Kirk’s request had I seen the forecast.

It’s 94 degrees at Providence Park, and thankfully, the suite I’ve shuffled into for the production meeting is air-conditioned with a few bottles of water on hand.

Portland legend Diego Valeri is already in the room and will be doing the analysis for the Spanish language broadcast, and so too is Twellman, who razzes Zivin after the former Portland broadcaster walked in, dolled out hugs and gave a hearty “Welcome to Portland” to the 18 or so people in the room.

“How many times are we going to hear you say ‘we’ today?” Twellman asks Zivin.

“I don’t think I ever have once,” Zivin responds. “Even on the local broadcast.”

Everyone’s gathered for final preparations before their 16th broadcast of Sunday Night Soccer. It’s the new cornerstone of MLS’ Season Pass content on Apple TV and one the league is doing its darndest to show off — I’m not the first reporter to tail around the crew this season as they go about their work.

“What you’re going to see when you’re out there on Sunday is the most comprehensive and robust production package of the league outside of MLS Cup, All-Star and the League’s Cup Final,” MLS VP of Media Seth Bacon told me earlier in the week. “We made a decision with Apple over a year ago at this point that we wanted to create a marquee window and a marquee matchup each week to showcase the league, to get it out to as many people as we could, because we knew that we were having great success with our Saturday nights and we knew that people were subscribing and watching MLS Season Pass. But what we’ve created with Apple is not just a place to watch games, we’ve created a product.”

And with that product comes more airtime. Sunday Night Soccer games are preceded by an hour-long studio show that includes on-site hits and packages. And the news that gets everyone going in this suite is that producer Jason Saghini has been able to secure an extra two minutes in the match’s opening segment.

Instead of a 4:10 p.m. kickoff, it’ll be 4:12 p.m.

“We should have a 12-minute kick for the rest of the Sunday Night Soccers this year to give us a little more breathing room in that first segment,” producer Brad Mertel tells the room to a light round of applause. “You guys can be on camera a little longer and spend a little more time in the lineup.”

“It’s just mandated that you get Diego and Taylor’s faces on for at least 90 (seconds) of those two minutes,” Saghini jokes.

Mertel leads the room through the next seven hours of their day: from the three blocks to open the show, when to run a promo for Apple’s new F1 movie, the timing of Wiebe’s hit from The Axe & Rose, the storylines to check in with throughout the match and when they’ll throw back to the studio after in Stamford, Conn., for wrap up.

Between all of the technicians, camera operators, broadcasters, producers and directors, there are about 50 people working on the production crew here, with those in the room serving as the permanent crew that travels from city to city each week.

That includes director Tony Mills, who spent 26 years at Sky Sports as a match director for the Premier League and UEFA Champions League. He was most recently directing matches in the Saudi Pro League, where he said his directing style aided in the challenge of working with an unfamiliar production crew.

“The more you shout the less you’re heard,” Mills says. “In Saudi, you’re working with a completely local crew who don’t even speak English. I had to talk to them in sign language with diagrams, just explaining ‘Do this, do this and do this,’ it was calm and the response was unbelievable.”

He says he jumped at the opportunity when IMG Media — MLS and Apple’s production partner — called about Sunday Night Soccer in the States.

“I would have walked here. I couldn’t wait,” Mills said. “I had to curtail what I was doing there, got home, did the Visas, got on the plane, came here. My initial thought was I didn’t know how well supported the games would be, but I’ve been to half the venues, if not more, and it’s unbelievable. The atmosphere that you feel, I’m so pleased.”

On the Scene: 2:27 P.M.

It’s hot, it’s muggy and it’s starting to get packed here in The Axe & Rose, the warehouse home of the Timbers Army across the street from Providence Park. I’m with Wiebe, who lives in New Jersey and is prepping for a move to Kansas City to be more centrally located.

“I don’t have any home games. I’m always on the road. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was tired sometimes,” he says. “I take the 6 a.m. on a Friday so I can spend as much time with my family as I can. I’ll take a red-eye tonight to get home and take my kids to school tomorrow. The reality of jobs like this one is if you want to do them, you have to make sacrifices, but within that sacrifice, I do every possible thing I can to be with my family every moment I can and to do my dream, which is this.”

Wiebe started as an editor at MLSSoccer.com in 2012, became a studio host with the league in 2018 and was moved into a jack-of-all-trades role here in 2025 with Sunday Night Soccer. During matches, Wiebe is positioned between the benches and does his best to eavesdrop for the sake of the audience.

“I’m spying,” he says. “I want to know what they’re saying, who they’re saying it to, what they’re watching on their iPad, how they’re changing their team, what their body language is like and feed as much of that back to the broadcast as I can. I want to be the person who’s the fly on the wall.”

But before the match, Wiebe’s job is to present a taste of the city. Today, that has him here with a camera crew at The Axe & Rose, where he just paid $10 to become a member and is ready to head into the bar.

“We’ll try and show what it’s like to have a beer with the supporters in a kick ass clubhouse,” he says, “and then walk across the street and go to the game.”

The Voices: 3:13 p.m.

Twellman has been pretty adaptable throughout his career. The former MVP played eight seasons in MLS, is New England’s all-time leading scorer and has transitioned into a broadcasting career that saw him spend 11 seasons with ESPN before joining Apple in 2023.

But one hour before going live, Twellman has had enough of arts and crafts time.

“Tyson, can you put this in the article?” Twellman asks as he watches Zivin cut out individual player profiles from a printed sheet filled with facts and stats, then arrange them in front of him in a quasi-starting 11. “I’m a control freak. I want it to be done. The cutting and pasting, I’m just nervous for him.

“This is kindergarten.”

Most of the time I spend with these two involves Twellman cracking on Zivin, which is somewhat of a full-circle moment for the former Timbers broadcaster who interned with the ESPN production crew of MLS broadcasts in 2006 and 2007.

“I was operating the score bug when he was scoring goals,” Zivin says.

Now, after a career in TV sports that took him through Montana and Eugene, and after his nine years as lead on Portland’s local broadcasts, Zivin is paired with Twellman as the two faces — voices — of Sunday Night Soccer.

And while they certainly took separate routes to this booth, Twellman says it’s those days that Zivin spent in the production truck that make his partner good.

“The first thing ESPN taught me is if you don’t know how the truck works, you’ll never be good at it,” Twellman says. “So when I heard Jake’s story it was like, whoa. Very few play-by-play guys can say they literally worked in the truck. So if anything goes wrong in our broadcast, you have two people that care about the truck maybe more than a normal broadcast.”

Zivin counters that, no, it’s Twellman’s dedication to the production side that makes their broadcast sing. And while I admit this is getting a little too syrupy now, I think it’s part of what Season Pass is looking for in its broadcast team. There’s a chemistry and familiarity between the two, to the point that Zivin tells Twellman that he felt like he was cheating on his wife with an ex when he did a midweek broadcast with Ross Smith as his analyst.

“He was in heaven,” Twellman says.

It’s feeling a little different from that in the booth as the temperature continues to rise. Twellman says that’ll likely be an advantage for Portland and that the Timbers Army can “kick things up a notch” for the home side if the club looks fatigued.

Zivin mentions that it didn’t used to get so hot here.

“It’s weird for me to leave Boston today and the high is 63 degrees in June and in Portland it’s 90,” Twellman says.

“When I was in Eugene, it would still be raining this time of year,” Zivin says. “I feel like around 10 years ago it flipped.

“Well, enough of the Global Warming Show.”

I tell him that sounds like a pull quote.

“Hey, if you want to lead with the fact that we’re not climate change denialists, that’s fine,” Zivin says. “But I don’t think that’s going to get headlines.”

The Legend: 3:30 p.m.

In the booth next to Twellman and Zivin, I find Valeri staring at the pitch. The groundscrew is below watering the field, which leads to a slight grimace from Portland’s 2017 MLS MVP.

“It’s insane. That actually makes it worse,” Valeri says. “When the water gets hot, the humidity gets worse and there’s no wind down there, so it just hangs there. You’ll get blisters in 20 minutes.”

Valeri played in a few hot ones during his time with the Timbers. The 39-year-old Argentinian appeared in 262 matches with Portland over his 10 years with the club, retired in 2022 and is now in his third season as a Spanish analyst for Season Pass and for most of the week, Valeri says he does a pretty good job of living the life of someone who used to play soccer. But when he rolls into the various stadiums each week — especially here at Providence Park — he starts to get that itch.

“When I wake up and I don’t have to go to training and the feeling in my body is different. That’s different,” he says. “But on the weekends when I come into the stadium, I’m still thinking about the game as a soccer player. Many retired players say that never changes.”

Valeri is partnered with play-by-play man Sammy Sadovnik, one of the more famous goal callers in professional soccer and has a host of experience for Valeri to lean on.

“I’ve been in this business since I was 13,” Sadnvnik says. “I started with music in my home country in Peru and since ‘89, I switched from entertainment to sports and basically soccer. I called eight World Cups and Copa Americas, Euros, I’m still working in radio and I love radio.”

Valeri’s broadcasting resume has far less polish. But he also knows he wasn’t great at soccer right away, either.

“I don’t get nervous because when you’re a soccer player you’re in the spotlight and there’s always someone watching,” Valeri says. “What’s really on my mind is that I’m learning. This is still new for me and this is huge. That’s the only thing that’s in my mind, that I got to be ready for it and I got to be prepared, but it’s not pressure.”

Truck is Hot: 4 p.m.

Of all places, the truck is ice cold.

I walk by these long trailers every time I come through the press entrance for matches, but this is my first time stepping inside of one. Sunday Night Soccer usually contracts these trucks out regionally, but they were thrown a bit of a curve this week when their normal NEP truck was unavailable.

The one I walk into is slightly smaller, though that’s where the staff’s familiarity with one another pays off, Mertel tells me. Half a season in, he finally feels like they’re running a smooth operation.

“The first few weeks I told people, no over reactions,” Mertel says. “We’re going to get this figured out. And of course we did overreact but we’ve gotten into a groove of here’s the things we like to do.”

The truck looks how I imagined it would. In the main room there’s a wall of monitors showing feeds from their 17 cameras, pre-packed clips ready to go and the live feed from the studio show. There’s four rows of seats filled with more monitors and a backroom with a smaller crew.

In front sits Mertel, Mills and technical director Dana Villa from left to right.

“Brad is the producer, he’s deciding the storylines and what we’re going to do throughout the show. He’s the storyteller,” Saghini says. “Tony is showing you the pictures and Dana executes it.”

It used to be more crowded in these trucks, but MLS now has an in-house graphics department that handles things back at the studio. In this truck, they’re responsible for what to show, when to show it and then beaming multiple feeds out to Apple and their international partners. And since this is Sunday Night Soccer, the truck has extra responsibilities with the now-ending pre-game show.

“If you’re doing a Saturday game, or when I’m doing a midweek game and I’m just one of 15 games, you have maybe a few things for studio but for this one we have an hour dedicated for each show,” Mertel says. “It’s feeding them content. Giving them interviews. I do that production meeting and it’s 15 minutes on all the pre-game production stuff, then we get to the game it’s like, well, we’ve done this before.”

At 3:58, someone yells, “Two minutes to air.”

90 seconds.

60 seconds.

It’s cool and quiet as the 10-second countdown arrives.

“Truck is hot. Truck is hot.”

They begin with a shot of the West Hills as Zivin’s voice is fed into the truck.

“Welcome to Portland, Oregon,” Zivin begins, as the truck directs the B-roll to shift from an outside shot of Providence Park to bagpipes in the street to players signing autographs as they arrived to the stadium. The opening segment moves from the greeting to the starting lineups to players to watch, where Twellman insists that “Antony’s got to be the guy today” for Portland.

Zivin provides a little Providence Park history as the teams walk onto the field and the truck is alive with reminders of “Don’t forget the Tifo. Don’t forget the Tifo,” as they head into the break. When the broadcast returns, they run through win probability and throw up a recorded shot of the Timbers Army raising the match’s Tifo. Zivin runs through a bit about Portland’s Pride Day warm-up tops that they had discussed earlier in the day’s production meeting, they introduce the referees and Mills calls for a wide shot to begin the match promptly at 4:12 p.m.

The Match:

I watched the first 10 minutes of the match in the truck with the crew, then went up to spy on Zivin, Twellman, Valeri and Sadnvik in the booth. It was something watching Zivin rev it up during the consecutive saves from James Pantemis that kept the Timbers in the match in the first half.

They offered to let me watch the rest of the match, but I needed to get back to do my actual job.

I had just gotten back to the press box, hooked my computer up and popped the broadcast into my ear when I got to see Antony pull off the equalizer in the 55th minute and hear Zivin’s call.

“Antony will take it himself. Oh, what a goal!”

There was something cool about having just been in that booth, having just been in that truck and having a better sense at how that sausage is made. Did I come away knowing better than before if Sunday Night Soccer has become a success for the league and the platform?

No.

Bacon didn’t have any numbers to share with me at the time of our pre-match call. But I did come away with a better appreciation for what were previously just buzzwords in a press release — enhanced production — and the work it takes to build a broadcast like this from scratch.

“I am very intrigued to see what this looks like next year and in 2027,” Twellman told me. “When the schedule evolves, we got really good rivalry games in this league and I could probably give you 25 must-see games. Now, imagine when those are all Sunday night soccer like Monday Night Football.

“Now you’re cooking with gas.”

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor