Edmonton Elks continue to forge ahead with multilingual broadcasts
Global News
On Saturday night, the Edmonton Elks' home game versus the B.C. Lions will be the first pro football contest to be broadcast in Punjabi.
Victor Cui isn’t resting on his laurels.
On Saturday night, the Edmonton Elks’ home game versus the B.C. Lions will be the first pro football contest to be broadcast in Punjabi. This achievement follows the franchise’s earlier milestone in 2022 when they had a regular-season matchup carried in Cree.
And already Cui, the Elks affable president/CEO, is looking to broadcast Edmonton games in other languages.
“Chinese, as an example, is one of them,” Cui said during a telephone interview. “Last year, we started even looking at a broadcast in Ukrainian because we wanted a way to welcome all the new Ukrainians that we’re bringing into our community.
“That one was a little bit (more difficult) because there’s not enough experience to pull it off.”
And that’s the key, Cui said.
“The ability to story-tell in sports comes with experience,” he said. “That really is a key criteria, finding somebody who can be comfortable enough with that and have enough experience to be calling a live game.
“When it comes to live sports, you have to think on your feet and have experience doing that.”