VGC reports that ESPN’s John Buccigross — spell it with two c’s — says Electronic Arts is using AI for some of his play-by-play lines in EA Sports NHL 27. Buccigross joins color commentator Darren Pang on the new broadcast team, replacing last year’s James Cybulski and Cheryl Pounder pairing. He has been an ESPN anchor for about 30 years, and the VGC package is built from his Chirping Zebras podcast comments rather than an EA corporate policy memo.
On the workload, Buccigross describes name reads and scenario lines as tedious: every name in the league, said multiple ways, plus invented score-and-situation prompts that often need another take. He then draws a hard line between that grind and the paycheck. Per VGC’s transcript of the podcast: “But they’re also using some AI stuff now. They played me some stuff back in my voice… if it means less work and the same check, I’ll take it.” That is talent talking about a tool in the booth pipeline — not a claim that all commentary is AI, and not a claim that he has been replaced.
Authenticity QA is part of the same anecdote. Buccigross says he reviews playback because AI can miss sports vernacular. One example he flags: the line “Score! And the crowd gets out of their chairs!” — which he corrected because crowds leave seats, not chairs. “You’ve got to manually put that in,” he said of teaching the system the right words. Score-order habits matter too; he notes you do not say a baseball final as “four to six” when the winner should lead the read. Those are human edits on top of machine-assisted lines, not a blank check for unreviewed AI chatter.
Keep the scope narrow. This draft does not invent an EA Sports corporate NHL AI policy statement, does not weld the story to other GenAI licensing drafts, and does not overclaim that every line in NHL 27 is synthetic. For broader industry context on how studios are talking about tools and cost pressure, see our live coverage of Tim Sweeney’s “worst crash since the 1980s” remarks. The NHL 27 point here is simpler: Buccigross is on the record that some lines use AI in his voice, he still records, he still QAs authenticity, and he will take the reduced tedium if the check stays the same.
