Laura Woods and Mark Pougatch will be joined by a new host during ITV’s coverage of the World Cup – which all kicks off in a couple of weeks
ITV will have a new face alongside Laura Woods and Mark Pougatch when they launch their World Cup coverage from the USA, Canada and Mexico next month.
Mark Pougatch and Laura Woods will be joined by Semra Hunter on hosting duties when the festival of football kicks off. Born and raised stateside, Semra is football mad, and she’s worked as a host for La Liga TV, while also appearing on Sky Sports and BBC.
Semra had dreamed of turning professional in the sport: “If I wasn’t at school or studying, I played football. Then when I was 16, I suffered a bad injury and that was the end of that,” she told The Set Pieces.
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“I was unsure what to do after studying International Relations at University of California Berkeley and my mum said to me that I’d make a great reporter because I love sports and traveling.
“She gave me the belief. I applied for a sports journalism and communication masters at the UEM in Madrid and got accepted. I did the whole programme in Spanish and worked an internship off the back of that.”
Semra had a basic understanding of the language before she took the jump, explaining that her mum had lived in Colombia and Mexico and spoke Spanish to her when she was younger.
After graduating, Semra worked as an intern at Al-Jazeera before a job appeared at Real Madrid. She said: “They had an opening and I spent two-and-a-half years doing a bit of everything from reporting in English and Spanish, to writing, editing, producing my own shows.”
“Then I worked in Istanbul for two years, where I worked as a sports anchor and correspondent for Beyond the Game’s daily sports news programme. I was sent all over the world to cover sports, including the 2016 Euros in France.
“After a couple of years in Turkey, I returned to Spain for personal reasons and the stars aligned as La Liga TV had just opened up in 2018. Before I started there, I had a short spell hosting e-sports for Konami.”
Speaking last year, Semra admitted it’s her dream to host at the World Cup: “So that is definitely my immediate goal – to host or present something to do with that!”
Semra won’t be the only new face on the coverage – and ITV has named Adam Richman, of Man vs Food fame, as her co-presenter in the Brooklyn studio.
ITV added that they will be “joined by celebrity guests. A ‘special section of the studio’ will examine all of the biggest World Cup social and cultural moments.”