Sports Business Classroom
Beau Estes: I started working for Turner Sports while I was still a college student. So, the Olympics were coming to Atlanta in 1996, and we were all preparing for that and doing internships in college for that. I was lucky enough to get an internship at CNN Sports when I was a college junior. And my first day there we heard about people getting paid to do what we were doing at CNN Sports as interns over at Turner Sports covering the NBA.
So I made a call to a guy named Craig Barry who now happens to be basically in charge of our company, and said, ‘Hey, I’m interested, I’m doing this at CNN Sports’, and he said let me just put you on the schedule. So he put me on the schedule in November 1994 – my first day with Turner Sports ever – and I have basically been in with that company ever since. So, I migrated over there and I did the Turner Sports thing covering highlights as a young editor and logger in that program and quickly became the person, when Kenny Smith came on, to be assigned to Kenny Smith to do his analysis. But I always knew I wanted to be on camera, I always knew I wanted to be an announcer, so as all this is happening I’m also working on the side to become an announcer and eventually Turner had an open audition and I was, at this point an announcer for CBS. Myself and a lady perhaps you’ve heard of named Erin Andrews won the auditions, so we just had the Atlanta Braves job doing that. From there, I got a hockey job with the Atlanta Thrashers through Turner Sports, and I was the Atlanta Hawks sideline reporter, and studio host for a while. So all of that was basically me bouncing around and in that span of time, I became the NBA.com and NBA TV guy.
Honestly the whole NBA highlights operation, it was just a real perfect spot for me through all of those experiences because the one thing I loved most was basketball. I wasn’t in love with hockey, I wasn’t in love with MLB. As a kid, I was in love with NBA basketball. I told my parents when I was in elementary school that I wanted to be a sportscaster and that I loved the NBA. So this is a dream I’ve followed since I was a little kid, and I never veered from it. And so, to land here where I am now, as sort of the guy who is the voice for NBA highlights is just an immense dream come true for a little kid all those years ago.
