Pablo Stecco is an Argentine journalist and sports host with extensive experience in television and radio. It has been consolidated in SportsCenterfrom ESPN, where he works as a sports host and communicator, and participates in various formats within the ESPN/Disney+ ecosystem. Stecco combines on-screen hosting with production and voiceover, and receives invitations to academic spaces and talks focused on sports journalism. He has managed to build a career focused on clear communication and active participation in training colleagues.
Maximum Palma He is an Argentine journalist with strong ties to the development of sports marketing in the region. He works as a host on radio and television, and is part of ESPN programs. Palma integrates his journalistic work with his own communication ventures, in addition to maintaining an active presence in social networks to share about sport, marketing and his passion for local clubs.
Both represent the contemporary profile of the Argentine sports journalism: conductors arising from traditional media that expand their reach with digital projects and transversal content. In 2025, they maintain their presence as a formula for success and embody the permanent transformation and adaptation of the profession.
Leo: — What is the most beautiful thing, Maxi, about being on the news like SportsCenter?
Maxi: — We are very happy doing what we do. We have found a way to make it so that, for example, the schedule that is complex due to leaving the house at night, getting up from a birthday, or dinner with friends, does not have weight. And I am particularly very happy. ESPN is the global brand in the world of sports, it is the leader in the world of Latin sports, clearly. And we are in a privileged place. We have two hours every night to have fun, do what we like and receive on the other side affection from people who truly never cease to surprise us.
Leo: — The schedule is zero hours? 12 at night?
Pablo: — Yes. There are days, moments in many Copa Libertadores, that the schedules vary, you see? Until three in the morning, two thirty in the morning. It’s heavy.
Leo: — But I like it because that has allowed them to take this show without limits.
Maxi:— It’s just that we are late nights.
Leo: — Do you know what I also liked a lot when they did it from the fields? Cancha de Ríver, once, and I don’t remember if another stadium…
Maxi:— Yes, from Racing.
Pablo: — It’s good. But we have to wait another hour. The match ends. Germán is there for an hour and then they almost turn off the lights in the stadium and they stop for a little while and you have to go on air…
Maxi: — Sometimes we have left almost with a crowd of visitors who leave it three hours later…
Pablo: — Shouting, drunks (laughs).
Maxi: — The truth is that I believe that the great satisfaction is what we told you: feel the love of the people. There is a lot of back and forth with the public, but we make it extremely natural. To meet in the air is to have a good time.
Pablo: — It is true what he says: “We meet in the air.” Because of the way we work, we are on the channel a while before. But two minutes before we see you. It’s not that we prepare everything.
Maxi: — Everything is natural.
Leo: — They see the routine, the themes, the games, all of that goes on air like a gymnastics.
Maxi: — Yes, but everything that comes after: jokes, looks, complicities… That’s all natural. Nothing is prepared.
Leo: — That can’t be faked. Sometimes it’s a good group, a good team…
Pablo: — But it doesn’t always happen. And it’s not the same to work with just anyone. You don’t always have the same tune.
Leo: — But in that amount of time, as you have been doing for five years…
Pablo: — Yes. And they ask us to do other things. “Let’s see when they go on tour,” they say.
Maxi: — And we are putting together the summer tour. We sing and dance very well (laughs).
Leo: — What other sports do you like to watch, participate in or attend said event?
Pablo: — At a certain time on the canal there was not much traveling outside. We did not have the rights to the Copa Libertadores, Argentine soccer. They were noted. So, as a show host, there wasn’t much to go, to travel. I didn’t have that experience. And I raised my hand with this question about who wants to go to tennis and it was 15 years traveling to the Grand Slam. Today I also do a tennis program with Franco Squillari.
Maxi: — It makes me jealous. It’s a matter of fighting. I measure how much he talks to him and how much he talks to me (laughs).
Leo: — Did you always like tennis or did you specialize after you started covering?
Pablo: — You always have to like sports. But in principle I took it as a way to travel.
Leo: — He chose soft, calm. Paris, Roland Garros…
Maxi: — Melbourne, London, Paris and New York.
Pablo: — And at what moment, right?
Leo: — Of course, because you seized the moment…
Pablo: — Of all the silvers, all the Latin Americans…
Leo: — Nalbandian, then Delpo and Peque, the last one, one of the most representative.
Pablo: — In 2005 in Shanghai with the title of teacher, with the master’s degree, with David.
Leo: — But well, when we started 25 years ago, with SportsCenter, in 2000, it had not debuted Diokovic in tennis as a professional. Messi had not debuted, only four years later. Imagine all the stories. Manu Ginobili there has not been to the NBA. The Lionesses were not called Lionesses, only there in 2000. Imagine all the things that happened…
Leo: — And in your case, Maxi? What other sport catches you?
Maxi: — I started with rugby and I played rugby for a long time. And then, don’t forget that I was at Fox for many years. I arrived at ESPN in 2021. But I found on Fox, at the time, a space where there was an empty place that was not football and I specialized in all sports other than football. So, to every event, every place and every athlete who was not a soccer player that had to be met, they sent me. I positioned myself very strongly in the sports center and my concern was always the sports marketing. I work a lot with that and football, obviously, is the passion of crowds, you have to be there. So throughout the race, luckily, I went to all the events without Pablo. Now I would like to go with Pablo.
Leo: — There will be no shortage of opportunity. But tell me this story: you took your history teacher to Platense and it went very viral. I loved the emotion…
Maxi— Yes. But it was natural, like everything we do. I just invited him to come and greet the players. I tell him: “Look, the champion players are coming, you are a Platense fan, you can’t not come.” He was my history teacher in high school. In those five years, we went to the court together.
Leo: — But did you have contact with him?
Maxi: — No, no. I finished school and lost contact.
Leo: —And how did you contact him?
Maxi: — When we were in Santiago del Estero, a close friend of mine sent me a photo of the teacher in Santiago del Estero with the shirt on. I tell him, “Get me the phone.” And then I started writing to him, I congratulated him, and the bond began. When we got the players to come, I called him to come. That’s how it was. And it was not planned to make it happen, nor for what happened to happen. It was all natural.
Pablo: —And he cried naturally. Because you saw that it is fashionable to cry (laughs). And that’s fine.
Maxi: — I am the Fernando Bravo of the 21st century. I am very crybaby.
Pablo: — What’s more, since it was so successful, it was so viral, that now I tell him: “Cry something” (laughs).
Leo: — What virtue of Maxi would you like to have and vice versa?
Pablo: — He is a very confident guy, he moves forward like a bull and for him nothing is impossible.
Leo: — Would you like to have that virtue? That even though you have it, you like that in him.
Pablo: — No, but I’m not like that. I am more reserved.
Maxi: — And Pablo is very perfectionist, very professional, very structured, very armed. We are the yin and the yang. What he has, I don’t have. What I have, he doesn’t have, but it is the complement. I rest a lot that he is informed.
Leo: — Which player would you like to interview and you haven’t done so yet?
Pablo: — Messi!
Maxi: — Messi, without a doubt.
Leo: — And the player they interviewed the most times, the most friendly. Is there one who is closer, who always watches them, who is a fan?
Maxi: — A lot of players are looking at us without realizing that a lot of players are looking at us. The football environment looks at us a lot, he comes from a tennis background and has interviewed the best tennis players in the world and I have also interviewed the best tennis players in the world.
Leo: — And if they had to say, my best interview was…
Pablo: — Taking that into account, I don’t know, some Federerfor example, after winning a Wimbledon or after Delpo. I don’t know, I named David Nalbandian before, now a new anniversary is celebrated in November. King David winning in Shanghai. And that’s why one of impact with a world athlete is that of Michael Phelps. Top winner in the history of the Olympic Games.
Maxi: — Incredible. A bulldozer.
