Inside the Game: Sports and Poker Reporter/Host Natalie Bode shares her journey with AWSM

Written by Ella Kurovsky

Natalie Bode is a Sports and Poker Reporter and currently works for Hearst Television’s KOAT7 as a Weekend Sports Anchor/Reporter. She began her career after interning with TNT Sports on the NCAA Digital team after graduating from UNC Chapel Hill in 2021. 

Bode assisted in programming the NCAA website, covering sporting events, writing articles, and more. Her passion for the industry sparked from watching sports with her dad as a child and grew from there.

Just a year later, Bode began working for Bleacher Report and also balanced traveling to do sideline reporting and hosting at the same time. She found that working both jobs simultaneously allowed her to continue her passion and drive to be a TV personality. 

Bode developed her interest in playing poker to become a correspondent for the World Series of Poker by CBS and PokerGO. After doing a year of poker, freelance, and sports reporting, she took her talents to local television. Bode was often questioned as to why she left freelance work, as many people longed for that position.

“I worked two weeks out of the month, made pretty good money, and was going to cool events. But, I wasn’t experiencing enough growth,” said Bode.

Bode switched over to local television in order to make sure she could build her reel for the foundation of her career. She didn’t want to get comfortable in her current position if she wasn’t quite where she had wanted to be yet career-wise. 

“I’ve worked in social, done sideline, done other freelance hosting work, and I still feel like this was the best thing I could’ve done,” said Bode.

Bode currently works out of Albuquerque, New Mexico where she carries around her camera equipment, edits her own content, and sets up her live news shots. Still early in her career, Bode has had a plethora of reporting experience and hopes to continue gaining more in the field. 

Bode shared that if you know what you enjoy doing, keep doing it and find new and creative ways to get involved.