Cal football is speaking a new language to its fans this season. For the first time in the program’s 144-year history, the Golden Bears are broadcasting home games in Spanish, part of a campaign called “Vamos Osos” that pairs Spanish-language play-by-play with new social content aimed at Berkeley’s Spanish-speaking community.
According to calbears.com, the Golden Bears now offer a Spanish livestream during every home game on the Cal Football and Cal Athletics YouTube pages, a first for the program. The initiative was created by Val Grimaldo, Cal football’s digital content coordinator, who said he wanted to bring Spanish-language game broadcasts to local fans, according to KRON4. The station reports the move was intended to strengthen Cal’s connection with its fast-growing fanbase.
Brothers Behind the Mic Fulfill a Childhood Dream
Calling the games are brothers Jesus and Enrique Zarate, both of whom currently serve as the lead Spanish play-by-play broadcasters for the San Francisco 49ers, per the Cal athletics department’s announcement. They’re joined by Carlos M. Ramirez, an AppleTV broadcaster for Major League Soccer who also works for NFL International in various roles. Jesus and Enrique broadcast the first-ever Cal football game in Spanish on Sept. 5, when the Bears opened the 2026 season against UCLA.
Per KRON4’s reporting, the brothers fulfilled a childhood dream by finally calling live games together, something Jesus said traces back to simpler days: he and Enrique used to play Madden and pretend to announce together. Now their real-game calls include signature moments like “Touchdown! Osos Dorados!” when the Bears find the end zone, the station notes.
Jesus Zarate’s path to the booth started long before Berkeley. Born in Mexico, he moved to the Bay Area as an elementary schooler and became a 49ers fan early on, according to CBS News, which reports he began working as the team’s Spanish-language play-by-play announcer in 2018.
A Program Looking Beyond Berkeley
The reach appears to be extending past the Bay Area. Enrique Zarate said interest in college football stretches into international regions beyond the Bay Area, and he told KRON4 that people in Brazil had contacted the broadcast team. He added that Latinos are becoming involved in and falling in love with football, and that the community had shown strong support for the new coverage, with local response equally strong, according to KRON4.
Ron Rivera, Cal football’s general manager and a former NFL head coach and linebacker, framed the decision as a matter of reaching the community the program serves. “Over a quarter of the San Francisco Bay Area population is Spanish-speaking, and we want them to be a part of what we are building in Berkeley,” Rivera said, according to calbears.com. KRON4 reports Rivera said the program needs to reach the community.
The broadcast push lands as football keeps growing rapidly in Mexico and Latin America, per KRON4’s report, and as college athletics sees rising Hispanic and Latino participation nationally. The NCAA reported 38,778 Hispanic/Latino student-athletes in 2025-26, making up 7% of the total student-athlete population, according to ncaa.org, which also reports that figure has climbed 55.2% over the past decade.
Identity on the Roster, Too
For some Cal players, the initiative resonates personally. Jericho Johnson, a Cal defensive lineman, said being African American and Mexican American is part of his identity, and he told KRON4 he welcomed his community’s participation in football.
Cal joins a short list of college football programs offering fans a Spanish-language option, according to calbears.com. UCF has run Spanish-language broadcasts for five seasons through broadcasters Carlos Bohórquez and Sergio Ruiz Torres, who call games from what WESH describes as the first designated Spanish-language booth in UCF’s renovated Roth Tower, with the broadcast available via the UCF Knights’ YouTube channel. The University of Texas, meanwhile, had roughly a 25-year head start on much of the competition in Spanish-language college broadcasting as of 2019, according to WBUR, which described Spanish-language play-by-play as a small but growing trend in college athletics.
The Zarate brothers’ NFL day job offers its own evidence of the audience at stake. The 49ers provide a live Spanish-language broadcast inside Levi’s Stadium through the team app, free and without the delay often associated with streaming or radio broadcasts, according to 49ers.com, which credits Jesús Zárate and Carlos Yustis with leading that call. The team is set to face the Minnesota Vikings at Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca on November 22, 2026, the same source reports.
League-wide numbers help explain the momentum. More than 30 million Hispanic Americans consider themselves NFL fans, according to a poll cited by Cronkite News, which also reports the NFL estimates more than 22 million people in Mexico identify as fans, with Latin America accounting for more than 40 million fans of the league overall. Separately, Latino NFL viewership rose 11% while Spanish-language broadcasts jumped 34% compared with previous years, according to OPB, which noted Telemundo became the first Spanish-language U.S. network to air the Super Bowl exclusively in Spanish in 2022.
Back in Berkeley, the new Spanish Instagram page tied to the campaign, called “vamososos,” will carry the main football page’s content with Spanish subtitles along with original Spanish-language material, per calbears.com. For Grimaldo, Rivera and the Zarate brothers, the goal is straightforward: give Cal’s Spanish-speaking fans a seat in the broadcast booth that’s been missing for 144 years.
