SVG Saturday Fax: The Week In Sports Video Production
Sports Video Group
To advance the creation, production, and distribution of sports content.
The Olympics are in the rearview and it's time to return to your regularly scheduled programming. The WNBA is back. So is the Premier League. Baseball is entering its home stretch. And, of course, football weekends are just around the corner.
Here's what's happening in the world of live sports video production and operations in the latest edition of your SVG Saturday Fax.
OBS CTO Gives Final Reflections on Paris 2024 Summer Olympics
The Paris Olympics are over, and, for the Olympic Broadcasting Services team, there is a brief moment to reflect on its accomplishments before the Paralympics begin on Aug. 28.
That gives SVG a chance to chat with OBS CTO Sotiris Salamouris about the multi-year effort that produced a nice return to normalcy after the past two the Olympics [the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games and the Beijing 2022 Winter Games] were severely affected by the pandemic and, without fans in the stands, lacked much of the energy that transforms an Olympics into something special.
“Empty venues impact us quite negatively in terms of how the sports appear,” he says. “Having fans creates an excitement that gets all the way up to the way that we’re doing the production. It affects the producers; it affects the directors, even the camera people. It doesn’t change the technical setup, but it absolutely contributes to the quality of the final production.”
NBC Olympics' Global Transmission Plan a True Feat
NBCUniversal 's Olympics operations for the Paris 2024 games were a genuine transatlantic operation, with production teams throughout France and at NBC Sports ’ Stamford, CT, Broadcast Operations Center (BOC) tied together by a supercharged web of connectivity.
Add NBCU’s stateside facilities at 30 Rock in NYC; EC Network Operations Center (NOC) in Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Dry Creek Hub in Denver; and Telemundo Center in Miami; and it’s clear how much transmission fire power NBC Sports had at its disposal for these Games.
“We have what we lovingly call the ‘subway map,’ illustrating all the different services and individual video paths connecting every site and venue in Paris to five of NBCU’s facilities stateside, and it’s bigger than ever,” said Ian Kuchta , VP, BOC and Transmission Operations, NBC Sports Group, during the Games. “We have a copy of the [subway map] from the Torino 2006 Games, and it looks miniature compared with this year’s [transmission scheme]. That shows just how much everything has grown and changed.”
A whopping 445 audio and video signals were sent from Paris. This included OBS host feeds, which were backhauled via JPEG XS. NBC deployed Media Links Xscend and MD8000 media-transport platforms for JPEG XS/ J2K contribution. NBC also deployed 26 LiveU IP wireless backpacks as ENG cameras in Paris.
Scripps Sports Debuts New Studio With WNBA Pregame Show on ION
The WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) is back from the Olympic break and to mark the occasion, The E.W. Scripps Company debuted a brand new set in Scripps Sports' Atlanta-based studio on Friday night.
The set has multiple 4K graphics monitors + a wall of four vertical monitors, and an 86-in. touchscreen telestrator. It also has three free-roaming Ross Video CamBot pedestals which can be controlled from any of three control rooms in the facility.
“We wanted to make our show feel as big as possible. Having so many different positions allows us to utilize our space in the best ways possible and tell stories on our studio show.” - Quinn Pacini, VP, Broadcast Operations, Scripps Sports.
The space will also be used on ION's coverage of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL).
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Caitlin Clark, Indiana Fever Retake the Summer Sports Stage
The Indiana Fever and their generational superstar Caitlin Clark returned to action on Friday night.
Matching the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer with last year’s No. 1 overall pick, Aliyah Boston has been heaven for the team's internal digital media team. From Clark’s arrival in April to the return from the Olympic break this week, the crew responsible for the club’s social media and digital platforms at Pacers Sports & Entertainment has been hard at work.
On this episode of SVG Rewind, we are joined by Digital Video Manager Daniel Stallings to highlight the franchise’s planning before and during the 2024 WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) Draft, what it’s been like to work with Clark and the rest of the team, the content that was generated during the first half of the regular season, the workflows used to cover Clark at the recent WNBA All-Star Game in Phoenix, how they’re handling an increase in attention, and more.
Perfect Game Goes All-In on PGTV at All-American Classic at Chase Field
This weekend in Phoenix, the future of baseball takes center stage at the Perfect Game All-American Classic (Sunday, 8 p.m. ET). Sixty of the nation’s top high school players to Chase Field for amateur baseball’s crown-jewel event and Perfect Game's burgeoning media team is onsite to stream multiple events exclusively to its own free video platform, PGTV.
This weekend’s All-American Classic is the 22nd iteration of the event, but it’s a notable one: it will be the first time Perfect Game has produced live coverage of the event and delivered it exclusively to its own streaming platform. In the past, the group has partnered with various cable networks to expand its reach.
“I think it takes a lot of courage to put a game like this on only your own platforms,” says says Daron Sutton, VP/executive producer/host, Perfect Game and Perfect Game.TV. “It takes a lot of courage and belief in your distribution and what you’re doing. A lot of people would assume you’d at least do a partnership with a network. Quite frankly, I don’t know if it would’ve been the smartest thing to do a couple of years back, but, because of what we’ve built in our platform and built on the social side, I think we’re going to reach people.”
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