
Bally Sports Regional Networks Rolls Out Cloud Control Rooms To Boost Storytelling for Local Viewers Developed with Mobile TV Group, Cloud Control will be extended to all Bally Sports RSNs this fall By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Wednesday, July 21, 2021 - 3:12 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
When sports resumed after the pandemic shutdown, regional sports networks were forced to transition to a world-feed production model that severely limited the away-team RSN's ability to customize its broadcast for local fans. In an effort to remain efficient while also restoring RSNs' storytelling capabilities, Bally Sports Regional Networks is launching Cloud Control rooms at the home offices of its 19 RSNs (as well as at Sinclair-owned sibling Marquee Sports Network in Chicago).
With [Cloud Control], you truly have control of your own show again, explains Mike Connelly, EVP, production, Bally Sports Networks. Our producers and directors can cut their own show again like they did the with the traditional dual-feed model [prior to the pandemic]. At the same time, we're saving costs by not having to travel our entire [crew] for away shows because [crew members are] located at the [Cloud Control room] in their office.
Bally Sports' first Cloud Control room officially launched at Bally Sports North in Minneapolis for a Twins-Royals series at the beginning of June and was followed by Marquee Sports Network in Chicago this month. In both Minneapolis and Chicago, CC rooms are being used for selected MLB productions in which Mobile TV Group (MTVG) is the truck provider for the away-team venue. Here's a look at Bally Sports North's Cloud Control setup in Minneapolis:
https://www.sportsvideo.org/new/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/IMG_5929.mp4
CC rooms are in place and being tested at Bally Sports Florida (Ft. Lauderdale), South (Atlanta), and Southwest (Dallas), with plans to begin broadcasting next month. The goal is to have CC rooms finalized and tested at all Bally Sports RSNs by September, so that all 19 will be up and running for the start of NHL and NBA seasons in the fall.
How It Works: Truck Is Onsite, Most of the Crew Is at Home With Cloud Control, the Bally Sports producer, director, and EVS replay, Vizrt graphics, and score-box operators remain at the away-team's RSN's home office and use control panels to remotely control the technical facilities in the mobile unit, which is at the away venue. Multiview feeds (not individual camera feeds) from the truck are brought back to the CC room to allow the director to cut the show just as they would if they were in the onsite mobile unit.
With Cloud Control, the director and producer are able to call the broadcast for away games from a control room at the home office like this one in Minneapolis.
The mobile unit - typically a dual-feed unit that serves both the home and the away shows - provides the home show with a full-blown facility and the visiting network with its own switcher/TD and audio console/A1. The visiting network has access to three dedicated cameras plus all the home show's cameras (including four super-slo-mos). Two EVS replay servers are dedicated to the away team and networked to all the EVS gear in the home show, including the super-slo-mo units.
You get the same number of [unilateral] cameras that they had in a traditional dual-feed model before [the pandemic] and access to all the home-show cameras with dual tallies, says Connelly. Your director can still cut the game like they normally would; they just aren't actually in the truck.
He adds that Cloud Control offers considerable cost reductions for the away-team RSN, which isn't dependent on a world feed produced by the home-team RSN. Under the Cloud Control model, the home production staff does not need to travel, and construction of the CC rooms is at a fraction of the cost of a typical control room.
You're saving costs on travel, and you're not over-extending yourself on capital costs, Connelly notes, [The production team] is still with the team at least 50% of the time, so you're not losing that intimacy you worked so hard to develop. Everything is based on that intimate relationship and making sure that we serve the needs of the team. We can still do that very effectively.
Connectivity between the CC room and the mobile unit requires only 300 Mb (depending on the venue and the situation), and MTVG provides the coordination to ensure proper communication between the remote-control panels at the RSN's office and the MTVG mobile unit at the venue.
This is truly the next stage of the dual-feed model and allows us to serve the needs of our team partners by creating broadcasts that cater to the hometown fans, says Connelly. Our entire business is built on the relationships and intimacy we have with our teams, and this keeps our [production crews] close with our teams in their home markets instead of at a centralized control room. [Viewers] are going to see a high-quality show geared towards their team rather than the more generic [world feed] that we've had to do with [during the pandemic]. That's really exciting.
Looking Back: Years-Long Effort Comes to Fruition According to Connelly, the concept has been in development for several years, dating back to his group's previous life as Fox Sports Regional Networks prior to Sinclair's acquiring the RSNs from Disney (via 21st Century Fox) in 2019. While still under the Fox Sports umbrella, Connelly and his team were exploring ways to reduce travel without sacrificing production quality or staff. His team worked with MTVG to begin developing the system that would eventually become Cloud Control.
Cloud Control rooms are primarily deployed in what was previously office or conference space at Bally Sports RSNs.
When
More from Sports Video Group
01/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Spyrosoft's Jonathan Witty on Futher Business Exp...
01/07/2025
The NIL Effect: How the Shifting Business of College Athletics Impacts On-Campus...
01/07/2025
Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 w...
01/07/2025
NESN's Josh Jun on Keeping Alternative Broadcasts Fresh for Boston Red Sox, ...
01/07/2025
TNT Sports Races Back Into NASCAR With Fresh Look, Familiar Edge Production approach emphasizes creative freedom, bold storytelling, casual-fan-friendly tone B...
27/06/2025
How smarter compression is creating a sustainable future By Michael Burns
Monday, June 23, 2025 - 14:13
Print This Story
Live sport is especially vulnerab...
27/06/2025
Behind the Mic: FOX Sports Ratchets Up UEFA Women's EURO 2025 With Top-Class...
27/06/2025
RTL Group To Acquire Sky Deutschland By George Bevir, Editorial Director, SVG Europe
Friday, June 27, 2025 - 8:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story ...
27/06/2025
Frictionless, At Scale: The Current State of Live Video Streaming Techology Leaders from Bitmovin, Comcast Technology Solutions, Harmonic, IMAX, and Phenix brea...
27/06/2025
Marquee Sports Network's Nick Steger on Meeting the Moment of the Contending...
27/06/2025
NHL Draft 2025: The League Is Primed for First Decentralized Draft in Non-Pandem...
26/06/2025
10th-Annual SVG Regional Sports Production Summit Presents Useful Roadmap for th...
26/06/2025
The Big Cloud Debate: Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid Tech leaders from CineSys, Diversified, and Net Insight breaks down all flavors of cloud By Jason Dachman, ...
26/06/2025
Program Productions' Jess Kowatch on Training the Next and Current Gener...
25/06/2025
SVG College Summit 2025: Select Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAY Tackling the latest in college sports video: NIL, live production, virtual productio...
25/06/2025
ESPN Is Set To Bring AR Graphics to Wimbledon, Revamps Bunker and Studio 18 VO B...
24/06/2025
2025 NBA Draft: ABC/ESPN Prepares for Two-Day Draft at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By M...
24/06/2025
Cloud Broadcast Tech Update: Google Cloud's Jane Day on the Impact of AI on ...
24/06/2025
Cloud Broadcast Tech Update: AWS's Dana LaGattuta on Data-Driven Innovation ...
24/06/2025
Lions live: Dublin opener sees Sky Sports take remote route By Fergal Ringrose ...
24/06/2025
Pumas maul Lions as S4C and TG4 deliver first-ever joint host in Dublin By Ferg...
24/06/2025
ABC/ESPN Prepares for 2025 NBA Draft, the First at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By Mark ...
23/06/2025
Adventures in Live Cloud Production: Stories From the Trenches with MLB, NHL, NB...
23/06/2025
Finding the edge: How Badger & Combes produces live-streamed coverage of county ...
23/06/2025
Masters of Madness: New football format shakes up the rules of sportainment By Adrian Pennington
Monday, June 16, 2025 - 11:38
Print This Story
The ball i...
23/06/2025
New State-of-the-Art Mountain Media Center Launches in Former Starz Encore Build...
23/06/2025
ESPN Says Goodbye to Seaport Studios, Hello to New State-of-the-Art Production F...
20/06/2025
Feeling Unlimited, Part 1: Athletes Unlimited Softball League Deploys Remote Pro...
20/06/2025
A True Test? Cricket's Growth on the Global Stage and the Role Broadcast Can...
20/06/2025
Sky Sports goes large for the British & Irish Lions Tour with AR graphics, UHD a...
20/06/2025
ESPN's Men's College World Series Finals Coverage Combines Innovation, L...
19/06/2025
SVG Rewind: PGA Tour Introduces Drone AR Smart Tracing, Reflects on Winning Geor...
18/06/2025
Technology focus: Fan expectations drive advances in the in-stadium experience By Jo Ruddock
Tuesday, June 3, 2025 - 08:36
Print This Story
For years, att...
18/06/2025
Making connections: How stadiums are meeting the ever-growing demand for data an...
18/06/2025
SVG Venues & Teams Summit Keynote: RWS Global Powers the Stadium Environment at ...
18/06/2025
SVG Rewind: Behind the Scenes of Producing Tottenham Hotspur's Europa League...
17/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Mercury Intermedia's Tom Richardson, Mike Ligon o...
17/06/2025
Total Sports Performance from Relo Metrics, VideoAmp, Offers Next-Level Media, B...
17/06/2025
From Stage to Stream: Producing Live Esports Events in 2025 Leaders from ESL FACEIT Group, Riot Games, and more break down the latest trends By Jason Dachman, ...
17/06/2025
Inside FIFA 2025 Club World Cup Operations With FIFA's Oscar Sanchez, HBS...
17/06/2025
Production ambitions: Over Exposed on making the National League Promotion Final...
17/06/2025
DAZN Brings Global Ambition to U.S. Soil With Production of 2025 FIFA Club World...
17/06/2025
Diversified's Christine Williamson on How UT's New State-of-the-Art Prod...
16/06/2025
Grass Valley 4K Cameras Head to Greece for View Master Events' New Productio...
16/06/2025
Behind The Broadcast Booth, Ep. 3: Golf. My Future. My Game. Founder and CEO Cra...
16/06/2025
The REMI Revolution Is Here: How Remote Production Technology in Esports Pioneer...
16/06/2025
From Super Bowl to Indy 500, New Orleans Artist Frenchy' Captures Energy of...
16/06/2025
NFL Films Enhances Post Studio With Dolby Atmos Audio Forty-three channels of audio enable the facility to migrate to immersive By Dan Daley, Audio Editor
Mo...
16/06/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Storj's David Colantuoni on Expanding Cloud-Based...