Dude Perfect's DPHQ3 Soundstage/Fun House Is a Gen Z Version of a Production FacilityOnline sports phenomenon's new studio suggests sports media's possible futureBy Dan Daley, Audio Editor Thursday, September 25, 2025 - 7:00 am
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Dude Perfect is a quintet of buddies - Cody Jones, Tyler Toney, Garrett Hilbert, and brothers Coby Cotton and Cory Cotton - who came together 15 years ago and successfully turned their love of sports and hanging out into a nine-figure business. Since launching their popular YouTube channel while still roommates at Texas A&M University, the principal players have posted hundreds of athletic trick shots that have netted them more than 60 million YouTube subscribers and a staggering 17 billion-plus views. They're now valued at $100 million, based on the stake that private-equity firm Highmount Capital invested earlier this year.
DPHQ3 - Dude Perfect Headquarters, the third and vastly more expansive iteration of their clubhouse, which opened this year in the Dallas area - encompasses a full-size basketball court, a 45-yard football gridiron (complete with NFL-regulation goal), a mini golf course inspired by some of the sport's most famous holes, and other playing fields that serve as stages for their zany video shoots.
Dude Perfect's new DPHQ3 clubhouse boasts sparse but sophisticated infrastructure.
Is Dude Perfect the template for the future of sports-media production? At the very least, it does seem like a Gen Z version of NFL Films: a massive postproduction facility that can generate, edit, and move media content around seamlessly and put it out through various channels.
But, whereas the NFL Films studio complex in Mt. Laurel, NJ, is a 200,000-sq.-ft. facility laden with the latest in broadcast and postproduction audio and video technology, Dude Perfect's 80,000-sq.-ft. soundstage/fun house in Frisco, TX, reflects its generation's era of sparser but no less sophisticated media infrastructure, one that relies on IP instead of SDI. It's TikTok on digital steroids, what Darryl F. Zanuck might have built if he had had an iPhone.
Stadium SoundDPHQ3 also has some rather serious sound, from components you'd find in arenas rather than on dorm-room bookshelves. Clear ProAV Systems, the Dallas-area system integrator responsible for sophisticated broadcast installations for regional corporations and houses of worship, outfitted the space with what Clear ProAV AV engineer Chad Fuller calls stadium-worthy sound. A total of 18 L-Acoustics X12 and eight X8 enclosures plus six SB21i and SB15i subwoofers are divided into groups that cover the football, basketball, golf, pickleball, and rock-climbing areas of the main space. These are zoned to allow individual playlists for each use.
We gave them the option to be able to play different material in different areas, with six or eight unique audio sources simultaneously, he says. Or they can use it as one giant system and blow it out of the water, audio-wise and decibel-level-wise, if they want.
Loudspeakers are deployed throughout DPHQ3, including workout and weight rooms, and in the Dudes' own offices, each housing a pair of 5XT speakers and a ceiling-mounted SB10i subwoofer - all connected via the AVoIP infrastructure threading the entire facility. In the executive lounge, a pair of colinear Soka speakers discreetly flank a large video display; in another space just across the hall, a dozen ultra-compact X4i and two low-profile SB10i subs are suspended from a grid above a common meeting area. Eight channels of Shure wireless audio are accessible via both bodypacks and handheld microphones in multiple RF zones.
We have implemented an AVoIP infrastructure at DPHQ3 with dozens of audio zones and hundreds of channels of Dante-based audio, explains Clear ProAV founder Eric Schell. In their previous building, they used to cram multiple people inside one of their edit bays to watch an initial edit, but, with AVoIP, they're able to pull everyone into one centralized location - the owner's lounge, for example - and the team can be on a comfortable couch with a big 4K LED display. Having reliable infrastructure and the highest-quality audio experience is critical for their team and their business operations.
One of the first productions there is Almost Athletes With Dude Perfect, a weekly original series that launched Sept. 10. Hosted by founding member Garrett Hilbert and crew member Kevin Sparky Sparkman, alongside a rotating cast of The Dudes, the video podcast series marks Dude Perfect's first move into long-form, personality-driven media.
It's a Post HouseDPHQ3 is a production facility, of sorts. Fuller uses the term cautiously, nodding in agreement when it's pointed out that no one makes those trick shots on the first try.
I mean, they don't really livestream out of there much, says Fuller. Obviously, they certainly could, and they're certainly set up to do that should they want to, but they're mainly a postproduction house. A lot of what they do is create content, and then it goes to post, which they do there in the office, and then they release it. They have done some livestreaming, but they don't necessarily have a traditional broadcast-video setup in there with a video switcher and SDI infrastructure. They don't have that sort of a workflow.
Besides serving essentially as a postproduction facility, DPHQ3 features a variety of fields for Dude Perfect's video shoots.
What they do have is clutch of handheld DLSR cameras and a very nice assortment of high-end lenses, says Fuller. What they also have is a Facilis HUB shared-storage server that acts as the central repository for what might be millions of hours of video of those trick shots and other long-form content, co
