NBA Returns: ESPN Brings Plenty of Tech Firepower to Wide World of Sports Productions Highlights include RailCam, new robos, embedded mics, virtual graphics, and more By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, July 31, 2020 - 2:22 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
NBA on ESPN is back in business tonight, with its production team resuming live broadcasts from the NBA bubble inside Disney's Wide World of Sports complex in Orlando. To pull them off safely, the network's operations team has worked with the NBA and fellow rightsholder Turner Sports to build a massive broadcast compound that echoes an Olympics IBC (international broadcast center) to serve the three arenas hosting the NBA games.
It's a tremendous feeling to know that your sport has come back, says ESPN Senior Operations Manager Patty Mattero. With everything going on in the world right now, we're all very happy to just be able to make TV again. There are certainly monumental technical challenges, but we all know the fundamentals of making TV, and we can't wait.
In the Compound: NEP EN3 and EN2, Game Creek Victory Power the Production The sprawling NBA broadcast compound is roughly the size of three football fields.
ESPN, along with the NBA and Turner Sports, spent the better part of two months creating a 94,920-sq.-ft. broadcast compound (equal to roughly three football fields) to house the 13 production trucks, 31 trailers, six mobile-unit cover tents, two catering tents, two field-shop tents, and several cooling stations onsite.
ESPN has rolled out three dedicated twin mobile units to produce the games out of the three venues at WWoS: NEP's EN3 for The Arena (Court 1, the main national-telecast court and site of Conference Finals and NBA Finals), Game Creek Video's Victory for HP Field House (Court 2 for the regular season to Second Round), and NEP's EN2 for Visa Athletic Center (Court 3, primarily for games broadcast exclusively by regional sports networks).
CAT Entertainment Services has rolled out 20 generators to power the compound: 12 500-kVA units, two 300-kVA units, two 400-kVA tow plants, and four 175-kVA tow plants. With the 90 temperatures in Orlando, the compound is also equipped with 32 20 -ton HVAC units (two of them 60-ton units) with redundancy for mobile-unit support.
Three sides of the court have 17-ft. LED videoboards.
ESPN, Turner, and the league have also built a comprehensive NBA fiber ring at WWoS, laying more than 436 miles of fiber throughout the facility. On the transmission side, the NBA compound is sending out 65 transmission paths with 14 paths returning, plus 92 (and counting) NBA HSAN feeds and an additional 190 Gbps in bandwidth for file-sharing and redundancy needs.
Our operations team has done an unbelievable job, ESPN VP, Production, Michael Shiffman said this week. It really represents ingenuity, innovation, technology, and - above all else - a can-do' mentality, which I believe is one of the hallmarks of our company. This is the latest example and has allowed us to hit the ground running with these scrimmages and get us ready to go for Friday night.
GREMI and REMI: At-Home Model Is Out in Full Force ESPN is deploying its GREMI model for the majority of its games (including nearly all games at The Arena and HP Field House), as it has for its NBA coverage for the past two years. Under the GREMI model, EVS replay and Vizrt graphics systems are located onsite in the trucks, but three or four replay operators and all graphics and scorebug operators are at the ESPN facility in Bristol, CT.
The Arena will serve as Court 1, hosting the Conference Finals and NBA Finals.
ESPN and Turner are also creating a neutral world feed that RSNs around the country will use to produce in-market telecasts from their home facilities. In addition to the world-feed line cut, ESPN is delivering a dedicated iso camera feed to each RSN (which has full comms to the camera operator) and access to several other camera feeds to integrate into its telecast.
Although EN2 is on hand to serve some of the RSN-exclusive games at the Visa Athletic Center, the majority of them will be REMI (remote-integration) productions in which feeds are sent to control rooms in Bristol. According to Mattero, this is the first time ESPN has produced NBA games as full REMI productions from control rooms in Bristol.
Because all of our sports are coming back, our control rooms are insanely busy trying to juggle all the events and all content coming back to Bristol, says Mattero. What Bristol can support determines how we're going to cover the games. The majority are REMI, but there are also quite a few of them that will be more of a GREMI setup out of EN2.
Safety Protocols in the Compound: Keeping the Crew Healthy To ensure social distancing, ESPN has doubled the usual distance between trailers/trucks. To limit the number of people in each truck, the network has also reorganized several crew positions, outboarding multiple replay operators, robotic-camera shaders, and audio personnel to other locations in the compound.
HP Field House will serve as Court 2 from the regular season through Round 2 of the NBA Playoffs.
In this environment, we are putting safety first and taking extra steps to ensure health and safety of everyone, says Mattero. We have only six people in the majority of our A units; that's about half of what we would normally have. There is plexiglass separating people, and we've mapped it out so everyone is spaced far enough apart based on ESPN and Disney protocols. And, of course, everyone is wearing masks. We're all trying to get used to a whole new way of doing business, but we know how important it is to do it the right way.
The crew has been divided into functional groups, with the majority of the production and operations
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/07/2026
Broadcast Management Group (BMG) has announced the appointment of Kathy Samuels ...
01/07/2026
Shade has announced Custom Objects and Automations, a platform expansion releasing June 29, 2026, that adds database and workflow automation capabilities direct...
01/07/2026
FOR-A America has announced the addition of Jaz Wray and Fernando Cruz to its U.S. sales team. Both report to Ernie Leon, Senior VP and Head of Sales and Strate...
01/07/2026
NBC Sports will air all 15 MLB games nationally on Sunday, July 5, across NBC, P...
01/07/2026
Clear-Com has announced a wireless communications upgrade for Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune, deploying FreeSpeak II and FreeSpeak Icon systems across both prod...
01/07/2026
England's performance team will use Sony's STATSports APEX GPS tracking system to monitor player physical data in real time during FIFA World Cup 2026 m...
01/07/2026
Adder Technology has announced the appointment of Neil Hillier as Chief Executive Officer, effective July 1, 2026. Hillier succeeds Adrian Dickens, who transiti...
01/07/2026
Bitcentral, Inc. has announced a strategic transaction creating two separate companies. The Production and Playout business will continue as Bitcentral, now own...
01/07/2026
DAZN has announced results from DAZN48, its creator initiative for the FIFA World Cup 2026. Launched in April 2026, the program received thousands of applicatio...
01/07/2026
Sarah Rose, VP, global services, Daktronics (NASDAQ: DAKT), will be inducted into the Information Display and Entertainment Association (IDEA) Hall of Fame at t...
01/07/2026
Gravity Media and the World Economic Forum's production team provided broadc...
01/07/2026
Insight Productions has announced the launch of Insight Storm, a 53-foot mobile broadcast unit built for esports production. The truck is built around a Ross Vi...
01/07/2026
ESPN has announced several content initiatives marking America's 250th anniversary, as part of The Walt Disney Company's Disney Celebrates America pro...
01/07/2026
Eleven production kits, REMI workflows, and cloud distribution bring 40 World Cu...
01/07/2026
The conference also discussed the opportunities offered an industry that is endu...
01/07/2026
The Mountain West Conference has announced the launch of MW , a direct-to-consumer streaming platform powered by Kiswe. The platform will carry live Mountain We...
01/07/2026
New AI Assistant, Multi-channel Audio, ARA2 improvements & more
Tracktion's DAW software has just received its latest major update, gaining a selection ...
01/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
01/07/2026
Exclusive run of limited-edition modelling pedals
Sweetwater and Andertons M...
01/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF) is pleased to announce that the ca...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Manfrotto Introduces UNCOVER, the new premium camera bag collection for modern h...
01/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Powers Houston Tamil Sangam Literacy Competition
Brie Clayton July 1, 2026
0 Comments
Volunteers use ATEM Mini Pro, Blackmagic Desig...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
PlayBox Technology has published State of Broadcast Infrastructure 2026, an in-depth industry research report examining the technologies, operational challenges...
01/07/2026
LONDON, UK, 1 JULY Jigsaw24 has appointed Alan Henry as Head of Sales for Media and Entertainment, reinforcing its continued investment in helping broadcaster...
01/07/2026
Content Vault, the patent-pending secure content distribution platform protecting high-value media from disclosures, theft and unauthorised access, today announ...
01/07/2026
Bitcentral, Inc. a leading provider of enterprise software and digital media solutions for news, sports and entertainment broadcasters, as well as streaming pla...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
01/07/2026
Groundbreaking First Nations Screen Business Accelerator launched through nation...
01/07/2026
Chyron Launches the All-New Chyron Academy: A Reimagined, Hands-On Learning Expe...
01/07/2026
Amplium Captures Kawasaki Brave Thunders Game with Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersiv...
01/07/2026
Boris FX Optics Expands Plugin Support to Apple Photos, Capture One, and Affinit...
01/07/2026
Sky Zero Footprint Fund-backed TV campaign featuring Deborah Meaden challenges consumers to rethink everyday bathroom wasteWednesday 1 July 2026
Fussy asks Bri...
01/07/2026
Constituency-level analysis reveals where girls miss out most on sport - and where targeted action could unlock more than £640 million in economic and health be...
01/07/2026
Wuppertal July 1, 2026
Riedel and SKAARHOJ Expand Collaboration With SimplyLive IntegrationRiedel Communications today announced an expanded collaboration wit...
01/07/2026
Apple today introduced power-packed updates to Apple Creator Studio, a groundbre...
01/07/2026
Nectar360, the Retail Media, Loyalty and Insights business of the Sainsburys Gro...
NBA Returns: ESPN Brings Plenty of Tech Firepower to Wide World of Sports Productions Highlights include RailCam, new robos, embedded mics, virtual graphics, and more By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
