Fox Expands Specialty Cameras Count to Elevate World Series Production

Added to the broadcast lineup are 4K and 8K Nucleus cameras, more AR initiatives, two aerial drones, a fleet of high-speed cameras

FOX Sports will broadcast Game 1 of the 122nd World Series tonight from Milwaukee, when the Milwaukee Brewers square off against the Tampa Bay Rays. With a crew of 475 - more than 150 of whom will bounce back and forth between American Family Field in Milwaukee and Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, the FOX Sports team is ready to deliver for baseball fans across the country.

What we like to say is that there's watching baseball and then there's watching baseball on FOX, says Mike Davies, EVP, field and technical management and operations, FOX Sports. What we like about this Series is, these are the two best teams and they've been the best teams all year. So, while they're certainly not the big-market teams, that's alright: it's cool to be in two new towns beginning tonight here in Milwaukee. We plan on showing this beautiful stadium in the best possible way.

Last year, FOX Sports took home four Sports Emmy Awards for its postseason MLB coverage and brings that same award-winning mentality to this year's show. New to the production lineup are versatile 4K and 8K Nucleus cameras, in addition to expanded AR initiatives, with Major League Baseball, that track respective pitches and swings from either side of the field. Also, a fleet of high-speed cameras will capture every spin on the ball and every inch of a bang-bang play at first base, and two aerial drones will be flying overhead, synchronizing game action from multiple locations on the field.

When it comes to raising the bar from one postseason Series to the next, the biggest jump is from the Division Series to the Championship Series. We pretty much double the resources from the DS to the CS, notes Thomas Lynch, coordinating producer, game and studio, FOX Sports. The change from the Championship Series to the World Series is things like adding in two centerfield cameras.

FOX Sports will expand its use of specialty cameras for the World Series.Among the additional bells and whistles are three dirtcams, supplied by Fletcher, which are brand new for a World Series. We'll have two at home plate and one in the pitcher's mound, explains Francisco Contreras, executive director, operations, FOX Sports. That's something different that will be pretty neat to see.

Adds Davies, The dirtcams are interesting because we have to dig them into the field and they have a lot of backend technology because they are wireless. We have high-gain antennas pointing down to those cameras to capture the camera signals.

In addition, 4K boundary cameras will return to the World Series, along with 4K cameras shooting side swings of batters, according to Lynch. Also returning are cameras in the batting cages during warmups which he says were a big hit last year.

Fox has deployed 63 cameras for World Series coverage in Milwaukee, including 27 Sony 5500-series (16 hard cameras, 6 handhelds including one RF for game coverage) and five for studio (needs three build-ups, a jib and an RF handheld). There are also eight robotic cameras heads, two RF Movi (Sony FX6) and one RF Steadicam, eight Proton POV cameras, three DirtCams, two Phantoms, three Nucleus 4K and approximately seven other POV and ENG cameras (umpcam, scoreboard, tracking and others). Fox is also pulling in 18 additional feeds from MLB, Statcast and AR sources and 11 of those are High Frame Rate feeds.

On the audio side, roughly 70 game-side mics, plus studio are in play with 24 boundary mics, 10 in-ground mics, nine parabolics ( five wired, four RF), three RF base mic sets (one set per base), 13 effects lavs (eight wireless, five wired) and four shotguns and then four reporter kits, four player mics, one RF umpire mic and eight headsets for the booth and dugouts. The studio operations make use of seven wireless lavs, seven wireless stick mics and eight wireless IFB sets.

Handling the games in the broadcast compound will be Game Creek Yogi in Milwaukee and NEP ND1 in Tampa Bay. One thing has made this year's World Series setup a bit easier: the Brewers surprisingly swept the Los Angeles Dodgers in the NLCS, giving FOX Sports and NEP plenty of time to get ND1 from Los Angeles to Tampa Bay and the team in Milwaukee plenty of time to prep for Game 1.

Yogi didn't need to move at all, notes Davies. Since we knew Game 1 was going to be here, we've been ready for a while. We've been through other World Series where the [Championship Series] made World Series preparation not this easy, but television got smiled on this time.

FOX isn't alone in benefiting. A World Series always has a compound and stadium filled not only with FOX Sports but also with MLB International, MLB Network, ESPN, and other broadcasters. For the first time, he says, our new friends at FOX Sports Latin America are doing the feed for both FOX Mexico and FOX Deportes via a Rush Media truck here in Milwaukee. What makes baseball interesting at this level is just how many people are here shooting the same game.

FOX Sports will use two drones for its coverage of the World Series: one outside the stadium, the other inside.In the loading-dock area at American Family Field are two compounds about 500 ft. apart and connected by fiber. At Tropicana Field, the compound is located in Lot 5 behind center field.

I built out eight compound plans, says Lynch. You have to be proactive with these sorts of things.

Contreras also had eight sets of plans, for the studio operations. We did a couple of surveys here, and, in Tampa, we're going to have the studio near third base, he explains. We worked with Turner and NBC to get that place cabled out before the postseason even started because it was a new location and needed a full infrastruc

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/10/23/dirtcam-expanded-specialty-came...
	See more stories from svg

More from Sports Video Group