NFL Media Expands Combine Coverage With Player-Tracking Robo on Catwalk, Exclusive Show on NFL Event is part of wild few months from Super Bowl LVIII to NFL Draft April 25-27 By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor
Thursday, February 29, 2024 - 11:09 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
The next crop of the National Football League's brightest stars will show off their skills during the 2024 NFL Combine Feb. 29-March 3 in Indianapolis. As the league's production arm, NFL Media is on hand at Lucas Oil Stadium to broadcast the multiple events and evaluations with an arsenal of technologies and a handful of studio shows covering the action from facilities in Los Angeles and New Jersey.
We go from our focus being millions of fans watching Super Bowl LVIII to looking at players hoping to break into the league, says Dave Shaw, VP/head of operations, NFL Media. This event gives fans behind-the-scenes access to get to know these players. It's an event that defines what NFL Network is really about.
The camera operators play a huge part of this intimate event.
Technology Mix: New, Traditional Workflows Enhance Multi-Day Coverage The NFL Combine officially begins late Thursday afternoon, but the preparation and additional programming that NFL Media is handling began this past week. With minimal restrictions to on-field access, the league is poised to litter the playing surface with cameras to capture all the angles and sounds of the various drills that put the potential NFL players through their paces.
The NFL Combine is a unique experience since it's done within a quiet stadium and only the prospects and coaches are on the field, says Adam Acone, director, media operations, NFL Media. You can hear everything, so the ability to capture all that audio is one of the great enhancements.
From left: Tom Pelissero, Ian Rapaport, Mike Garafolo, and Jeffri Chadiha on The Insiders: At the Combine
Much of the technology has become common at this event. On the audio side, more than 70 primary and backup sources make up the mix. That includes 25 RF and hardwired effects mics and four parabolic mics around the stadium, six RF mics on a handful of coaches, and 50 mics used by the onsite studio team and announcers. Talent Rich Eisen, Daniel Jeremiah, Charles Davis, Peter Schrager, Chris Rose, Ian Rapoport, Stacey Dales, and Jamie Erdahl will be joined by guests, including New Orleans Saints defensive end Cam Jordan on Thursday and former NFL offensive tackle Taylor Lewan and NFL Network analyst Shaun O'Hara on Sunday. They will be on the field and in the booth to explain the drills to viewers.
As for video, nearly 50 cameras will anchor coverage of all events, including hard and RF handhelds, a bevy of robotics, a Skycam, and a TVU-powered camera for live hits to free up sources in the production truck. Supporting the effort is a variety of partners and vendors: Robovision (robotics), Aerial Video Systems (RF video connectivity), CP Communications (RF audio connectivity), Filmwerks (power), and THUMBWAR (editing and file transfer).
Aerial Video Systems is handling RF video needs at the venue.
Educating fans about the players aspiring to the professional ranks is important to NFL Media. Editing everything together over the next few days is a big piece to our show, says Acone. We've taken a lot of material and put together a ton of packages that'll be played.
Keeping everything together in the compound is Game Creek Video PrimeOne mobile unit. It has handled NFL Media's NFL Draft coverage in the past, but this is its first time as part of the NFL Combine infrastructure.
Reporter Trevor Sikkema joins NFL Total Access via a TVU-powered camera.
In the stadium, something that isn't new to the coverage is the data-heavy and eye-catching 40-Yard Dash. Driven by the league's Next-Gen Stats and SMT player-tracking and graphics, this portion of the broadcast has changed dramatically since NFL Network began covering the NFL Combine in 2005.
It has been fun pitting the new players against older players that participated in the NFL Combine in the past, notes Shaw. It's a bit tricky to use the older technology and overlay it with newer technology, but it has become an awesome feature to our show.
Changes in technology aren't the only obstacle in pulling off this activation. With the league relying on both manual timers and electronic timing, the challenge is to make sure that the elements of the graphics overlay are synchronized. In the past, we've seen that the video doesn't always match up with the timer, says Shaw. [The officials] throw out the time that looks different from the others, but we can still use it as the base layer for our overlays.
Robovision is responisble for all robotic cameras in Indianapolis, including this one capturing press conferences.
Besides creating another year's worth of 40-Yard Dash overlays, the team is pushing SMT player-tracking and graphics to the limit with a new production wrinkle. Positioned above the field in the catwalk, a robotic camera offering a wide shot of the drills will integrate tracking and graphics for even more stats.
At Home in Indy: The Operations Team Knows the Venue Well Two of the league's tentpole events, the Super Bowl and the NFL Draft, have a different host venue every season, but the NFL Combine has called Indianapolis home for 37 years, since the last non-Indy event in New Orleans in 1986. Centrally located for all 32 NFL clubs, Lucas Oil Stadium is an ideal venue and, for an event comprising a multitude of moving parts, offers the operations team the confidence that comes with working in a familiar setting.
Some of the elements that we execute may change, says Jessica Lee, VP, studio operations, NFL Media, but it feels like coming home every tim
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
19/11/2025
November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES
During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...
19/11/2025
Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades
Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...
19/11/2025
Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...
18/11/2025
Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...
18/11/2025
NBA Debuts New Comms Infrastructure and Systems for RefereesTwo-phase rollout is intended to improve game flow, enhance officiating accuracyBy Dan Daley, Audio ...
18/11/2025
Platinum White Paper: How Aggreko Delivers Certainty For Broadcasters On The Wor...
18/11/2025
Kiswe Extends DTC Products With Kiswe Core Cloud-Based Tool for Distributing Con...
18/11/2025
Spanish Basketball Federation partners with ScorePlay to power digital transform...
18/11/2025
HBS selects BBright encoders and decoders to connect ST 2110 live production wor...
18/11/2025
Ashes to Ashes: Inside TNT Sports' hybrid and maverick' production plan...
18/11/2025
SVG All-Stars: Mimi Fotopoulos, Director, Talent and Production Operations, Tenn...
18/11/2025
SVG LIVE! Conference Explores the Tech Side of Sports and Entertainment ConvergenceLive sports and music productions increasingly share gear and infrastructureB...
NFL Media Expands Combine Coverage With Player-Tracking Robo on Catwalk, Exclusive Show on NFL Event is part of wild few months from Super Bowl LVIII to NFL Draft April 25-27 By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor 
