Overtime Elite's First Hoops Season Relies on Broadcast Infrastructure for Digital- and Social-Focused Content Although games are not broadcast live, OTE Arena features a full live-broadcast ecosystem By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Tuesday, March 15, 2022 - 3:05 pm
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When sports-social-media outfit Overtime announced plans to launch Overtime Elite (OTE) - a basketball league offering a new path to the NBA for top high school players - it was looking to revolutionize the way sports leagues connected with younger fans. In OTE's debut season, which wrapped over the weekend, that meant focusing on distributing short-form broadcast-quality content to digital and social-media outlets rather than delivering a traditional linear broadcast.
Although games are not broadcast live, OTE Arena features a broadcast-control room and high-end production ecosystem at OTE Arena, the new 103,000-sq.-ft. facility Overtime built in Atlanta's Atlantic Station.
Overtime Elite has constructed a full broadcast-control room at its OTE Arena in Atlanta.
Think of OTE Arena as a content-production house that happens to have a basketball league playing in it. In addition to housing a basketball arena with state-of-the-art lighting and LED boards to serve fans, the facility also features a boarding school and dorms for the 27 high school-age athletes (all earning at least $100,000 per year) who play on the league's three teams (Team Elite, Team OTE, and Team Overtime).
OTE Arena: Basketball Court, Broadcast Facility, Boarding School All in One Overtime Head of Production and Technology Matthew Montemayor, who spent 16 years as director of production for the Atlanta Braves, joined the team last June to help build the broadcast side of the facility on an extremely short timeline for the start of the season in October. Although the plan was not to broadcast games in OTE's first official season, Montemayor emphasized the importance of creating a broadcast-quality production facility to serve OTE's unique needs.
On the surface, he notes, we're set up just like any broadcast [facility] would be. We have coverage cameras that we use to create a broadcast line cut. But we are built for speed in order to feed video to our [digital-]content team. We cut our show just like any basketball broadcast would be cut but don't actually broadcast that feed. Instead, we deliver that line cut and other material to our editors and our content team, who cut it up and distribute it from there.
OTE deploys three Sony FX9 handhelds with Wave Central wireless transmission in covering each game.
That quick-turnaround content, including instant highlights and condensed versions of each game, is distributed to Overtime's digital and social channels, which have more than 70 million followers. OTE focuses on one-minute game recaps and highlights for Instagram and TikTok, approximately 30-minute game recaps on YouTube, and further cut-down versions on Snapchat.
Overtime's business model is very different [from a traditional league's], Montemayor explains. Our leadership believes that the next generation of fan doesn't want to consume sports in the traditional way. They don't want to necessarily sit there and watch an entire basketball game. So, even though we produce games live, we don't [distribute] them that way because we want to better serve those [younger] fans.
In addition to the quick-turnaround content, OTE produces a weekly long-form behind-the-scenes series on the players' experiences, along with other off-the-court content. In all, OTE's production teams create about 25 TB of data a month that must be stored and managed for editors to access.
We're as much a school as we are a league, says Montemayor, and we want to give these guys the best possible experience. These guys are finishing high school with us, so the [documentary team] is following them to classes and practice to create this amazing day in the life' experience. It's my broadcast team's responsibility to help support that - whether it's broadcasts of the games or the day-to-day needs of running a production company.
Inside the Control Room: Broadcast-Quality Facility, Non-Broadcast Workflow The control room at OTE Arena looks like any other production-control room, including a three-bench setup featuring a switcher, replay and graphics systems, and other typical broadcast gear. The workflow, however, is markedly different from that of a traditional live broadcast.
We feed everything through a Ross Video Mira replay system, which creates a growing file on our EditShare server, says Montemayor. As soon as we press record, the editors can start working off that file as we go for quick-turnaround content. We're also taking our entire game and condensing it down to about 30 minutes. Even though it looks similar to a traditional control room, the workflow is unique to what Overtime does.
OTE has a combo TD/director operating the switcher for its productions.
In addition to the Mira 12-channel replay server, OTE's facility is equipped with a Ross Carbonite 3M/E switcher, Ross Ultrix router (96 inputs x 96 outputs, 3G-SDI), Ross Xpression three-channel character generator, and Ross PIERRO graphics-analysis system (which has yet to be used but will be in future seasons).
Also on hand are a Calrec Brio 36 Medley audio console, Riedel MFR-128 G2 Artist mainframe intercom, ClearCom partyline intercom (tied into Riedel intercom system and able to be placed in selected locations throughout the building), and AJA HELO H.264 encoder (client CDN and authentication required for externally hosted live streaming). OTE enlisted Atlanta-based Clark as its systems integrator on the project.
The control room is set up to serve
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Overtime Elite's First Hoops Season Relies on Broadcast Infrastructure for Digital- and Social-Focused Content Although games are not broadcast live, OTE Arena features a full live-broadcast ecosystem By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
