NFL Kickoff 2025: FOX Sports Launches Groundbreaking New LED-Fueled XR/AR Stage

NFL Kickoff 2025: FOX Sports Launches Groundbreaking New LED-Fueled XR/AR StageThe revamp of Stage B follows in the footsteps of FOX's Stage A, which launched in 2022By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.

Friday, September 5, 2025 - 1:26 pm

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FOX Sports continues to blaze the trail in XR technology and virtual production this week with the relaunch of Stage B at its L.A. headquarters. Home to FOX NFL Kickoff on Sunday mornings and Colin Cowherd's The Herd on weekdays, the rebuilt studio is a sprawling LED medium composed of more than 54 million LED lights.

The revamp of Stage B follows in the footsteps of FOX's LED-fueled Stage A, which launched in 2022 and serves as the home to the network's flagship NFL on FOX pregame show. Previously a practical set, Stage B's LED volume is more than twice the size of Stage A. The photorealistic environment enables FOX Sports to transform the set backdrop to mimic the visuals of any NFL stadium and a variety of other locales, affording infinite opportunities for storytelling and analysis.

I think with our experience and expertise on both the creative side and the technical side all coming together, we've made a lot of strides and we were ready to take the next step, says Zac Fields, FOX Sports SVP/Graphic Tech & Innovation. We're to the point where, day in and day out, we are comfortable with the workflow and can adapt to last minute requests. So we felt that we were in a really good position to move to doing a larger fully LED-based set for Stage B.

The set launched earlier this week with The Herd and will make its FOX NFL Kickoff debut on Sunday at 11 a.m. ET. Stage B will also serve as home to FOX's MLB Postseason coverage during the Divisional Series this fall and is expected to play a role in other marquee FOX Sports properties like college football and the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Inside Stage B: A Fully LED-Based Feast for the Eyes Stage B originally debuted in 2013 with the launch of FS1 and had yet to undergo a significant makeover since, so it was definitely time for an upgrade, according to Fields. FOX enlisted Architecture Van Brandenburg out of New Zealand (who they worked with on their Basilica of Soccer' virtual studio last year) to design the virtual environment for FOX NFL Kickoff, while Jack Morton designed The Herd's on-air look in partnership with ROTU Entertainment.

As opposed to Stage A, which is composed of roughly 1/3 LED medium and 2/3 practical set, Stage B is entirely LED-based. The ROE Visual LED medium is just under 20ft tall and is composed of 42-ft-wide left and right walls, a 72ft-wide back wall, and a full LED floor. The LED Walls have 35,312,650 total pixels and the LED Floor has 12,730,368, for a total of 48,043,018 pixels. In terms of power, the LED Walls are pulling 415A while and the LED Floor is pulling 438A power-wise.

One thing that we realized in using our LED volume on Stage is A was that we wanted to have more space to move around, says Fields. If you're doing entire shows in that LED medium rather than just segments, you really need a larger space so you can have some relationship shots and movement where talent can get up from the desk and walk to another area of the set. So that's partially why we opted to just do the whole thing as LED rather than a hybrid like stage A.

The facility is equipped with ten broadcast studio cameras including eight robos, a Techno Jib, and a SteadiCam - all enabled with stYpe camera tracking technology for AR graphics.

Behind the Scenes: A Full Battery of Technical Infrastructure Powering It All In order to power Pixotope's Unreal Engine-based system that feeds content to the XR LED walls, FOX is running 24 high-powered real-time render workstations featuring Megapixel processors. An additional eight high powered real-time render workstations are on hand to drive the AR camera composition being done with Pixotope's Unreal Engine-based system.

FOX is also leveraging the same Ghost Frame technology it used on Stage A to provide four different tracked/rendered camera perspectives - a feature that has been a hit with production leaders and viewers alike.

The scale of this project is just massive, so it takes a lot of technical firepower behind the scenes to make it run, says Fields. And we had to do some creative engineering with scaling to get to this point.

In terms of UI, FOX Sports is using Erizos Studio software to control the various components of the XR stage - including both Unreal elements and Vizrt insert graphics. Inside Studio B, The Herd continues to run on Ross Video's Overdrive production automation system as it did prior to the studio relaunch.

The LED walls, the AR, and all this other technology is integrated directly into Overdrive and driven by the automation system, which I find pretty impressive to say the least, says Fields. Despite this technology being very advanced, our team has been able to take all the different components and graphics elements and automate the entire show. The producer can script out their AR and what the set is going to look like on very easily. I would say the most underrated part of this project has been putting an automated show on air with this much technical firepower.

Building on a Legacy of Innovation: FOX Stays on the Bleeding Edge of XR This marks just the latest chapter in FOX's virtual-studio journey, which dates back to the opening of its revolutionary NASCAR Race Hub virtual studio in Charlotte, NC, in 2019. Since then, the network has continued to undertake groundbreaking studio projects, including not only Studio A for NFL on FOX but also a AR-powered 2022 FIFA World Cup set in Doha and 360-degree immersive XR for the 2024 EUROs and Copa America.

I'm very grateful that

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/09/05/nfl-kickoff-2025-fox-sports-lau...
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