ESPN Deportes unveils its own state-of-e-art production facility in Mexico City

With a nod to the design of ESPNs new DC2, the Mexico City operation is fully integrated with ESPN centers in Bristol and Los Angeles.

The following is an excerpt of the original article published by SVG.

When ESPN Deportes hit the airwaves in 2004, the 24-hour channel welcomed Spanish-language telecasts of ESPN-produced content while producing 30 minutes of studio programming - its own episode of SportsCenter - each day. Fast-forward 12 years, and that 30 minutes has exploded into 10 hours of content a day and earned ESPN Deportes a much-needed studio overhaul.

Last month, ESPN Deportes unveiled a state-of-the-art production facility in Mexico City. The 2,690-sq.-ft. space features four versatile studios that will enhance the network's wide range of Spanish-language studio programming - such shows as Futbol Picante, Futbol Center, Golpe a Golpe, Los Capitanes, NFL Live, and SportsCenter - to better serve Hispanic sports fans in the U.S., Mexico, and Central America.

The Gear To Make It Happen

To support the various studio spaces, ESPN Deportes built four control rooms: two large production-control rooms, a smaller control room with approximately two-thirds the capabilities of the larger rooms, and a Grass Valley Ignite-based automated production-control room.

The two large rooms feature Grass Valley switchers and routers, Vizrt graphics engines, and a Quantel infrastructure. Each studio is equipped with four Grass Valley cameras; in addition, two studios have JimmyJibs while the other two have Steadicams. ESPN Deportes also installed a dedicated Liberovision station and 10 editing rooms, including four voiceover booths. Because the Mexico City facility is used exclusively for production, ESPN Deportes opted not to install a dedicated asset-management system; all assets are managed and stored in Bristol.

Within the same facility, ESPN Deportes integrated its newsroom capabilities for the linear-television personnel with digital, dotcom, and radio.

Our people are extremely happy because you can imagine how hectic it was to produce all that amount of content out of one single studio. Now we went to four, says Rodolfo Martinez, VP, production, ESPN Deportes and ESPN International. It changed completely our workflow for better, so we're getting used to the new workflow. The challenge will be over the next six months to adapt the people to these new workflows, which is much improved. It's almost like going from manual to automatic.

Read the original article on sportsvideo.org.

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