Esports' Storytelling Script Is Very Different From Traditional Sports Broadcasting's Producers of live coverage share the challenges and opportunities in telling the stories of their competitions By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Monday, November 26, 2018 - 3:18 pm
Print This Story
Story Highlights
In the early days of sports television, legends like Roone Arledge, Don Ohlmeyer, and Dick Ebersol turned sports media into a juggernaut by converting athletic competition into dramatic cinema. Sports became more than just who scored the winning goal. It became who that goal scorer was, streaming tears of joy with parents celebrating in the stands.
Today, esports is emerging as the new, exciting live event content consumed worldwide, but, still in its infancy as a broadcast property, it has not concretely defined what makes for a good esports broadcast.
Blizzard Entertainment's Frank LaSpina (right) speaks during a panel on storytelling at SVG's Esports Production Forum in Los Angeles earlier this month as NGAGE Esports' Corey Dunn looks on.
Sure, there's natural strategy in telling the story of esports competitors through interviews or feature packages, but telling the real-time story of the live competition requires producers to step back a bit and consider the core goals of a sports broadcast. Whether the goal is to tell the story to an audience full of die-hards or to viewers watching for the first time, the responsibility is the same: clearly display the outcome and the important events that lead to that final outcome with graphics, announcers, and images.
For Blizzard Entertainment's Frank LaSpina, who serves as senior producer of Overwatch broadcast for Overwatch League, a city-based franchised esports league that recently concluded its inaugural season, that task is easier said than done.
One of the major obstacles that you have to overcome in most esports is the objective, says LaSpina, who compares his role in the production with that of an executive producer in a traditional live sports broadcast. How do you explain the objective to the viewer, and how do you capture the objective? A lot goes into the strategy behind basketball, but there's a pretty simple fact: you can't score without the ball. At a super-high level, as long as you make sure every time the ball goes in the basket, it's on the screen, everybody is seeing all of the scoring, and it's clear who is doing the scoring.
In esports broadcasts, he continues, especially in Overwatch League, you are dealing with 12 players who have supernatural abilities on a digital map that, if it were a physical space, would be miles by miles wide, and they're all working on a coordinated push or attack that has a different objective for each map. That's a huge challenge to make sure that the viewer is seeing the ball go in the hoop' but also that they understand why it's about to happen.
A significant part of that storytelling process is remaining committed to the actual moves being made to achieve victory in the game itself while keeping the athletes in the real world as the stars of their story. According to Dave Stewart, executive producer/broadcast lead of Riot Games' North American League Championship Series, the goal in live esports production is to blend the two worlds simultaneously and seamlessly.
With the exception of a character who might flash a mastery or a spam taunt, a lot of the emotion of the storytelling isn't taking place within the game, says Stewart. Trying to get the pro players and their stories into the game and to merge that is one of the more exciting challenges. In traditional sports, when Lebron James drunks in your face, you see him yelling. For us, when something happens within the game, we need to go to player reactions. We need to take cameras. We need to merge that real world with the digital world. It's a hugely exciting opportunity. It's incredibly challenging, but the better we are able to pull that off, the better we are able to tell stories.
It's, naturally, an obvious crutch to compare esports with all of traditional sports, which is an easy comparison. However, for Corey Dunn, executive producer, NGAGE Esports, which is opening the stunning Esports Stadium Arlington in North Texas, it helps to draw appropriate parallels when comparing the two sides. It's not as clear-cut as one vs. the other.
We have to look at esports as more equivalent to college sports, explains Dunn, who has been directing and producing esports events for nearly a decade. You can't directly correlate esports to football. It's more like Overwatch to football and League of Legends to soccer. Those are the types of associations that we have to think about. Treat each game differently. In baseball, you can break that 180-degree plane. You cut from all the different angles in that gameplay. In football, you always stay on that one side of the field to make it easier for the observers or the audience at home to know what they are looking at. Creating establishing shots in-game is key.
Logistically, behind the scenes, LaSpina feels that strong esports broadcasters will ultimately be the ones that invest in the infrastructure needed to allow content creators and storytellers to react to game outcomes and not rely simply on storytelling efforts done prior to the match, hoping for an outcome that involves that team or athlete.
I think where the opportunity lies in esports is storytelling within the match itself, because, ultimately, your game script can be completely blown up by someone having a terrific game, says LaSpina. If you are not prepped and prepared and have not built a workflow that's adaptable and flexible, you are going to end up with a bunch of assets for a player that's having a terrib
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
Esports' Storytelling Script Is Very Different From Traditional Sports Broadcasting's Producers of live coverage share the challenges and opportunities in telling the stories of their competitions By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
