Live From Super Bowl LIV: Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment, Hard Rock Stadium Team Up to Produce the Crown Jewel of In-Stadium Shows Four video boards and three ribbons from Daktronics anchor the sharp presentation for fans By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Saturday, February 1, 2020 - 11:31 pm
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Putting the cap on the celebration of its 100th season, the NFL will acknowledge its past on Super Bowl Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami by honoring its 100 greatest players. It promises to be a true reflection of just how far America's favorite sport has come. As far as the Super Bowl itself? As an event to attend as a fan, it's nothing like it was in those early days. Look no further than the stadium's videoboard show.
Hard Rock Stadium features four primary videoboards, each erected above the corners of the endzones. Each screen measures at roughly 49-ft. high by 111.5-ft wide.
Twenty five years ago, Bob Becker, SVP at Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment (VWSE), the sports and marketing agency that oversees the in-venue video production of countless of the world's largest neutral site national and global championship events, worked his very first Super Bowl with VWSE. How's this for full circle? That Super Bowl was Super Bowl XXIX, in this very building [it was named Joe Robbie Stadium back them] in which this year's NFC representative, the San Francisco 49ers, won their last championship. When he worked that game he was one of just two VWSE representatives on site. This year's VWSE contingency on site for Super Bowl LIV? It's at least 60 people large.
Our Super Bowl show has grown tenfold even in just the last five years, says Nathan McCoart, Director of Technical Operations at Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment. Its really a testament to the NFL wanting to continue to push the envelope, to the creative team on our side, the creative team at the NFL, and everyone working together to keep pushing the Super Bowl forward as the best venue presentation of any event in the world every year.
From left: Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment Creative Director Ryan Kehn and Director of Technical Operations Nate McCoart are helping oversee the in-venue videoboard production of Super Bowl LIV at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami.
Super Bowl shows have gotten so big, in fact, that most NFL venues don't have the necessary equipment to pull off the types of elements VWSE wants to deliver for the league. But, why would they? A show the size of the Super Bowl only comes around once a year. For this year's iteration, VWSE has brought in a sizeable flypack to help fill in out the video infrastructure native to the stadium. A whopping 24 cameras will be in the stadium shooting for the in-venue show; a number that far exceeds a typical game day at Hard Rock. Among the added gear is also an extra Evertz Dreamcatcher system. With two of those, the production team is able to dedicate a full Dreamcatch replay device to each of the two participating teams.
Naturally, graphics are a huge driver of the show. Ross is here supporting those efforts in a big way. There are a pair of Acuity panels driving the program feed while traditional CG (character generation) is running on Xpression and the Xpression Tessera system is driving the main displays.
There's also going to be a significant augmented reality deployment that was ride on the Xpression AR system while on the field, select camera operators on the field will be equipped with Ross' ACIDCam with Furio robotic heads that will feed back realtime data to the control room. VWSE is also using technology from Piero, the sports analytics software that Ross acquired in 2019, to design and execute graphics with deeper statistical analysis.
All of these efforts are to fill a stadium that now boasts four primary videoboards; one in the upper reaches of each corner of the endzones. The Daktronics displays each measure approximately 49-ft. high by 111.5-ft wide and featured a 13HD pixel layout. There's also three ribbon boards that rim the bowl, the longest of which is 2,105 feet, while meausres 3.5 feet high. These screens are also pretty new. They debuted in 2016 following a privately funded renovation of the building in 2015.
VWSE has brought more than 60 staffers here to Super Bowl LIV to integrate with and work alongside the in-house crew from Hard Rock Stadium and the Miami Dolphins.
As for the quality of the video feeding the primary videoboards in the bowl, VWSE will be pushing out 1080p imagery. Even though Fox Sports is producing the game in high-dynamic range, these videoboards will not be taking that. VWSE is sticking with SDR, but that promises to look sharp and with a tighter pixel edge on the newer screens.
VWSE is also responsible for programming the many LED screens that are scattered around the exterior of Hard Rock Stadium, as well. There's numerous screens, including a large board on the building's Fountain Plaza at the south endzone. From that position, VWSE will actually be hosting a studio show style format for much of pregame that will serve as the primary content for fans in the bowl prior to pre-kickoff festivities.
That's something we've wanted to do for a while and it really made sense to do that here, says McCoart. Gates are opening pretty early before we kick off and we want to get people inside. We want to give them something to do, something to experience, and something to interact with. We're going to go an [ESPN] College Gameday type of environment out there: get the fans close to the set, interact with them, and get people to that area.
VWSE's crew is also partnering with the in-house venue teams from Hard Rock Stadium and the Miami Dolphins. Becker, McCoart, and VWSE Creative Director Ryan Kehn have worked very closely with Tomas Ru
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Live From Super Bowl LIV: Van Wagner Sports & Entertainment, Hard Rock Stadium Team Up to Produce the Crown Jewel of In-Stadium Shows Four video boards and three ribbons from Daktronics anchor the sharp presentation for fans By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
