SVG Venue Summit: Detroit-Area Teams Look To Better Engage Fans in the Stands Tech advances, pregame shows, top-quality video are all to boost the home team By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Thursday, July 18, 2019 - 10:21 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
In-venue production teams face the challenges of managing the expectations not only of fans of but also of coaches, athletes, management, and ownership. At the 2019 SVG Venue Summit, held last month at Detroit's Little Caesars Arena, game-presentation leaders from the Lions, Pistons, and University of Michigan took the stage to offer video-production tips, discuss the technology, and explain how they leverage video to engage with their fans game after game. And top of mind for all? Helping out the home team.
In-Venue Video: Engaging Fans in the Stands panel: (from left) Detroit Lions' Bryan Bender, Detroit Pistons' Diane Ferranti, and University of Michigan's Kurt Wisenbaugh
The first priority is homecourt advantage and working with the team, not against it, said Diane Ferranti, VP, programming, production, broadcasting and game operations, Detroit Pistons. If the visiting team is inbounding, we want to make it noisy and have the fans stand up. But, if our coach is trying to call a play, we want nothing going on.
Kurt Wisenbaugh, director, game presentation and fan experience, University of Michigan, highlighted the need not only to push forward with technology but also to stay tied to traditions and, potentially, create new ones. For 140 years, the school's football team has taken to the field in a stadium that has no sponsors, no pyrotechnics, no fancy lights, not even a mascot.
Fans come for the tradition and pageantry, he said, and we fill the stadium well before the game starts. We take what we have and make small improvements to bring the fans closer to the action. One thing is, we have the best Steadicam operator in the country for the band show and when the team comes out.
When Jim Harbaugh was hired to coach the team, he came in with a new vision for the team's pregame entrance video. He wanted a scripted package that was about 2 minutes long and managed to bring in James Earl Jones to give a legendary voice to the script for a legendary collegiate program.
Usually, you want to change up the intro video every year, but, when that video ran for the first time in 2015, the fans loved it, so we used it a second year, said Wisenbaugh. Now the fans want us to keep running it, and it's a tradition where the students chant along with the narration. It fits with the traditions, and the fans love it.
More than 150 industry pros gathered for the SVG Venue Summit at Detroit's Little Caesars Arena last month. (Photo: Dave Reginek/DIG Photographics)
The video does evolve. Harbaugh's vision included highlighting moments of pride for the university and the Ann Arbor community. He wanted to see certain people, said Wisenbaugh, so we will switch out clips during the year to make sure others outside of the video are part of the equation.
Ferranti noted that the in-venue experience evolves not only on a seasonal and event basis but even on a day-by-day basis. Friday-night crowds skew more adult, whereas Sunday crowds have more families and children. Therefore, each show has a different feel and theme, which is increasingly akin to live theater with dancers, mascots, and musicians.
The lower bowl is now programmed for live theater, she observed. That means that everything - from lighting to the LED ribbons and boards and the video elements - are driven from the production switcher in the control room.
That allows everything to work in sync, Ferranti added. And we have a team and crew that has worked together for so long that there is a synergy so that we can make the most of all the bells and whistles.
Bryan Bender, director, event presentation, Detroit Lions, discussed Ford Field's $25 million upgrade two years ago, which was pulled together by Alpha Video, WJHW, Daktronics, and Parsons on the audio front. The efforts solved previous sightline issues and also gives an in-venue production team a broader canvas to serve fans who arrive at the stadium early. The stadium opens at 11 a.m., and a power hour from 11 to noon offers a different giveaway for each game, cheerleaders throughout the building, alumni legends, and live music. The video team does a number of live shots from different places around the building as well as from a stage where interviews can be conducted.
And key alongside all the entertainment, said Bender, are $2 hot dogs and $5 beers.
Attendees at the 2019 SVG Venue Summit were offered a tour of Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
The University of Michigan video department has much more on its plate than just football. The production team covers 15 sports in eight venues that have videoboards. All the events are produced from A production studio in the basketball arena, and soccer, field hockey, baseball, and softball productions are produced remotely from the venues.
Our resources are thin, but we do what we can do, said Wisenbaugh. We can do three or four events a day over a weekend, and, when we have something like a hockey game right after a football game, we'll hope there is no overtime, so we can get the cameras to the hockey game. Or we can pull one or two cameras to get them to a different arena.
Ferranti and the rest of the Pistons team are looking forward to a new production facility that will open at the team's practice facility 2 miles from Little Caesars Arena.
It will have a mini control room as well as a broadcast studio with open windows, so it will be like the Today show, she explained. We will also have an Evertz DreamCatcher and ChyronHego [system] there so we can build things there. But it will be
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
SVG Venue Summit: Detroit-Area Teams Look To Better Engage Fans in the Stands Tech advances, pregame shows, top-quality video are all to boost the home team By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director 
