ESPN To Deploy Two Live Drones for Broadcast of Pro Bowl Weekend Festivities

ESPN To Deploy Two Live Drones for Broadcast of Pro Bowl Weekend Festivities Access is key in coverage of skills competitions and flag football game By Mark J Burns, SVG Contributor

Thursday, January 30, 2025 - 11:40 am

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The Pro Bowl Games broadcasts from Orlando this weekend across Disney and ESPN platforms will emphasize player and celebrity access and incorporate live drone coverage.

The festivities begin at 7 p.m. ET today with the 90-minute Skills Showdown on ESPN and ESPN+, live from Nicholson Fieldhouse on the campus of the University of Central Florida (UCF). Among the competitions are dodgeball, a relay race, quarterback throwing accuracy, and a trivia test.

Sunday's events - starting at 3 p.m. on ESPN, ABC, and other platforms - will feature additional skills competitions and a four-quarter 7-on-7 flag football game at Orlando's Campus World Stadium.

The two-day coverage will also be distributed on ESPN Deportes, NFL+, and NFL digital platforms. Super Bowl champion and ESPN analyst Jason Kelce will make his flag-football booth debut on Sunday, and host Scott Van Pelt, and analysts Dan Orlovsky, Ryan Clark, and Marcus Spears will be part of the Sunday coverage.

The DJI Mavic 3 Pro drone, with a Hasselblad 4/3 CMOS camera on a gimbal, will be used during Pro Bowl Weekend for exterior scenic shots and the Skills Showdown. (All photos: Ryan Humble, ESPN)

For the 2025 Pro Bowl Weekend, ESPN shifted its strategy to streamline communications across the different broadcast functions, such as video, audio and graphics. It's a different mindset, explains ESPN Senior Operations Manager Tommy Mitchell. We basically took all the guardrails off everything and turned it into Okay, we're on the air for five, six hours. We're going to do a six-hour entertainment show - not a game siloed with studio siloed with these skills competitions.

NEP EN1 A, B, C and D units are onsite at UCF today and will move to Camping World Stadium for the Sunday events. Multiple support haulers are also part of the overall production, Mitchell says.

For the skills competitions, the varied camera complement comprises six hard cameras (two of which are super-slo-mo units), four handhelds, two RF Steadicams, one Supracam, and one jib. Super Bowl champs Peyton and Eli Manning - serving as coaches for the AFC and NFC teams, respectively - will wear microphones, as will several players and guests.

Sunday's festivities will be captured by 13 hard cameras, four handhelds, two RF Steadicams, two jibs, one drone, one Skycam, and one robotic booth camera. Six of the cameras will be super-slo-mo. The Manning brothers and several players, including all quarterbacks, will be miked.

The GEPRC Darkstar20 MicroFPV drone will follow competitors in The Great Football Race.

Throughout Pro Bowl Weekend, access and drone use by ESPN are a priority. It's about the skills, the game, and everything that's going on, says Mitchell, but, when we get these access types of things, it's about humanizing these guys who are always wearing helmets and uniforms. He adds that the broadcast will highlight special interactions between participating players and their families, a focus that's not typical of the regular season.

With drones, he notes, ESPN can present elevation, side-to-side movements, and other views not easily captured by other technology. During the Pro Bowl Weekend, he adds, there's a little more leeway to test and implement newer technology than during a normal Monday Night Football regular-season game.

It definitely feels a little bit like the Wild West, Mitchell says of the current state of drone coverage in sports. That's why it's awesome to have an in-house team who knows all the Disney rules and all the paperwork that needs to get done. I literally make one phone call to those guys and say, Hey, we want to do drones. Are you available? Yes. Cool.' They can then run with it.

Michael Shea, who served as a drone pilot for the team's coverage of the two most recent Pro Bowls, is back this weekend.

ESPN will deploy two types of drones for this year's events. The DJI Mavic 3 Pro with added propeller guards, which was used for the past two Pro Bowls, has a Hasselblad 4/3 CMOS camera on a gimbal. According to Ryan Humble, manager, drone operations, ESPN, it will be used for exterior beauty shots in addition to coverage of the Tug-of-War and parts of The Great Football Race, a relay event featuring six players on two teams competing across five challenges.

Pending onsite review and approval by the NFL on Saturday, the GEPRC Darkstar20 MicroFPV drone will also be used on Sunday. It has 2-in. guarded propellers and is flown via first-person goggles worn by the pilot. During the Skills Showdown, the lightweight drone will follow players through obstacles of The Great Football Race, although it won't fly over any individuals, Humble says.

Mitchell notes that, with the use of smaller drones, especially in a live application, there might be sacrifices made on stabilization and image quality during the broadcast.

With the live drone integration, Humble and his team are always looking for new and innovative ways to cover action. The goal, he says, is to further push the boundaries for how drones can be used to get closer and more dynamic in-game coverage.

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