The 2026 event, the first Draft with NFL Network under the ESPN umbrella, will be broadcast on nine platformsThe NFL's premier offseason event begins tonight in Pittsburgh, and several hundred thousand fans will descend on the Steel City to witness their favorite team's selecting what may be the missing piece for a Super Bowl title next February.
This year's NFL Draft will air on a record nine platforms across the ESPN/ABC family, including Disney+ and Hulu. That encompasses five distinct live broadcasts in Round 1 from the theater and main stage starting at 8 p.m. ET tonight outside Acrisure Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
The NFL Draft is a flagship event for ESPN, says Tommy Mitchell, senior operations manager, ESPN. This is the 47th year of the Draft on our network, and it has been a great partnership over the years. This year in Pittsburgh is another exciting opportunity to showcase a fantastic fanbase in a vibrant city with so much NFL history.
When asked to describe the way ESPN/ABC covers an event of this magnitude, the seasoned ESPN operations and media executive responds, Big.
The main stage of the NFL Draft is located outside Acrisure Stadium on Pittsburgh's North Shore. (Photo: Brittany Dippolito) He continues, We can never be accused of doing events like this small. Making sure we have every aspect covered for the production is what we do. Operationally, we like to hand our production counterparts all the tools so they can do what they do so well, which is create compelling content and cover storylines throughout the entire process.
Key Component' of Spring Programming
The annual NFL Draft - which also airs this year on NFL Network and ABC for 21st and eighth time, respectively - is the league's spring showcase to kick off the 2026 football season. Coverage spans the ESPN App, ESPN Radio, ESPN Deportes, and the broadcaster's social channels on YouTube, TikTok, and X.
The NFL Draft is a massively scaled show for ESPN and ABC, Mitchell explains. Among studio-specific remote events, this is by far the largest we do on a yearly basis, and it certainly rivals the largest-scale sport events that ESPN covers. The Draft content carries multiple networks for multiple days/nights and is truly a key component to our programming this time of year.
ESPN's presentation is supported by Game Creek Flagship, the three-unit fleet that handles Monday Night Football production. ABC's broadcast will be produced from Game Creek Moonshine, and Game Creek Discovery is handling The Pat McAfee Show. Illumination Dynamics supplies the generator needs for the broadcast compound.
The compound - which also houses the Flagship office support trucks and multiple trailers, tents, and ground-level support units - is located alongside Reedsdale Ave. beneath the Pittsburgh Light Rail Allegheny Station.
The team is deploying both REMI and REMCO workflows for multiple productions around NFL Draft coverage. Beyond the presentations of the actual Drafts on ESPN and ABC, Mitchell says, we are also doing NFL Live, Draft Countdown, and multiple SportsCenter segments throughout the weekend.
To capture the excitement and drama around the selections, each team will have a camera inside its Draft War Room and facilities, with upwards of 25 player feeds coming in from NFL Media.
Heisman Trophy winnerand former Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who won't be attending the Draft in person, will have video accessibility, given his projected early selection in Round 1.
Inside the NFL Draft Theater (Photo: Brittany Dippolito) ESPN/ABC will deploy 55 dedicated cameras for the Draft in addition to several additional feeds from NFL Network and Van Wagner, the latter supporting the overall in-house presentation, fan experience, and event setup.
The highly touted SupraCam, a 1,700-ft.-line camera, returns to provide an aerial view of fans outside the NFL Draft theater in Pittsburgh. Multiple cameras will also be situated on rooftops across the downtown landscape, including one on the city's highest building (U.S. Steel Tower/UMPC). ESPN/ABC has added a Jib this year and increased the number of virtual-graphics cameras to round out the technology.
All hard cameras and buildups are Sony HDC-5500's, and Sony P50's will be used for the robotic cameras and SupraCam, according to Mitchell. The Ronin rigs will carry Sony FX3 and FX6. Several other POV cameras are being deployed, along with three drones.
Additionally, PTZ cameras inside team war rooms across the country were fed into TVU Anywhere for encoding, giving the production team a reliable window into those critical draft-night decision-making spaces.
At the theater in Pittsburgh, each of the 25 players on site was equipped with a TVU Pack, allowing live video and audio feeds to be captured and transmitted in real time. Those feeds were then routed to MediaHub for output to air, helping streamline the delivery of player reactions and live moments across the broadcast.
With events like the NFL Draft, the most exciting thing is just the scale that we get to try things he explains. Our compound is about a half mile from the ABC stage and SupraCam operating positions. We have drone and camera coverage across the river in Point State Park, and the camera on the UMPC building roof is more than 1.25 miles away. Getting all those things to work together is always an interesting plan to put together.
Key leadership and personnel involved in Disney's broadcasts include Producer Bryan Ryder and Director Steve Zawalinksi for the ESPN presentation and Producer Jim Gaiero and Director Rodney Perez for the ABC broadcast. Production leadership includes Manager, Programming and Acquisitions, Mike Feinberg and VP, Production, Seth Markman.
On the operations team are Senior Manager, Remote O
