ESPN Says Goodbye to Seaport Studios, Hello to New State-of-the-Art Production Facility at Disney's 7 Hudson Square

ESPN Says Goodbye to Seaport Studios, Hello to New State-of-the-Art Production Facility at Disney's 7 Hudson Square By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.

Monday, June 23, 2025 - 4:06 pm

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The next chapter in ESPN's 45-year studio journey begins this month with the launch of its new digs at Disney's new state-of-the-art 7 Hudson Square NYC headquarters in Lower Manhattan. ESPN's 7 Hudson Square space, which replaces the networks NYC Seaport studios erected in April 2018, became home of Get Up on June 9 while First Take and ESPN Radio's signature morning show UnSportsmanLike both launched earlier today.

Get Up officially relaunched at 7 Hudson Square on June. 9

We were at Seaport for seven years and we are sad to see that facility go, but we have an amazing opportunity to be a part of Disney's state-of-the-art facility that spans an entire New York City block here at seven Hudson Square, says Chris Calcinari, SVP, Content Operations, ESPN. The company's goal was to bring all New York City-based production operations together and create a collaborative environment with everyone in one spot. And ESPN stands to benefit immensely from that collaborative environment on multiple levels.

Located in the Hudson Square area just west of SoHo, the ST 2110-based media hub (which was integrated by Diversified) is already home to a plethora of Mouse House studio productions including ABC News, LIVE with Kelly and Mark, Tamron Hall, The View, WABC-TV, and - as of earlier this month - Good Morning America. Now, ESPN is joining the party at Hudson Square party with Get Up, First Take, and UnSportsmanLike taking over its own studios in NYC and being produced remotely from ESPN's Bristol, CT campus.

From the day-to-day production side, I'm excited to have all these resources to expand and opportunities to pull from other shows, says Patrick Hoffman, Senior Manager, Studio Operations, ESPN. A GMA guest can come right over and walk into our set or one of our guests can walk over the GMA set or Mark and Kelly or the View. We are already seeing synergy between production teams in terms of the guests we can get on our set. I'm confident that the collaboration between all these different production units is really going to work well.

Inside the 7 Hudson Square Studios: Gearing Up for a New Production Era in NYC Inside the Robert A Iger Building (as Disney's NYC HQ has been dubbed), ESPN has been allocated two dedicated TV studios (Studio 1X and Studio 2Y) and a podcast studio (Podcast Studio Q), as well as office space for production staff, a green room for talent, and a Bureaucam area since to conduct live hits with NYC-based talent for SportsCenter and other Bristol-based ESPN studio shows.

ESPN began producing First Take out of its new studio at 7 Hudson Square on June 23.

It's been a great collaboration between ABC News and ESPN on both the operations and technology side, says Calcinari. ABC News largely oversaw the design and build process and they were in charge of the big decisions in terms of [facility-wide] routers, communication systems and that sort of thing. And our teams worked closely with them to ensure all our needs were met from a workflow perspective.

Get Up's Studio 1X and First Take's Studio 2Y both feature six Sony HDC-5500 cameras (a mix of hard cameras and Telemetrics robos along with one jib and one SteadiCam apiece), stYpe AR/VR tracking systems, and Fuse LED screens for background walls (as well as portions of the floor and desk for Get Up). Studio 1X has an LED wall with full touchscreen capabilities, while 2Y has a roll around touchscreen station.

We are on the basement level, so we leaned heavily into LEDs for the scenic facades in both studios and - similar to what we did at Seaport - we've heavily emphasized that New York vibe with things like subway station tiles and other New York City trademarks, says Chris Strong, Senior Director, Specialist Operations, ESPN. We also identified some key locations that production will be able to use for a variety of setups - whether it's sitting at the desk, doing a standup with a touchscreen, or just a more casual standup with multiple talent talking to one another. So there's a lot of different things you can do in this space.

Both studios feature Lawo Audio core for local IFB/Mix-Minus and Riedel Communications intercom systems (along with Unity Connect for backup comms).

Meanwhile in Podcast Studio Q, UnSportsmanLike is equipped with four Panasonic AW-UE150 PTZ cameras; a FUSE LED background display; Wheatstone for audio, mics, IFB/mix-minus; and a Riedel Communications intercom system.

ESPN has also been allotted Flex Room R to serve its bureaucam area, which is outfitted with an Azzurro remote camera system with a Panasonic AW-UE150 PTZ.

ESPN Radio's signature morning show UnSportsmanLike is produced out of Podcast Studio Q at 7 Hudson Square.

If It Ain't Broke : ESPN Retain Same REMI Workflow as Seaport Studios Strong and his team looked to maintain a similar REMI production workflow between Bristol and Hudson Square as it used for Seaport Studios. All productions originate from control rooms in Bristol with the majority of the production team (including the director and producer) located remotely.

I could not be prouder of what we did at Seaport, so other than some technology upgrades, we really didn't change a thing says Strong. Certainly, going 2110 gives us a lot more flexibility. We're picking up where we left off with AR, VR, and depth [mapping], so that's all being incorporated. We built a very robust system at Seaport and now we're just elevating it technology-wise here at Hudson to match the current advancements.

ESPN partnered with FUSE on the sig

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/06/23/espn-says-goodbye-to-seaport-st...
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