ESPN Navigates Ops Madness for Coast-to-Coast Productions of NCAA Women's Basketball Tourney

ESPN Navigates Ops Madness for Coast-to-Coast Productions of NCAA Women's Basketball Tourney A trio of production models are deployed to cover 16 opening-round sites By Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.

Friday, March 21, 2025 - 2:07 pm

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Few events personify the diversity of ESPN's remote-production methods more than the NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament. Each March, ESPN's remote-production operations team is tasked with assembling a jigsaw puzzle of solutions to produce more than 60 games around the country in less than three weeks. It all begins with the First Round for which - unlike with the men's tournament - the sites are not predetermined. The games take place at the home courts of the top four seeds in each regional.

ESPN director Jimmy Platt (center) along with producer Kaitlin Urka (left) during an opening round game at the 2025 NCAA Women's Basketball tournament.

To cover the 16 First Round sites this year, ESPN has deployed a mix of three production models: for A sites, traditional mobile units onsite; for B sites, REMI productions from control rooms at its Bristol, CT, and Charlotte, NC, facilities; and, for C sites, productions handled out of on-campus control rooms at SEC, ACC, and Big 12 schools.

Pulling off this tournament is the ultimate form of teamwork and collaboration, says Catherine Chalfant, manager, remote production operations, ESPN. Our success would not be possible without our partnership with production and the hard work of our functional teams - crewing, mobile units, remote traffic, REMI, our non-traditional-production operations teams, and many others who make this tournament the high-profile event that it is.

All About Preparation: Planning Pays Off for the Ops Team Chalfant, Operations Specialist Brock Wetherbee, Senior Operations Coordinators Abby Hurlbert and David Quintanilla, and Operations Coordinator Renee Greenwood started scenario planning for the tournament in January and gradually built a comprehensive package in the ensuing weeks.

To cover the 16 First Round locations, ESPN has a full mobile unit onsite in four cities, six REMI productions (three out of Bristol control rooms, three out of its Charlotte facility), and six productions out of ACC, SEC, and Big 12 on-campus control rooms.

NEP EN1 is parked at Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, SC, for this afternoon's game between South Carolina and Tennessee Tech.

Making matters even more complex is the fact that Chalfant's team also handles operations for the NIT and supports ESPN's international coverage of the NCAA men's tournament. Thankfully, there were no overlapping sites for the NIT and the women's tourney this year, unlike in multiple cities last March.

We started working with our partners early on to put people and resources on hold so that, when it all hits on Selection Sunday, it's just executing our plan and we're not just figuring it out on the fly, says Chalfant. We don't know where we're going until the very last minute, so preparation is the key. Thankfully, since we had all these pieces in place, Sunday night wasn't that stressful.

ESPN frames BTG Marshall cameras for tomorrow night's Women's Basketball First Round game at the University of Texas at Austin.

In terms of mobile units onsite (for both traditional and REMI productions), ESPN is deploying NEP EN1 (at South Carolina), M14 (UCLA), and NCP10 (USC); F&F GTX 16 (Notre Dame); Game Creek Video Varsity (UConn); LMG MU3 (TCU), MU4 (Ohio State), and MU22 (Texas); and Raycom's HD1 (Oklahoma).

Our mobile-unit group did a great job of working with our vendors to position trucks across the country based on where we expected to need a full truck vs. a REMI, says Chalfant. We also spent a lot of time in the preparation stage evaluating the AP poll and the committee rankings, which helps us project and guesstimate where these resources may go.

Although different levels of equipment are deployed across the 16 opening-round sites, the operations team worked closely with ESPN production leaders - Senior VP Meg Aronowitz, Coordinating Producer Matt Leach, and Senior Director, Production, Integration, and Editorial Graphic Production Kate Leonard - to ensure that the broadcasts maintain the same level of production quality across the board.

Our key goal with production was to keep image quality consistent, says Chalfant. There was no reason that one site should look significantly different from the others, because all these games are equal and of the same value. Even though we are doing 16 sites, we need to give them each the level of coverage they deserve and make them look consistent across the First and Second Rounds. And we carry that same goal on to the regionals but with a beefed-up [camera complement].

In addition to the standard complement of game, tight, slash, and handheld cameras, ESPN will have at least one super-slo-mo on each game and deploy several Fletcher ATR (above the rim) robos and Marshal BTG (below the goal) PTZs across the various sites. In addition, the broadcaster is deploying the Dream Chip Atom One mini PTZ camera (provided by Fletcher), which allows the crew to color-correct the shot and frame up the ref on official replay calls.

Looking Ahead: Big Plans for Regionals and Final Four Sweet 16 and Elite 8 productions will add two super-slo-mos, a mid-court handheld, and a Sony FX6 cine camera to provide a shallow-depth-of-field look. The A game will also feature a Sony HDC-4800 4K super-slo-mo to capture dramatic high-speed shots for director Jimmy Platt. Other key adds include RF boom mics to capture sounds from the huddle, Viz Libero telestration system (operated remotely from Bristol), robust file-transfer capabilities with CMSI, and virtual shot

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