
Portland Trail Blazers Crank Up In-House Live Broadcasts With AR Graphics, Advanced Stats, New Camera Angles, Increased Fan Engagement Four pillars - Elevate, Inform, Access, Engage - form the foundation of the enhancements By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor
Monday, March 13, 2023 - 7:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
In the sports-video-production industry, the Portland Trail Blazers are known as one of the more forward-thinking franchises in the National Basketball Association. One of only five teams in the league that produce all live broadcasts in-house, the club is taking it up a notch with next-gen broadcasts featuring advanced analytics, real-time AR graphics, increased access to players and staff via in-game audio and behind-the-scenes camera POVs, and increased fan integration with social media.
Our fans love to talk about the Trail Blazers, says Jeff Curtin, director, broadcasting, Portland Trail Blazers, so we're focusing on the stories of our team and giving access that viewers want to see. Our ownership is very happy with the elements that we've done, and the reaction from our fanbase has been positive.
The Portland Trail Blazers' next-gen broadcasts are focused on four main goals: Inform, Elevate, Access, and Engage.
Inform, Elevate, Access, Engage: Organization Focuses on Four Main Building Blocks Not a team to rest on previous success - the franchise won the Northwest Regional Emmy for Best Sports Program, Live Event, or Game in 2019 - the production department worked with executives during the offseason to find ways of improving its broadcasts. With next-gen innovations and technologies making a splash at a national and regional level, the team aimed to replicate that energy and intensity for their games. For a massive endeavor, the club needed to move with a unified mission statement, and that's where the four key goals of the initiative were established: Elevate, Inform, Access, Engage.
These four pillars came from meetings that happened last spring, says Curtin. We wanted to map out and brainstorm what these next-generation broadcasts would look like.
Advanced metrics, like DARKO, are being integrated into studio shows and the live broadcasts.
Discussions covered every possible detail, including the array of content that would be covered throughout the season and what new technological workflows could be added. Focusing on the fans, the four-pronged plan is intended to provide unparalleled exposure of their favorite team in ways that they've never experienced before. The fact that these games are produced in-house may seem daunting, but Curtin and his crew see it as a chance to have more freedom for creativity.
Being able to control our own broadcast gives us so much more flexibility, he says. The flip side is that there's a little bit more work that has to get done, but my team is passionate about their work. A network or a regional sports network could help us with that, but I look at our situation as an advantage.
Second Spectrum provides real-time information for data-driven graphics like this percentiles chart.
A Delicate Balance: Mixing Advanced Metrics and Old-School Statistics Basketball fans in the Pacific Northwest are familiar with traditional stats like points, rebounds, assists, and turnovers, but, deploying the more modern analytics approach that is taking the NBA by storm, Trail Blazers broadcasts showcase the new way of thinking in an entertaining way. Through a partnership with Second Spectrum and spearheaded by Trail Blazers Graphics Coordinator John McConnell, real-time player data and information are fed into the aesthetically pleasing graphics that the crew is developing with Vizrt. Following the technical renovation, broadcasts offer dynamic percentile graphics through pie charts and graphs and up-to-the-minute numbers allowing fans to see where players on the team rank in advanced categories - such as DARKO (Daily Adjusted and Regressed Kalman Optimized), a predictive metric that uses box score and plus-minus statistics.
Second Spectrum has been a great partner, says Curtin. We've gotten these overlays for the first replay after a play happens, so the latency is super low. They're also able to provide access to clips that are archived on their website, [enabling] our producers to quickly create playlists and let our announcers look at stats for research that they share during each game.
Augmented-reality graphics combine real-life photos of players within Vizrt-powered AR environments.
During pre/postgame and halftime shows, on-air graphics are ratcheted up to include traditional and advanced information in an augmented-reality (AR) environment. These elements are accompanied by real-life photos of the players and live interview footage. This is done through solutions provided by Vizrt and photographs captured during Trail Blazers Media Day and action shots during the game. With the goal to highlight all this material as much as possible, creating the right cocktail of traditional and new-age is one of the hardest parts of Curtin's job.
Finding that sweet spot of advanced stats and traditional stats has been a challenge for us, he says. We leaned a bit too much into percentile and advanced stats earlier in the season, but now we have that balance of showing a traditional box score along with advanced metrics sliding up from our scorebug.
Analytics insider Cory Jez offers insights into the advanced metrics side of the game.
Guiding Voice: Analyst Cory Jez Meshes New-Age Discussions With Basic Telestration To avoid confusing fans with unfamiliar stats, the Inform pillar of the plan was necessary to bridging the gap between younger and older demographics. Working alongside a loaded cast of talent on the studio side - hosts Jamie Hudson and Neil Ever
More from Sports Video Group
11/07/2025
Behind the Mic: Amazon Prime Preps for First Season of NBA Action; MSG Networks ...
11/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Suite Studios' Craig Hering on Adapting to Client...
11/07/2025
2025 SVG Content Management Forum Breaks Down AI's Impact, Continued Transit...
11/07/2025
A Journey HOME: University of Nebraska's HuskerVision Goes IP Leaders from the HuskerVision and Lawo share their IP learnings By SVG Staff
Friday, July 1...
11/07/2025
CMSI, Remote Picture Labs, Ace ESPN's Cloud-Based Editing Efforts for Wimble...
11/07/2025
Netflix Enters the Live-Boxing-Production Ring for Round 2 With Historic Taylor-...
10/07/2025
5G for all? What the DFL's use of Easy5G and RefCam could mean for events in...
10/07/2025
Save the Date: PGA TOUR Studios Welcomes SVG Remote Production Summit on Oct 14-...
10/07/2025
Cloud on the Road: How Remote-Production-Service Providers Are Adapting to a New...
10/07/2025
Seattle Kraken's Ryan Schaber on the NHL Team Taking Live Game Productions I...
10/07/2025
FOX Sports Reboots Small Control Room in Los Angeles as Hub for Vertical-First P...
10/07/2025
SVG Sit-Down: MSE's Zach Leonsis, ViewLift's Rick Allen Go Deep on Joint...
09/07/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment, ViewLift Unveil Broadcast/Streaming Joint Ven...
09/07/2025
SVG Europe Audio State of Wireless Mics Forum: If we lose the spectrum, it...
09/07/2025
Tech Focus: Athlete Audio - Venues Provide Sound Just for the Players From locker room to field of play, personalized systems help rev up the athletes By Dan D...
08/07/2025
Groundbreaking Gamecocks: Inside University of South Carolina's Four-Control...
08/07/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment's Samantha Brady on the Power of the RSN...
08/07/2025
Live From 2025 FIFA Club World Cup: FIFA, HBS Focus on Tournament Wrap, With an ...
08/07/2025
SVG Rewind: NESN Goes Behind the Scenes of 1975 Red Sox Retro Broadcast NESN is following up the retrocast with a week-long celebration of the Green Monster By...
07/07/2025
1-2 Punch: The Cloud, Generative AI, and the Future of Sports-Content Distributi...
07/07/2025
Tests and decisions: Formula E host broadcaster Aurora on launching new AR graph...
07/07/2025
Building tension: Using new AR graphics for storytelling at the Formula E penult...
07/07/2025
Altitude Sports' Matt Krol on the Success of the RSN's In-Arena Postgame...
07/07/2025
SVG Rewind: Four NFL Clubs Bring Us on Set of Respective Media Day Shoots An in-depth conversation with 49ers Laura Johnson, Ravens Jay O'Brien, Las Vegas R...
07/07/2025
Cosm To Build Fifth Shared Reality Venue in Cleveland as Part of Bedrock's ...
02/07/2025
Progressive realism: Aurora on taking up the broadcast reins for World RX alongs...
02/07/2025
Great speed: New host broadcaster Aurora on getting the World RX 2025 season pro...
02/07/2025
Seat of its pants: Aurora boxes clever and looks ahead for the FIA as new host b...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: EBU, BBC Sport and Sunset Vine talk coverage plans, ...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Women's Super League launches new content series...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Ignite puts fans and players front and centre with t...
02/07/2025
Storytelling in the Live Game Broadcast: ESPN Director Jimmy Platt Breaks Down t...
02/07/2025
CONCACAF's Miguel Angel Garcia on the Gold Cup's Enhanced 2025 Productio...
01/07/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Spyrosoft's Jonathan Witty on Futher Business Exp...
01/07/2025
The NIL Effect: How the Shifting Business of College Athletics Impacts On-Campus...
01/07/2025
Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 w...
01/07/2025
NESN's Josh Jun on Keeping Alternative Broadcasts Fresh for Boston Red Sox, ...
01/07/2025
TNT Sports Races Back Into NASCAR With Fresh Look, Familiar Edge Production approach emphasizes creative freedom, bold storytelling, casual-fan-friendly tone B...
27/06/2025
How smarter compression is creating a sustainable future By Michael Burns
Monday, June 23, 2025 - 14:13
Print This Story
Live sport is especially vulnerab...
27/06/2025
Behind the Mic: FOX Sports Ratchets Up UEFA Women's EURO 2025 With Top-Class...
27/06/2025
RTL Group To Acquire Sky Deutschland By George Bevir, Editorial Director, SVG Europe
Friday, June 27, 2025 - 8:00 am
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story ...
27/06/2025
Frictionless, At Scale: The Current State of Live Video Streaming Techology Leaders from Bitmovin, Comcast Technology Solutions, Harmonic, IMAX, and Phenix brea...
27/06/2025
Marquee Sports Network's Nick Steger on Meeting the Moment of the Contending...
27/06/2025
NHL Draft 2025: The League Is Primed for First Decentralized Draft in Non-Pandem...
26/06/2025
10th-Annual SVG Regional Sports Production Summit Presents Useful Roadmap for th...
26/06/2025
The Big Cloud Debate: Public vs. Private vs. Hybrid Tech leaders from CineSys, Diversified, and Net Insight breaks down all flavors of cloud By Jason Dachman, ...
26/06/2025
Program Productions' Jess Kowatch on Training the Next and Current Gener...
25/06/2025
SVG College Summit 2025: Select Sessions Now Available to Watch on SVG PLAY Tackling the latest in college sports video: NIL, live production, virtual productio...
25/06/2025
ESPN Is Set To Bring AR Graphics to Wimbledon, Revamps Bunker and Studio 18 VO B...
24/06/2025
2025 NBA Draft: ABC/ESPN Prepares for Two-Day Draft at Barclays Center Partners Game Creek Video, CP Communications, NEP Specialty Capture will be on hand By M...