Portland Trail Blazers Crank Up In-House Live Broadcasts With AR Graphics, Advanced Stats, New Camera Angles, Increased Fan Engagement

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

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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

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