Live From Super Bowl LII: NFL Media Took Over the Basement of a Skyscraper to Establish Its Broadcast Nerve Center

Live From Super Bowl LII: NFL Media Took Over the Basement of a Skyscraper to Establish Its Broadcast Nerve Center 18,000 square foot space offers NFL Media a plush place to call home By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Sunday, February 4, 2018 - 5:11 pm

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Consider Dave Shaw spoiled.

Traditionally, NFL Media will roll up a pretty comprehensive truck compound to establish its tech presence during a Super Bowl Week. This year, however, feels more like an Olympics IBC model as the company was able to secure a large 18,000-square foot office space in the basement of the IDS Center in Downtown Minneapolis to serve as its media nerve center with the help of a flypack provided by VER for Super Bowl LII.

A flypack provided by VER is the nerve center for NFL Media's presence in Minneapolis for Super Bowl Week. NFL Media has established a home base in a 18,000 square foot space in the basement of the IDS Center.

It's a setup unlike any NFL Media and Shaw, its VP of Production, have enjoyed before and they are certainly enjoying it. Future Super Bowl host committees may want to take note.

It's just awesome, says Shaw. You will always still debate [rolling up trucks] but it really depends on what space you're in and what you have. Nicollet Mall is very narrow and when we're working with the host committee, there weren't really a lot of truck spaces. We did it in a fly pack last year, and we knew we could do it. So we to go this way. We got the space and it all came together.

The space which was previously the home of the now defunct Globe University had an open area where cubicles previous sat which was the perfect size for dropping the flypack. Throughout, offices and classrooms have been repurposed as video rooms, control rooms, edit suites, conference/meeting rooms, catering rooms, and more.

The main purpose of the area though is to serve as a fiber connectivity center pulling in all of the feeds from Nicolette Mall, the Convention Center, and other locations throughout the Twin Cities and integrating with NFL Media's home offices in Culver City, California.

Also being monitored from this space is NFL Media's aerial cable camera system above Nicollete Mall which is provided by SupraCam. The cable is a staggering 3,200 feet above the street below and spans between 9-10 city blocks in Downtown Minneapolis providing picturesque views that NFL Media is even sharing with the Super Bowl LII game broadcaster NBC Sports, for bumper shots in and out of break during pregame coverage.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2018/02/04/live-from-super-bowl-lii-nfl-me...
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