Athlete Audio Builds Fan Engagement, Player Branding at WNBA All-Star

Athlete Audio Builds Fan Engagement, Player Branding at WNBA All-Star Specialist A2 Ron Thompson has helped the technology evolve for decades By Dan Daley, Audio Editor

Tuesday, July 29, 2025 - 9:13 am

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For nearly three decades, Ron Thompson has worked closely with both the WNBA and NBA by supporting broadcasts on nearly every network that has carried their games. As a specialist A2, Thompson has helped refine the task of ensuring that the athletes' wireless microphone systems are connected, working, and ready to go at game time, while close-up, on-player audio for broadcast sports evolved from novelty to necessity.

Specialist A2 Ron Thompson: The younger guys especially are happy to wear the microphone because they understand: they're not a just a basketball player, they're a brand.

Most recently, he did that for the WNBA's All-Star Game (ESPN/ABC, July 19 at Gainbridge Fieldhouse). He works for the two leagues, the broadcasters, and Canadian transmitter maker Q5X, whose PlayerMics both leagues use.

I started the second year the NBA brought [the PlayerMic] in, he notes. I worked with [Q5X] to help develop and make some changes to make it a little more usable. I've moved over from just NBA, he adds. I now also do other sports with this, from baseball all the way down to pickleball.

The importance of athlete audio in building fan engagement and player branding was underscored at the WNBA All-Star Game when league star Caitlin Clark was miked during halftime even though she wasn't playing because of an injury. Her exhortations to her team during the game - Heat up! We're only down 20! and the imaginary but inspirational All four-point shots, four-point shots, four-point shots! - racked up millions of views across Instagram and TikTok.

Thompson normally places the PlayerMic transmitters in player jerseys before the athletes don them and calibrates, tunes, inserts, and remotely fires them up. For Clark, out of uniform but on the bench, he used Q5X's FlexClip, deploying the transmitter as a bodypack instead of embedding it in the uniform.

Improved Attitudes Toward Being Wired Up Thompson has been the player-audio technician for most of the time the technology has been deployed, watching as athletes and teams moved from resistance through indifference to enthusiasm about it.

When I first started, in 1998, he says, they would hire a sound guy who had whatever kind of bodypack was available, and they would clip it on the player however possible. The players did not want to do it; the league didn't want to do it; the players association didn't want to do it.

Thompson attaches a Q5X transmitter to a player jersey prior to the WNBA All-Star Game.

Fortunately, as the notion of on-player audio became more popular with fans, the process of capturing it was refined, notably with the arrival of the Q5X transmitter, whose padded form factor has become smaller over three iterations since its introduction in 2007, and the sewn-in player-jersey pocket that's already loaded and ready to go when the athlete gets to the locker room.

Before, says Thompson, we'd have to tape these bulky, hard-Metal [transmitters] in. It was a mess. [Players] kind of dreaded seeing us coming; now they just come in and put the jersey on. Sometimes, they'll go, Oh, I forgot I was even wearing it.'

He notes that NBA players now seem a bit jaded about being wired for sound during games. WNBA players, on the other hand, are still excited about it, as are the youngest players in either league. When I go in the locker rooms, the younger and newer guys especially, the up-and-comers, are happy to wear the microphone because they understand: they're not a just a basketball player, they're a brand.

WNBA's All-Star Wired Weekend For the WNBA All-Star festivities in Indianapolis, ESPN and ABC made good use of numerous wireless microphones onsite, with extensive player access throughout the weekend, including additional in-game interviews and players' wearing mics while on the court. ESPN's Bristol, CT-based REMCO production was on par with its regular-season effort for ABC broadcasts, with several additional iso cameras on the game side.

F&F GTX-19 A and B and B19 were in the compound at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. GTX-19, which will be ESPN's core truck for the remainder of the WNBA season, handled game coverage, and B19 did the studio programming. The audio team had two Calrec Brio console surfaces - one for studio, one for the game effects submix - networked to the main Apollo console in GTX-19.

Gender-Neutral RF Every microphone may always be on, as ballplayers and politicians learn (often the hard way), but they are also gender-neutral. That's certainly the case for basketball. Thompson does the necessary work on the transmitters and gives the finished assemblies to the equipment managers before the players suit up. For the WNBA All-Star Game, that was four jerseys just hours before the game. That's still simpler than the NBA All-Star Game, for which he wires 20 jerseys: 10 for each wired player - five per team - per game half. The players switch jerseys at halftime, the clothes headed to charity auctions or institutions like the Hall of Fame or the player's alma mater. That practice hasn't spread to the WNBA - yet.

But the basics of RF are completely gender-neutral, he explains: Everything works and behaves the same exact way for the NBA and the WNBA.

That has been the case for all sports so far, with one exception: women's soccer.

They wear very particular sports bras, he explains, emphasizing that the transmitters are attached before the garment is put on. We have the process down to a science now.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2025/07/29/athlete-audio-builds-fan-engage...
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