USA Sports Looks To Set a New Standard' for WNBA Playoffs Coverage Ahead of Fever-Aces Showdown Tonight

Production, tech, crewing, and logistics teams draw on experience of a busy inaugural season

USA Sports' first season carrying the WNBA reaches its pinnacle tonight, when Caitlin Clark and the No. 6 Indiana Fever visit A'ja Wilson and the No. 3 Las Vegas Aces in a decisive first-round Game 3. The star-studded game, which will be broadcast on USA Network and simulcast on CNBC, marks the culmination of a long but rewarding season for NBC's operations team.

It has been an incredible inaugural season of the WNBA on USA, says Matt Hogencamp, senior director, remote technical operations, USA Sports. For playoffs, we are continuing to build upon the success of our inaugural season and keeping the focus on delivering an outstanding product for the folks at home.

Following tonight's game, USA Sports will have a break before heading into the WNBA Finals, for which it will carry five of the seven games on USA Sports (simulcast on Peacock)

Postseason Plans: More Cameras, Player Mics for the Playoffs

Even during an ultra-busy regular season, USA Sports' production-management, technical-management, crewing, and logistics teams have been working for months to prepare for the postseason.

From an operational standpoint, says Hogencamp, the postseason has been all about logistics. How can we ensure that all our people and equipment are going to be where we need them, sometimes in under-24-hour notice? All of these departments have stepped up and are operating at full steam with the utmost efficiency and dedication.

We have people working around the clock, he continues. The dedication our teams have shown only echoes our commitment to setting a new standard in WNBA Postseason coverage.

Mobile TV Group remains USA Sports' mobile-unit provider for the playoffs and will continue to deploy extensive REMI workflows for the postseason run. Throughout the regular season, the broadcaster has used Vizrt Viz Engine graphics systems located at MTVG's Mountain Mobile Center in Denver operated from the onsite truck, and an onsite scorebug server operated from the MMC.

USA Sports is deploying additional iso hard cameras, POVs around the stadium, and an RF Steadicam to support its onsite studio presence. Additional EVS XT-VIA replay servers have been installed in the truck to capture all the action with a total of six super-slo-mo cameras. That brings the game productions to seven hard cams, five handhelds, two robotic Above The Rim cameras from NEP Specialty Capture (n e Fletcher), a Steadicam, and at least seven POV cameras.

Also, having deployed player mics for selected regular-season, USA Sports will use them for every playoff game.

For the Finals, the broadcaster will add more cameras, EVS, and RF coverage from NEP Specialty Capture (formerly AVS) and NEP Rentals (formerly Bexel) to dive even deeper into the X's and O's as well as the storylines for the players, coaches, teams, and cities. Two additional EVS operators will be working from the MMC controlling onsite machines.

A Look Back at 2026: Regular Season Sets the Table

USA Sports' first season as a WNBA partner has been quite the accomplishment from a production standpoint, given the number of games produced. With 48 regular-season national telecasts, Versant's USA Sports team produced more games than any other WNBA media partner this season.

Doing that many games takes plenty of infrastructure and people behind the scenes. In all, USA Sports brought in 15 on-air talent and more than 100 production and technical staff for the WNBA, many of them working together for the first time.

There were a lot of new workflows and people coming together to create something new, notes Hogencamp. We're proud of the teamwork from our group. Our tech and engineering teams did incredible work to get us off the ground and running in our first season covering the league.

Coverage starts tonight at 8:30 p.m. ET with the WNBA on USA Pregame Show presented by Ford followed by tipoff of Fever-Aces Game 3 at 9 p.m. USA Network carries up to five WNBA Finals games: Games 2 and 3, plus Games 5-7 if necessary. That means the 2026 champion will be crowned on USA Network if the series goes past a sweep. The broadcaster's 11-year WNBA deal runs through 2036 and includes at least 50 games a year.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/10/01/usa-sports-looks-to-set-a-new-s...
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