Boston Goes Frozen for Red Bull Crashed Ice at Fenway Park Skycam, digital streaming, iconic venue highlighted the high-contact contest By Kristian Hernandez, Assistant Editor
Tuesday, February 26, 2019 - 11:28 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Over the past four months, New England has been the center of the sports world, with the Boston Red Sox' World Series win against the Dodgers in late October and the Patriots' sluggish triumph over the Los Angeles Rams in early February. A championship wasn't up for grabs against a West Coast foe when legendary Fenway Park hosted a new-age event on Feb. 8-9, but Red Bull Media House was determined that Red Bull Crashed Ice would make a big splash in Beantown.
Red Bull Crashed Ice took over Fenway Park in Boston on Feb. 8-9.
As all Red Bull events do, the action and the event look spoke for themselves, says World Feed Director Terry Linger, having worked his first Red Bull event. The women and men were colorful characters, and I was blown away by their skill and athleticism.
From Dingers to Downhill
In the past, Red Bull Crashed Ice has ventured to international locales (France, Finland, Canada, and Japan) and was held domestically in downtown St. Paul, MN, for seven straight winters from 2012 to '18. For the first time in the sport's 18-year history, the competition graced the Eastern seaboard of the U.S.
Multiple streaming platforms enabled viewers to witness live coverage of 175 competitors cruising through a 2,000-ft. course.
The biggest challenge for those involved was transforming one of Major League Baseball's oldest stadiums into a hybrid skiing/speed-skating course. The 2,000-ft. track (stretching from the outfield to home plate) required 9,000 pieces of steel, 124,000 gallons of water, and 107,000 sq. ft. of flooring to construct the difficult elements: sudden drops, inclines, curves, and, the biggest feat, an enormous downhill ramp beginning at the top of the right-field bleachers. To fit all the necessary pieces into a ballpark that is more than a century old, Red Bull needed to rely on the organization that has dealt with the playing surface the most.
For logistics, Fenway was the best, Linger says [Boston Red Sox] VP, Marketing and Broadcasting,] Colin Burch has seen and done it all. [The organization provided us with] announce booths and a functioning TV compound.
The Linear/Digital Mix
Fans who were not in attendance had two options for tuning in to watch 175 skaters from 22 countries battle on the frozen surface. For live coverage across the globe, Red Bull Media House deployed a crew of more than 130 to stream the two-day schedule on Red Bull TV, Facebook, and Twitch. An encore presentation was televised on Fox Sports 1 in the U.S. and on CBC in Canada.
POV helmet cams on all the racers were among the 23 cameras covering the action on the ice at Fenway.
With a sport that comes with incidental contact, possible collisions, and split-second decisions, the production emphasized safety by using a Skycam to steer clear of any disturbance and provide sweeping aerial shots of the chaos. In addition to coverage from above, 23 other cameras as well as compound mics along the outside rim of the course helped immerse fans in the broadcast.
After the ice thawed and the massive track was dismantled, another Red Bull Crashed Ice production was jotted down on the r sum . With a non-traditional venue, an energized crowd, and another opportunity to showcase all that downhill ice skating has to offer, the production displayed the true essence of the sport.
I would have liked to have one more camera to roam the crowd for reactions, Linger says. These competitors belong in palaces of sports as much as the folks making $200 million do. [These athletes] have the same desire, the same passion, and the same skill. It's just with a bit more danger.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Boston Goes Frozen for Red Bull Crashed Ice at Fenway Park Skycam, digital streaming, iconic venue highlighted the high-contact contest By Kristian Hernandez, Assistant Editor 
