Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Legends Behind the Lens: Pat Sullivan

21/05/2020

Legends Behind the Lens: Pat Sullivan The former NFL GM became one of sports television productions most impactful builders By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital

Thursday, May 21, 2020 - 12:00 pm

Print This Story | Subscribe

Story Highlights

The story of American sports television is engrained in the history of this nation, rising on the achievements of countless incredible men and women who never once appeared on our screens. During this pause in live sports, SVG is proud to present a celebration of this great industry. Legends Behind the Lens is a look at how we got here seen through the people who willed it to be. Each weekday, we will share with you the story of a person whose impact on the sports-television industry is indelible.

Legends Behind the Lens is presented in association with the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame and the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund. In these trying times - with so many video-production professionals out of work - we hope that you will consider (if you are able) donating to the Sports Broadcasting Fund. Do so by visiting sportsbroadcastfund.org.

___________________________

By Ken Kerschbaumer

When it comes to careers in the sports industry, it is safe to say that few people have worked in as many aspects of the business as Pat Sullivan, president and founder of Game Creek Video, a company that, over the past 20 years, has become one of the industry's leading production-services providers and innovators.

To begin with, his father, Billy, was the founder of the New England Patriots (then the Boston Patriots), and Sullivan was a ballboy for the first team. After graduating from Boston College in 1976, he actually reported for work at Schaefer Stadium without his father's even knowing he was going to work there.

I showed up at the stadium manager's office, and the manager handed me a broom and rake and told me to go clean up the stadium, recalls Sullivan. And, when my dad asked me what he was having me do, I said I was cleaning the stadium, the offices, and learning how to run the sewage plant.

In 1979, after spending two years managing the stadium, Sullivan became the team's assistant general manager and, in 1983, was promoted to GM, a role he held for seven years during which the Patriots made it to Super Bowl XX.

It was a great experience, he recalls. We had some really special people.

In 1990, Sullivan left his post as Patriots GM and began looking for something new to do, knowing only that he really did not enjoy working for other people. It was then that he got his first taste of the remote-production business when Dick Dean, owner of NCP, approached him about financially backing construction of a truck to be used by MSG for New York Yankees baseball coverage. The 10-year contract was unprecedented in the sports-TV business and set a template for future TV carriage deals.

Sullivan, however, was not quite sold on remote production as a career path and spent a year at the Christian Science Monitor Channel working as on-air talent. But, while there, he had a chance to work alongside the likes of Dave Mazza (now with NBC Sports) and Paul Puccio (now with CBS).

I was working with really brilliant people and found myself gravitating towards the technical side, he says. I was fascinated by what they were doing.

The real opportunity occurred in 1993 when he acquired two production units from Sure Shot as well as a small team to get Game Creek Video up and running.

It was really a matter of building a team of people that had credibility in their fields, he explains. Then we went aggressively after engineering with people like Paul Bonar, Mike Copeland, and Jason Taubman.

From the very beginning of Game Creek Video's existence, Sullivan has placed a great deal of value on having a strong team, a philosophy he inherited from his father.

When I started, my dad said to surround myself with really smart people, and I have been fortunate enough to do that in some key spots, he says. It's not just engineering. It's also about having the right people to drive the trucks, the administration of the company, and making sure we have credibility with bank partners.

Game Creek Video's growth over the years has been highlighted by several key moments, according to Sullivan.

First was the construction of Intrepid in 2000, a unit capable of handling big shows and tapped by ESPN to handle the network's final year of NASCAR coverage.

That same year, the YES Network came down the pike and they gave us the contract, which was a huge win, says Sullivan.

Fox Sports EVP, Operations, Ed Delaney was with the YES Network at the time and forged a strong relationship with both Sullivan and Game Creek Video's team over the years.

Game Creek has been the mobile-facility provider for the YES Network since its launch in 2002, Delaney says. Pat underpromised and overdelivered from day one, providing superior facilities that transitioned YES to HD.

The 2007 All-Star Game in San Francisco also proved a major moment in the growth of Game Creek Video. Its Southern Cross production unit was on hand for MLB International's host-feed production, and the unit's massive routing-switcher core came in handy when a 30-minute pregame element featuring the 50 greatest players of all time was produced out of Southern Cross.

We assured them that we could pull it off. The MLB guys got out a half hour before air, and, at the push of a button, the monitor wall switched over for the pregame show, recalls Sullivan. And then, after the pregame, a button was pushed, and the reverse happened. Everyone went Wow,' as they had never seen anything like that.

Jerry Steinberg, former SVP of field operations for Fox Sports and fellow Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame inductee, recalls seeing Game Creek's Southern
LINK: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2020/05/21/legends-behind-the-lens-pat-sul...
See more stories from svg

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

22/07/2026

An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app

An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app Marc Levoy July 22, 2026 0 Comments At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...

22/07/2026

RTS Chooses Custom Consoles Desks and MediaWalls for Stud...

Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...

22/07/2026

Graham Media's WDIV Opens Satellite Newsroom/Coffee Shop

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/07/2026

FCC Approves License Transfer of WTVQ-DT to Scripps

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/07/2026

Spectrum Reach Expands Operations in N.Y.

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/07/2026

Miris spatial streaming platform adds support for glTF in...

Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...

22/07/2026

Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K

Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Brie Clayton July 21, 2026 0 Comments Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...

22/07/2026

AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back

AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026 0 Comments A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...

22/07/2026

From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Through Photos

From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...

22/07/2026

RT PUBLISHES 2025 ANNUAL REPORT

RT REPORTS NET SURPLUS OF 22.5 MILLION IN 2025...

22/07/2026

Documentary on film censorship in Ireland coming to RT

In the Opinion of the Censor airs Monday 27 July at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player In the Opinion of the Censor looks at how films for theatrical release wer...

22/07/2026

NVIDIA Open Sources First GPU-Accelerated Medical Physics Simulation Framework

Before a healthcare robot can be useful in the real world, it has to learn how the physical world pushes back. Anatomy varies. Instruments bend, press, slip and...

21/07/2026

High Interest, limited resources: AI in Mongolia's newsrooms

New research involving a cross-section of Mongolias independent media landscape finds enthusiasm for AI as a tool to improve efficiency, sustainability and resi...

21/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: The Firsts, Breakthroughs, and Lasting Legacies

With winners Spain having already paraded the World Cup trophy through Madrid in front of millions of fans and the dust now settling on an epic tournament of th...

21/07/2026

NHL Launches Centralized Production Operation for Regional Broadcasts; Four Teams Aboard To Start

In a time of disarray in regional sports broadcasting, the league will provide c...

21/07/2026

With Boland Monitors, NEPs PGA TOUR Unit Ready for Future

When NEP designed one of its largest recurring mobile production unit fleets for PGA TOUR coverage, the leading media services provider faced a familiar challe...

21/07/2026

elysia Channex Studio now available

High-end analogue channel strip boasts plug-in recall Originally revealed as a prototype back at NAMM 2024, the Channex Studio channel strip represented a b...

21/07/2026

Musik Hack announce HyFi mastering platform

Relies on same DSP as plug-in range Musik Hack's line-up has been influenced heavily by founder Stan Greene's work as a mixing engineer, and their M...

21/07/2026

Dirty Boy Jr. Series from Warm Audio

Official collaboration with boutique builder Dirty Boy Pedals Warm Audio have just announced the launch of a new guitar pedal range created in collaboration...

21/07/2026

SBS scores biggest ever FIFA World Cup Reach as Spain triumph in the final

SBS scores biggest ever FIFA World Cup Reach as Spain triumph in the final 21 July, 2026 Media releases Spain v Argentina attracted a Total TV reach of al...

21/07/2026

Rohde & Schwarz showcases broad range of EMC test solutions at EMC+SIPI 2026 in Dallas, Texas

Rohde & Schwarz showcases broad range of EMC test solutions at EMC SIPI 2026 in ...

21/07/2026

TVP Claims Top Spot as the World Cup and the Opole Music Festival Drive June Viewership in Poland

Warner Bros. Discovery's unbroken lead is interrupted as sports and live mus...

21/07/2026

Savannah Bananas Tap Calrec to Expand Banana Ball TV Coverage

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/07/2026

Where Growth Takes Root Viaccess-Orca Showcases the Found...

Across the TV and streaming ecosystem, industry players face mounting pressure to do more with less. They must simplify operations, protect premium content and ...

21/07/2026

Tuxera breaks performance ceilings and brings SMB/NFS mul...

Tuxera, a leading prover of quality-assured file systems and networking technologies, is bringing its latest advances in connectivity performance to the media w...

21/07/2026

COW Jobs: Apple Motion Expert for Custom FCP Rigged Graphics Package

COW Jobs: Apple Motion Expert for Custom FCP Rigged Graphics Package Brie Clayton July 21, 2026 0 Comments HIRING: Apple Motion Expert for Custom FCP ...

21/07/2026

Cinegy directly addresses the real issues of software-def...

Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, will use its presence at IBC2026 (stand 7.A01, Amsterdam RAI, 11 14 September) to...

21/07/2026

Calrec brings leading audio solutions and long term busin...

Calrec will be located in Hall 8, on Stand C47 Beyond bigger For years, broadcast facilities were built around one assumption: provision for the biggest pro...

21/07/2026

Pebble takes the next step towards the future of media de...

Pebble, the leading automation, content management and integrated channel specialist, will discuss its future-facing developments for the new generation of medi...

21/07/2026

nxtedition Brings Production, AI and Automation Together...

nxtedition returns to IBC2026 with its consolidated production platform, showing how scripting, editing, graphics, AI-assisted tools and automation can work wit...

21/07/2026

Big Blue Marble brings C2PA Content Credentials to Cloud...

C2PA content signing helps broadcasters, public institutions, and publishers give audiences a verifiable record of where their video content came from and how i...

21/07/2026

HDHomeRun Enables Operation During Internet Outages

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/07/2026

Calif. Federal Judge Pauses Paramount-WBD Merger

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/07/2026

AWARN Rebuts Weigel Claims of 3.0 EAS Problems

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/07/2026

FCC Announces Tentative Agenda for August Open Meeting

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/07/2026

VIDA Introduces QC Manager for Collaborative Quality Cont...

New capability centralizes collaboration, feedback, security and status tracking within VIDA, providing a structured, auditable approach to master quality contr...

21/07/2026

Lightcraft Launches Exclusive Spark Story Beta for Filmmakers and Creators at SIGGRAPH 2026

Lightcraft Launches Exclusive Spark Story Beta for Filmmakers and Creators at SI...

21/07/2026

Indie Road Movie Where in the Hell Shot with Pocket Cinema Camera 4K

Indie Road Movie Where in the Hell Shot with Pocket Cinema Camera 4K Brie Clayton July 20, 2026 0 Comments Colorist blends vintage film looks to shape...

21/07/2026

Which USS Defiant Pulse Phaser effect is better?

Which USS Defiant Pulse Phaser effect is better? Graham Quince July 20, 2026 0 Comments Aargh, ever since @DarkRavenProductions posted a comment ask...

21/07/2026

Built in Fort Worth: Wistron Opens Advanced Manufacturing Plant to Produce NVIDIA AI Systems

The AI era runs on AI infrastructure. Many of these advanced systems are built a...

21/07/2026

X-Rite Pantone and NIFT Partner to Build Color Management Skills for India's Fashion and Textile Workforce

X-Rite Pantone and NIFT Partner to Build Color Management Skills for India's...

21/07/2026

Bluepeak Taps Harmonic to Speed Up Fiber Rollout and Expand into MDUs

Harmonics cOS Virtualized Broadband Platform and Pearl Remote OLTs Enable Flexible PON Migration, While SeaStar Optical Node Powers Cost-Effective Multi-Gigabit...

21/07/2026

From Lens to Pixel: Why Connected Workflows Are the Future of Live Venue Production

Every live event starts with a defining moment. A camera captures the game-winni...

21/07/2026

Built for Vera Rubin, NVIDIA Spectrum-6 Arrives in Gigascale AI Factories

AI has entered the gigascale era. The world's most advanced AI factories are bringing together hundreds of thousands of GPUs and CPUs to train frontier mod...

21/07/2026

NVIDIA Vera Rubin Driving Performance Per Watt, Lowest Token Cost for Partners Worldwide

NVIDIA Vera Rubin is here, and it's going gigascale. Vera Rubin NVL72 produ...

21/07/2026

RT announces biggest ever year for new drama

160 hours of Irish storytelling for 2026 KIN and The Walsh Sisters return RT has today unveiled its most ambitious drama slate ever, with a record-breakin...