Live From Paris 2024: NBC Olympics Venue Operations Shine at Aquatics, Gymnastics, and Athletics Dedicated unilateral resources ensure NBC Olympics can tell the best stories for fans back home By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor
Wednesday, July 31, 2024 - 5:20 am
Print This Story
NBC Olympics is relying heavily on the Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) world feeds for a good portion of their event coverage in Paris, but for three specific venues where Team USA is frequently seen on the podium, NBC has deployed additional resources for those competitions so it can produce its own coverage. Through their relationship with OBS, these enhancements include various unilateral cameras and onsite production facilities provided by NEP which are located in the venue compounds.
The big three - swimming, athletics, and gymnastics - are where we have our biggest presence, says Chris Connolly, VP, venue technology and engineering, NBC Olympics. [These resources] help us concentrate primetime and the best moments from that days competitions, which air live on the networks of NBC and streaming on Peacock.
At the core of the operation is a fleet of NEP trucks at the trio of venues, including NEP Caspian and Albiorix at Stade de France for athletics, which moved from the Trocad ro to the stadium after Friday evening's Opening Ceremony; NEP Venus and Mercury at Bercy Arena for gymnastics; and NEP Ceres at Paris La Defense Arena for swimming.
NBC's unilateral handhelds at the women's gymnastic final last night allowed viewers in the U.S. to fell all the emotion surrounding team USA's victory.
With their own production teams on site NBC is putting a clear focus on American athletes. The production teams are utilizing OBS camera splits to help augment their own unilateral cameras to tell a more U.S.-centric story.
In addition, NBC has a domestic mobile unit at their headquarters in Stamford, CT specifically dedicated to Daytime Live Gymnastics and later for Semi-Finals & Finals of both Men's & Women's Basketball.
Of the three venues, the most challenging production will be athletics because there are simultaneous events happening with both track and field.
The three top venues also have dedicated editing facilities for turn around show editing. Those edit facilities will allow the NBC Olympics production team to edit the morning sessions and get them ready for primetime coverage on NBC (those events will also stream live on Peacock, leveraging OBS's original world-feed production). Although NBC Olympics has this added wrinkle of tech firepower, it will still be relying heavily on OBS's world feed coverage of athletics.
The three main venues will also have dedicated and direct connectivity back to Stamford via 10Gig circuits, but NBC has a massive amount of connectivity from the IBC to Stamford in order to get other event coverage signals back to the control rooms in Stamford that is handling the other events.
We have a total of 240G of connectivity that is sending video from the IBC to our U.S.-based control room, adds Connolly. We also have a full redundant network that goes between Stanford, 30 Rock [in New York City]; Englewood Cliffs, NJ; Denver, CO and Telemundo Deportes in Miami.
Diving deeper into the technical execution of primetime, NBC Olympics is using 32 total LiveU bonded-cellular flypacks to compile ancillary content that surround any of the venues as well as other feature elements around Paris.
At most venues and around the city of Paris, our ENG crews will tap into these devices to capture the atmosphere around the stadiums or show athletes upon their arrivals before they compete and display the amazing sites of Paris continues Connolly. These will also be used in mixed-zone interview areas for the smaller competitions to send these feeds back home.
The NBC Olympics aquatics production team has been busy producing tons of swimming coverage during week one of the Olympics.
This is Connolly's first Olympics heading up venue operations as previously he oversaw the transmission side of things. He still configured the transmission puzzle for Paris, but the being involved in venue operations gives him a new appreciation of the massive undertaking it takes to produce an Olympics.
Other tentpole event like the U.S. Open, Ryder Cup, or the Super Bowl is one event where you can put all of your resources towards that one production, he says. I never realized how difficult it is to coordinate a dozen productions at one time and make sure that every single thing goes correctly.
One good bit of news for this Games is that because Paris had so many pre-existing venues (only two of the 35 venues, the 5,000-seat Aquatics Centre and Le Bourget Climbing Wall, are the only permanent venues that had to be built) Connolly and the team could visit venues earlier and make request for things like camera positions much earlier.
From a venue preparation standpoint, it was really nice to be able to get an idea of where our camera positions were going to be, continues Connolly.
It Takes an [Olympic] Village Most importantly, the planning and outlining by OBS is a major factor as to why NBC Olympics is able to upgrade these specific venues. Without their overall guidance, this layer of the production wouldn't be possible.
It's key to have the relationships that ensue that things get executed as well as know the right person to go to [for help], says Connolly. This takes a lot of effort, and I'm not sure you can ever fully explain it to anyone that's never experienced it before.
Internally, Connolly leans on the experienced staff of co-workers that have been to previous Olympic Games or have had their skills put to the test.
Ultimately, you have to trust that you're hiring the right people, he adds. I have a great gro
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
14/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
14/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
14/11/2026
Newest Lenses, Horizon Anamorphic Seminar & Guided Lens Character Experience Highlight Creative Possibilities
At the 2026 Toru CAMERIMAGE Film Festival, ZEISS...
14/11/2026
Sonnet Announces Black Friday Sale on Select Products
Brie Clayton November 14, 2026
0 Comments
WHAT: Sonnet Technologies is having a sale on a select...
14/11/2026
Berklee Alumni Shine at the 2026 Latin Grammy Awards This year's winners included songwriters, engineers, and performers who contributed to acclaimed reco...
13/11/2026
The UIM E1 Series wraps its third season this week with the Bombay Sapphire E1 Miami GP, Nov. 11-14, on Biscayne Bay at the Miami Seaplane Base on Watson Island...
13/11/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
13/11/2026
Singer-songwriter Benson Boone will headline entertainment for the Discover NHL Winter Classic between the Utah Mammoth and Colorado Avalanche at Rice-Eccles St...
13/11/2026
Blackmagic Design has announced the Blackmagic Ambisonic Microphone, a 7th order ambisonic microphone array that captures spatial audio for immersive video prod...
13/11/2026
SMPTE has announced that The Studio B&H and Riedel Communications will provide the video infrastructure and communications technology for the Solutions Hub at t...
13/11/2026
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has announced the theme and program focus for the 2027 HPA Tech Retreat, which takes place Feb. 14-18, 2027, in La ...
13/11/2026
Football Manager 27 Touch is available on Apple Arcade starting today. The game ...
13/11/2026
MotoGP has announced a two-year media rights agreement with ESPN covering the Un...
13/11/2026
Apple Sports, the free iPhone app, has added the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to its lineup of supported sports, in time for Saturday's UFC 334. The...
13/11/2026
The NBA and Fanatics Studios, the joint venture between Fanatics and entertainme...
13/11/2026
ESPN held its annual EDGE Innovation Conference last night and offered up an ove...
13/11/2026
Regional sports network gives Ithaca College, SUNY Cortland students a platform to thrive
One of the biggest games in Division III college football will be pla...
13/11/2026
Studer-inspired 500-series PWM compressor unveiled
The HLabs range already includes a couple of Studer-inspired offerings in the form of the PRE169 and EQ16...
13/11/2026
Download Now!
To view the white paper, please enter the following details:
--
First Name* First Name
Company*
Country* Please select your countryA...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Blue Lucy, the workflow orchestration and integration platform for broadcasters, rights owners and localisation companies, today announced an integration with c...
13/11/2026
Krotos announces Black Friday offers on Studio Pro and Studio Max
Brie Clayton November 12, 2026
0 Comments
First-year annual plans start at US$195.99...
13/11/2026
Blackmagic Design Announces Blackmagic Ambisonic Microphone
Brie Clayton November 12, 2026
0 Comments
New 7th order ambisonic microphone with 108 MEMS...
13/11/2026
Meet the Berklee Student Setting Planetary Motion to Music With his compositional platform SoniKosmos, Javier Roqueni aims to make the universe the ultimate i...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , er...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , er...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Amagi, the media industry cloud company, today announced a partnership with Golden Times Media Technology (stock code 920021.BJ), a Beijing-based media and tech...
13/11/2026
CGI (TSX: GIB.A) (NYSE: GIB), one of the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world, together with its Malaysian partner, Cedar ...
13/11/2026
SMPTE, the home for media professionals, technologists and engineers, today announced that The Studio B&H and Riedel Communications will provide the video infra...
13/11/2026
iWedia, a global leader in connected TV software solutions, will present its software-first approach to DRAM optimization at Android TV APAC Summit 2026 in Bang...
13/11/2026
Beginning today, November 13, Apple HomeView is available for purchase at Apple Store locations, on the Apple Store online, and in the Apple Store app in select...
13/11/2026
From pediatric research to smart hospitals, AI is helping care teams spend less time on routine tasks and more time with patients.
Health systems and startups...
12/11/2026
Industry leaders examine how Dynamic Media Facility, Media eXchange Layer, and c...
12/11/2026
The junior Tar Heel is embracing the technical and creative challenges of live production while emerging as a leader and mentor in the control room...
12/11/2026
Gracenote, Nielsen's content intelligence business, has released its fifth a...
12/11/2026
RTL Deutschland will bring the NHL to free-to-air TV in Germany starting Nov. 30...
12/11/2026
Clear-Com supported On Air 2026, a 24-hour student-led broadcast connecting 45 u...
12/11/2026
uniqFEED has opened a Remote Operations Center (ROC) in Madrid, Spain. It is already operational, delivering virtual advertising for LaLiga matches. The ROC is ...
Live From Paris 2024: NBC Olympics Venue Operations Shine at Aquatics, Gymnastics, and Athletics Dedicated unilateral resources ensure NBC Olympics can tell the best stories for fans back home By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor 
