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 ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
06/07/2026
Long-developed relationships and informal access, three production models, and c...
06/07/2026
The deal follows Lumine's recent acquisition of Synamedia's video-networ...
06/07/2026
This former SportsCenter producer is shaping local-team studio coverage to surro...
06/07/2026
IMS Productions and FOX Sports deployed more than 100 cameras, 32 onboard feeds,...
06/07/2026
Lumine Group Inc. has announced the completion of its acquisition of the Video Network Business from Synamedia. The business will operate as a standalone compan...
06/07/2026
NASCAR has announced a content and commercial partnership with Motorsport Network, a motorsports and automotive media platform, to distribute NASCAR original co...
06/07/2026
Versant Media Group has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Full Swing, a sports technology company, from Bruin Capital and a group of minority investor...
06/07/2026
DAZN has announced global broadcast rights to 3ICE, a professional hockey format featuring three skaters and a goalkeeper per side, with no power plays or offsi...
06/07/2026
Bundle gains 100 new synths & more
Synth Anthology 5 the largest and most feature-packed edition of UVI's hardware synth emulation bundle, bringing toge...
06/07/2026
Available now via free firmware update
MOTU have just announced that three of their popular audio interfaces now boast official Milan Certification. The 16A...
06/07/2026
Rohde & Schwarz completes Hunter Preliminary Design Review for the Integrated Co...
06/07/2026
The R&S IMAGER from Rohde & Schwarz uses millimeter wave imaging to inspect the ...
06/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
06/07/2026
Digital Domain Appoints Industry Veteran Patrick Davenport as Executive Vice Pre...
06/07/2026
Gravity Media USA appoints Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development
Brie Clayton July 6, 2026
0 Comments
The strategic new appointment supports...
06/07/2026
Remote Editing Without Cloud Storage in Resolve
Michael Cioni July 6, 2026
0 Comments
This is a step-by-step guide that demonstrates how to setup your...
06/07/2026
Automatic Caption Translation in Adobe Premiere Pro
Colin Smith July 6, 2026
0 Comments
Here I showcase the innovative automatic caption translation f...
06/07/2026
Flavor's First Ever Managing Director Neal Cohen Retires; Longstanding Execu...
06/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Medtech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might think...
06/07/2026
Zhongyi Optics unveils the Dreamy Zone T1 FF Cine Lens Series on Indiegogo with ...
06/07/2026
Techtel debuts insyght: making ST 2110 media discovery easy
intellisphereinsyght2026
6 July Written By Suzanne Costello
Sydney, Australia - 06 July 2026 T...
06/07/2026
Monday 6 July 2026
Sky agrees to acquire ITV Media & Entertainment, creating a ...
06/07/2026
Fresh from his World Cup heroics with Cabo Verde, Roberto Pico' Lopes will join the RT panel for Argentina v Egypt tomorrow and for the England v Norway q...
06/07/2026
Nations have long invested in domestic infrastructure to advance their economies, protect and use their data, and take advantage of technology opportunities in ...
06/07/2026
Every year, the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) reveals where thousands of AI researchers have decided to put their work.
This year's ...
06/07/2026
A death can be unsuspicious, but it has to be explained
What happened to Ke...
05/07/2026
We've gone to another level of integrating the graphics into the set architecture' - Zac Fields, SVP, Graphic Technology and Integration, FOX Sports...
05/07/2026
Browser-based and desktop apps available
Digital Sunset Studios have been busy working on an interesting project: a free software tool that provides compute...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
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 
