ESPN Sees XFL as the Model for the Future of Broadcast Sports Audio Real-time, close-up sound is the hallmark of the coverage By Dan Daley, Audio Editor Wednesday, May 3, 2023 - 7:00 am
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With less than two weeks left before the divisional games and then the championship match, the XFL has been making some noise. In fact, deploying more player, coach, and officials' microphones than any other broadcast sports, the league is helping set the stage for a new era in sports sound.
ESPN's Ed Placey: XFL football has been very fulfilling, and a lot of that has been because of the audio technology.
In only its second full season in four years, given a three-year COVID hiatus, and with new ownership by entrepreneur/actor Dwayne The Rock Johnson and private-investment firm RedBird Capital, the XFL has become a developmental proving ground for what close-up sound can do for sports on television. Ed Placey, VP, Event and Studio Production Group, ESPN, has been at the helm of that process. Among his primary responsibilities are college-football event coverage and content innovation across the company's portfolio of sports properties, as well as development of new technology and alternative production approaches.
He says the big difference this season is more strategic use of microphone arrays, which also include conventional parabolic and shotgun mics. The broadcaster, he stresses, is using the lessons learned from the league's first season, as truncated as it was.
Those were a meaningful five weeks to just learn what we had with all this audio coming into us, he notes. We were just starting to get the hang of it, of what we needed more of, what we needed less of, what was most helpful, when was most helpful. And we were excited for the opportunity and lobbied to make sure we did everything we could to get it [from the league] from a production standpoint. We felt like we were just about to hit our stride.
But that certainly benefited us here in 2023, he continues. It still took a couple of weeks to kind of fine-tune that. But we definitely were very strategic: if you just open up all the microphones, it's not a very good experience, but you have to have that kind of experience where you learn. What's the timing you want? What sequence do you want: an offensive coordinator, then a defensive coordinator, then the quarterback calling the play? I think that, through the learning process and the feedback process on a weekly basis to all our crews - playing back sequences to them and talking to our audio group, our submixing group, giving them the feedback, showing them clips, and talking about them - we achieved what we were pursuing.
In addition to being strategic, Placey says, ESPN's audio crew was aggressive. The crew took chances with the audio, intentionally but with an awareness that it was also building trust long-term with the players, the teams, and the league. This was especially significant since much of the sound was intended to be heard as it happened, with only a dual-level profanity delay (one level keeps some ambient noise underneath to minimize abruptness; the second silences everything) during play, instead of during replays. It wasn't easy to process, given the vast amounts of audio coming in in real time.
As you know, Placey says, with most other sports, you're limited to only a few things you can [use], and everybody's kind of cautious and protective. We're trying to make a case not just within the XFL but by extension to all of our sports that, with planning and trust, we can get to a point of managing this type and amount of audio access responsibly and thoughtfully, rather than just going rogue with it. Leagues need to be protective and put in audio monitoring and play everything back off tape. But the fans these days are expecting it live. The days of just rolling it back off tape aren't where fans are today.
All the Sound, Everywhere, All the Time What sets XFL apart from most televised sports is not just the sheer amount of audio but the number of sources. They include two players per side per game plus the quarterbacks; coaches (head coaches and defensive coordinators); sideline reporters; ESPN XFL Rules Analyst Dean Blandino in Van Nuys, CA; and officials, both on the field and remotely from the league's Command Center in Arlington, TX. All game audio is sent directly to ESPN's audio consoles, where A1s have immediate control over it. In the NFL model, the league controls the scrimmage sound and feeds it to the broadcaster for prescribed number of seconds before and after the snap.
What makes [XFL] what it is, Placey explains, is that we have access to the complete coach-to-player communication on both sides of the ball for both teams. Anytime they press to talk to the quarterback or to the XFL, you're there with them, as are the players - 15 helmets with audio. Not just the quarterback but the skill-position players or whomever the team designates to hear the play calls can all hear that. Anytime there's a penalty called, the official that calls it is pressing a button on their beltpack, and we're hearing them communicate that to the referee. It's also being communicated to the Command Center. We're hearing the entire process in real time, and I think that has been one of the most fan-enlightening components.
You're not just hearing the referee; you're hearing everybody when something needs to be sorted out, he continues. I think that has been groundbreaking for football fans to hear, plus you can get plays called quicker because receivers running back from the last play are already hearing the next play. All the stuff in college football where they're holding up signs and curtains and signaling plays at the
