Chase Center, Two Years Later: Golden State Warriors Find Production Groove for Post-COVID Era

Chase Center, Two Years Later: Golden State Warriors Find Production Groove for Post-COVID Era Director, Scoreboard Operations, Scott Heitman is keeping content and technology fresh By Kristian Hern ndez, Associate Editor

Wednesday, March 16, 2022 - 2:35 pm

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Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors are on the doorstep of another deep postseason run. Playing in San Francisco's Chase Center, which is touted as one of the most high-tech arenas in the National Basketball Association, the team is getting an extra jolt from fans and the in-venue entertainment crew. Since opening in 2019, the building has been transformed in response to new technologies and for the eventual aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

[The pandemic] was an odd experience for us at the beginning, but we learned to make the most of it, says Scott Heitman, director, scoreboard operations, Golden State Warriors. We learned how to change our control room into a virtual environment.

Game-Day Responsibilities: Lower-Bowl Activations, Exterior Board in Thrive City Heitman joined the Warriors in February 2019. At the time, Chase Center was still a construction site and was seven months from its official September 2019 opening. From the beginning, he became an integral part of bringing the current technologies to the control room and assembled a star-studded team that would help him.

Thrive City, the district surrounding Chase Center, is anchored by a 75-ft. LED videoboard.

Now housed in a SMPTE ST 2110-based control room, the production crew is pumping out content for all 41 Warriors home games to the league's largest centerhung videoboard and other LED screens. Heitman is joined by four full-time employees: Control Room Manager Josh Swain; Broadcast Engineer, Scoreboard Operations, Matt Shelley; IPTV/LED Systems Manager Khari Jones; and Graphics Systems Engineer Bryan Bauer. The team also comprises 20 freelance and part-time employees who are familiar with the Warriors' style of entertainment. Chase Center's location helps in this department since Oracle Park, where freelancers work for the San Francisco Giants, is right down the street.

Besides activations in the lower bowl on game day, the crew is responsible for messaging directed to the 75-ft. main LED videoboard on the outside of Thrive City, the surrounding district that houses restaurants, bars, and a communal meeting place.

We have separate servers supporting these exterior displays that play out live weather and traffic information, upcoming shows, and Warriors highlights, says Heitman. When there's a home game or an away game, we flip [these screens] to show the linear-broadcast feed.

The COVID Effect: Productions Adjust to Local, State Guidelines Before full crowds returned to venue, Chase Center crew members had to endure an interesting time period. A few months into the venue's inaugural season, the COVID-19 pandemic grabbed professional and collegiate sports in a stranglehold in March 2020. Since the Warriors didn't make the postseason in the Orlando bubble, the staff used the downtime to acclimate with the new control room through remote training sessions and exercises.

We discovered that nearly every piece of equipment that we have in this control room has a virtual interface, says Heitman. These devices weren't initially designed to be run [remotely], but they're being used that way. It helps a lot with prep work before games: we can load, look at it, and listen to content from home, and it'll be ready to go once we're onsite.

The IP-based control room was the base of virtual productions during the pandemic.

During the pandemic, this capability allowed the crew to flex its tech muscles and produce shows for fans when games were played behind closed doors. Prior to the start of the regular season, the Warriors produced Dubs Draft Room, a virtual experience that provided expert analysis of the club's picks during the 2020 NBA Draft.

Throughout the regular season, the franchise took games to the next level with the creation of the Dub Hub, a multilayered digital planform with four exclusive camera angles and fan prompts reflected on a massive LED screen behind the bench. With lessons learned and knowledge obtained from those productions, the technical and creative teams boosted their confidence in the high-quality control room.

Looking back on it, there are many more tools at our disposal to spin something like that up without a problem, says Heitman. We got to learn all about vMix and from other people in our industry to see how [these shows] work.

Non-Game-Day Duties: Maintain Tech Infrastructure, Support Other Events When the team is on the road or it's the NBA offseason, the crew remains in full force, preparing for the next Warriors home schedule or supporting other events at Chase Center. Major events include occasional home games for the Santa Cruz Warriors, the team's G League affiliate, and the final days of the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship West Regional on Thursday, March 24 and Saturday, March 26. For the G League games, Heitman and his crew will assist producers of the Santa Cruz Warriors. As for March Madness, they'll be busy switching up templates and workflows for college basketball.

The venue's rack room was built for further expansion.

We need to make sure that we're programmed for halves and for different shot and game clocks and loading in all of the teams' logos for our displays, says Heitman. It's also another package with different data and stats.

When the control room isn't busy, the staff runs routine maintenance checks, updates solutions, and fixes any bugs in the system. In addition, the crew will be at the center of the organization's offseason meetings re

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/03/16/chase-center-two-years-later-go...
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