CBS Sports' First-Ever Big Ten Football Championship Game Will Feature a Live Drone Inside Lucas Oil Stadium The broadcaster's studio show will be onsite for two hours of pregame coverage By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Friday, December 6, 2024 - 1:12 pm
Print This Story | Subscribe
Story Highlights
In a college-football season filled with firsts, here's another: CBS will air the Big Ten Championship Game.
CBS Sports is out in force at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for a marquee battle between Penn State and conference newcomer Oregon with an onsite pregame studio show opening the festivities at 6:00 p.m. ET (College Football Kickoff at 6 p.m., College Football Today at 7 p.m.) prior to the game at 8 p.m.
In a storied history of covering college football at the highest level, CBS Sports has seen almost everything, but this will mark its first time broadcasting the Big Ten Football Championship Game. CBS takes the Big Ten mantle from FOX Sports, which had produced this game since its inception in 2011.
There's certainly a heightened level of excitement knowing that, in our first full season of the Big Ten, the pinnacle of the season is this game and Indianapolis, says Jason Cohen, SVP, remote technical operations, CBS Sports. This became the focal point of everything we did from the start of the season.
CBS Sports, of course, built a college-football legacy over the past two decades, delivering the SEC Championship Game to viewers from 2002 to '23. Now its operations team is bringing many of its high-end production elements - and then some - to the Big Ten scene.
Most notably, the broadcaster will be making some tech history at this game, deploying a live drone indoors on a football game for the first time. Longtime drone partner Kaze Aerial Production will fly a custom-modified DJI drone throughout the interior of Lucas Oil Stadium during the broadcast, having received clearances from the Big Ten, the stadium itself, and local authorities.
It was clear to viewers of the Big Ten package this season that CBS prioritized use of the live drone to bring a special look to many of the iconic stadiums across the conference. It was a noted effort to bring a fresh perspective as a new rightsholder for the league, and, although Saturday's game is being played inside a dome at Lucas Oil Stadium, the broadcaster wanted to carry drone use through to the end.
That beautiful sweeping shot from the exterior of the stadium has been brought to life at a lot of big football games this season, notes Cohen. The drone technology has become our signature stamp, and we didn't want to forego having a drone. We've worked very hard and closely with our partners to be able to fly the drone inside the stadium and give those incredible sweeping shots that only drones can do, but from inside the building. We'll have a packed house with all the electric atmosphere and all the pageantry, and we can showcase all of that with the drone live for the first time ever inside a stadium for a football game. We're really, really excited about it.
Welcome to Bloomington, Indiana. Welcome to the Big Ten on CBS!
It's @UMichFootball taking on undefeated No. 8 @IndianaFootball on @CBS and @paramountplus! pic.twitter.com/flf6lCQkGZ
- CBS Sports College Football (@CBSSportsCFB) November 9, 2024
This isn't the first time CBS Sports has flown a live drone indoors during an event inside a football stadium. It did so earlier this year at the NCAA Men's Basketball Final Four at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, AZ, but Cohen notes that this is the first time inside for a football game.
This is a landmark certainly for CBS, he says. This is hopefully going to be a launching pad for us and maybe other networks to be able to do the same in other sports. This is a big deal, doing it inside the building.
The live drone will be just one piece of tech at the disposal of legendary producer/director tandem Craig Silver and Steve Milton, who will be at the front bench for Saturday night's game. Working out of F&F Productions GTX-20 A, B, and C units (which have traveled with the CBS crew to each afternoon Big Ten game this season), Milton will call from a bountiful list of camera options: Skycam, jibs on each sideline, cart cameras on each sideline, a 4K camera at each high end zone, a fixed-wing aerial in the sky outside the stadium, goal-line and line-to-gain pylon cameras from Cosm, robos in the stadium tunnels and catwalks, 14 super-slo-mos. Also onsite is the Falcon 360, an immersive 360-degree camera offering panoramic views, which has been deployed all season by the Big Ten game crew and also over the summer at the PGA Championship in Louisville, KY.
Between all the game tech enhancements, the live studio show, and a juicy matchup on the field, Saturday night's production promises to be a fitting exclamation point on what has been a significant transitional year for CBS Sports and its college-football team.
I think the message in the offseason, says Cohen, was to not just take what we have done in college football and carbon-copy it for the Big Ten but to take how we approach all of our properties and all of our big shows and figure out what we can do to make this particular package feel special. We wanted to make it feel like it's a CBS Sports property.
We already had in our minds a very high-quality show that we were very proud of for many years at the SEC, he continues. We started from a place of strength. Then we certainly put tremendous emphasis in going into the Big Ten season with making sure that we added technology, we added cameras, we added everything that we could to increase and build on what we've been doing for years and making the Big Ten feel big, which is what I think people in the conference and
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
07/08/2025
July 8 2025, 22:30 (PDT) Tata Motors & Dolby Bring Dolby Atmos to Harrier.ev, R...
15/07/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
15/07/2025
L3Harris put its CORVUS-RAVEN counter-small UAS capability into the hands of soldiers at VANAHEIM, showcasing its ability to provide passive signal detect, enha...
15/07/2025
Netflix Viewing Up 13.5% vs. May, Represents 42% of Monthly Gain for Streaming
...
15/07/2025
SAN FRANCISCO and BENGALARU, India Sangeeta Chakraborty has been named chief revenue officer at Amagi, a cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology pro...
15/07/2025
As part of its mandate, the Advanced Television Systems Committee the U.S. organization tasked with developing advanced broadcast TV standards promotes ATSC 3.0...
15/07/2025
QuickLink, the leading global provider of multi-camera video productions and remote contributions, announces the launch of two innovative control panels Studi...
15/07/2025
Chris Kontopanos has joined leading high-quality microphone solutions manufacturer, DPA Microphones, as the company's new Regional Sales Manager for the Mid...
15/07/2025
Magnifi by VideoVerse, a global leader in AI-powered video automation, has launched a major platform upgrade built to simplify live and archival video editing f...
15/07/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will preview its latest innovations at IBC2025, Stand 7.B21. This year's showcase highlights how...
15/07/2025
IBC2025 is set to transform the onsite experience for its global attendees with the launch of a pioneering new feature: full integration of Amsterdam's GVB ...
15/07/2025
Music, sport and technology collided in spectacular fashion as ASB GlassFloor powered the debut of Beats N Buckets, Germany's first Basketball meets Hip-Ho...
15/07/2025
The Collectv, the Emmy award-winning broadcast solutions and workflows consultancy - and winner of Broadcast Tech's Team of the Year is delighted to announc...
15/07/2025
SipRadius, the expert in secure, low latency media transport, will showcase how broadcasters and media companies can take control of fragmented IP workflows at ...
15/07/2025
Appear, the global leader in live production technology, today announced its strategic partnership with beIN ASIA PACIFIC, a leading multi-platform sports media...
15/07/2025
Company marks 15 years of innovation at the show
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and monetization at scale, will return to IBC (Hall 1, Stand F83. RAI, Amster...
15/07/2025
New software solutions extend trusted timing measurement across broadcast, venue, and professional AV applications
Hitomi Broadcast, the market leader in audi...
15/07/2025
SHENZHEN, China Telycam has added control options for its portfolio of pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras with a new plug-in for Elgato's Stream Deck family of con...
15/07/2025
MELVILLE, N.Y. Chyron said its Chyron LIVE cloud-native live production solution has successfully completed the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Foundational Technical...
15/07/2025
PHILADELPHIA The Xumo streaming platform joint venture between Comcast and Charter has announced the nationwide launch of a new line of Xumo TVs from Westinghou...
15/07/2025
LONGMONT, Colo. DPA Microphones said Chris Kontopanos has joined the microphone solutions provider as its new regional sales manager, Mid-Atlantic....
15/07/2025
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION IN OR INTO OR TO ANY PERSON LOCATED OR RESIDENT IN THE UNIT...
15/07/2025
TV SIM builds for the future with high efficiency transmitter from Rohde & Schwa...
15/07/2025
News Corp Authorizes New $1 Billion Stock Repurchase Program and Intends to Acce...
15/07/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Announces the Start of Production of Los secretos de l...
15/07/2025
Harmonic's Hybrid, AI-Powered and Live Sports Streaming Innovations are Key ...
15/07/2025
The well-known and well-loved 4099 has been completely revamped. It features amazing CORE+ technology, which eliminates distortion and extends dynamic range, a ...
15/07/2025
Comscore Partners with HyphaMetrics to Launch Advanced Person-Level Audience Mea...
15/07/2025
Peak audiences of over half a million tune into both Kerry v Tyrone and Donegal ...
15/07/2025
PROTON Announces Production Facility Expansion Ahead of IBC2025 posted: 15/07/2025
Proton Announces Production Facility Expansion Ahead of IBC2025
Alongs...
15/07/2025
Submissions for NVIDIA's Plug and Play: Project G-Assist Plug-In Hackathon a...
14/07/2025
The Royal Moroccan Air Force hosted a C-130 award ceremony with L3Harris Technologies President of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Jason Lambert a...
14/07/2025
UK launch set for September, following on from recent US and Germany releases
London - UK, July 14, 2025 - Nielsen, a global leader in audience measurement, da...
14/07/2025
SHENZHEN, China Telycam has added control options for its portfolio of pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras with a new plug-in for Elgato's Stream Deck family of con...
14/07/2025
The awards are open to IBC2025 show exhibitors and offer a valuable platform for companies to raise awareness for the new products and solutions they will be la...
14/07/2025
Clear-Com is excited to announce a significant expansion of the award-winning Arcadia Central Station with new software updates. Together, these releases dram...
14/07/2025
Grass Valley and Daktronics today announced a strategic technology partnership that unites Grass Valley's live production expertise with Daktronics' lea...
14/07/2025
Cloud playout solutions provider, Veset, and swXtch.io, provider of cloud-based multicast and reliable networking solutions, are partnering to deliver multicast...
14/07/2025
Tintri , a DDN subsidiary and leader in AI-powered data management solutions, today announces a game-changing and award-winning refresh to its global Partner P...
14/07/2025
HighField AI, the broadcast industry's first agentic and multimodal AI platform for automating graphics production, is now commercially available. Developed...
14/07/2025
Encompass Digital Media has today announced that it has been delivering a complex global services project for DAZN, the world s leading sports entertainment pla...
14/07/2025
MASV (massive.io), the fastest, most reliable large file transfer platform trusted by over 10,000 global organizations, announced today it will showcase its nex...
14/07/2025
Calrec is introducing a series of usability, customisation and system enhancements across the entire range of Argo consoles at IBC 2025, on Stand 8.C47. Look ou...
14/07/2025
Fincons Group, IT business consultancy and systems integrator company with more than 40 years of experience in the market, is proud to announce a new engagement...
14/07/2025
Intinor returns to IBC to present the latest updates to its Direkt series. A key development on show is Intinor Direkt Management (IDM), a web-based interface f...
14/07/2025
Back to All News
Trailer Out Now! Netflix and YRF Entertainment's Mandala ...
CBS Sports' First-Ever Big Ten Football Championship Game Will Feature a Live Drone Inside Lucas Oil Stadium The broadcaster's studio show will be onsite for two hours of pregame coverage By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
