NBA Summer League Spotlight, Part 1: Reimagining How You Watch the NBA With Vertical View', SkyCam View' The league, ESPN look to innovate with alternative live-game experiences By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Thursday, July 12, 2018 - 4:09 pm
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It's July in Las Vegas, and that means the NBA Summer League is back in action at Thomas & Mack Center - and, with it, the league's annual Innovation Lab effort. Although the Summer League has always been a hotbed of technological innovation, the league and ESPN are taking it to a whole new level this year, testing out several alternative broadcast formats in an effort to better engage with fans and meet their rapidly changing media-consumption habits.
ESPN3 and NBA League Pass International live-streamed a SkyCam View (angle seen here) broadcast option for two NBA Summer League games.
Over the past week, the NBA and ESPN have teamed up to live-stream several different feeds on ESPN3: SkyCam View, Summer League Live, Dueling Analysts, and Hometown Call. Most interesting, the league is also producing two full games in 9 16 Vertical View ; intended to reach mobile-first viewers watching on their phones, they will be live-streamed internationally. The league, which has rolled out Mobile TV Group's 28HDX production unit for its live productions in Vegas, is also creating content for the NBA AR app and NBA VR platform.
For several years, [Summer League] was more of a basketball incubator; now it's become a content and technology incubator, says NBA Director, Broadcasting, Paul Benedict. We want everyone to come in and be willing to try different things, and I think we all come in here with that mentality. And, since these are exhibition games, we have a lot more freedom to experiment. It's really the perfect storm. It's always been an innovation center for us, but I think, this year, we took it to a whole new level, and I imagine we're going to continue along this path for years to come.
CLICK HERE for Part 2 of the NBA Summer League Spotlight, focused on the league's testing of alternative broadcast formats.
NBA Vertical View: Thinking Outside the 16 9 Box for Mobile Viewers
More fans than ever are watching live NBA games on their mobile phones, and, according to NBA data, viewers are increasingly watching this content vertically rather than flipping their phones horizontally. In addition, Snapchat has long championed the 9 16 vertical video frame, and Instagram just launched a long-form vertical-video section dubbed IGTV.
Director Jeff Curtin inside the truck at NBA Summer League running the 9 16 Vertical View production.
With all that in mind, the NBA embarked on a grand experiment: producing two games specifically for vertical consumption on mobile. On July 10, the league produced the Jazz vs. Heat and Kings vs. Grizzlies matchups in full 9 16 portrait view rather than traditional 16 9 and delivered them to Tencent in China and NBA League Pass International.
If you watch an NBA game right now on our League Pass app in the Vertical View, you're essentially filling up only about 40% of your screen, says Benedict. So we thought, What if we just shot a game in 9 16 instead of the traditional 16 9? Let's cover up viewfinders [on the cameras], frame it with bars [on the monitors] in the truck, and just shoot an entire game like that.
Rather than just shooting the game action tighter (similar to NBA Mobile View on NBA League Pass), the production rarely used the center-court game camera and, instead, leveraged SkyCam, courtside handhelds, above-the-rim robos, and slash positions in an effort to fill the 9 16 frame with action. Camera viewfinders were recalibrated for 9 16 shooting, and director Jeff Curtin (who is director of broadcasting for the Portland Trailblazers) was provided with safety bars on the truck monitors. In addition, ESPN worked with Vizrt to redesign the graphics package and scorebug, which features the clock and score centered at the bottom of the basket.
Everything is focused on keeping the ball in the center of the frame, so the majority of the game is covered with handhelds, with robos, and with the SkyCam, which all really lend themselves to vertical, says NBA EVP, Media Operation and Technology, Steve Hellmuth. We're trying to truly cover the game in more of an up-and-down [format], so, when we go into replay, we'll stack a couple of replays and show them at the same time in the vertical format.
The line cut left the truck as HD-SDI and was sent to the NBA's facility in Secaucus, NJ, where it was cropped and distributed to Tencent and NBA League Pass International.
Obviously, this is important because our data show that many fans have no intention of ever flipping their phone horizontally to watch a game, says Hellmuth. Obviously, this also provides a ton of material for all of our social-media channels besides just the live game. It's strictly an experiment right now, but it's something we're looking at very carefully, and our partners seem very interested.
SkyCam View: Bringing NBA 2K to Life
ESPN has deployed SkyCam for the duration of its coverage (July 6-17), but the aerial system took on an even bigger role on Wednesday, when ESPN3 and NBA League Pass International live-streamed a SkyCam View broadcast option for back-to-back games. Building on the efforts of NBC Sports' NFL Thursday Night Football coverage last year, the alternative production used the SkyCam, rather than the traditional center-court position, as the main game camera. The SkyCam View caters to NBA fans groomed with the infamous auto flip reverse perspective in NBA 2K videogames.
Our goal was to see what we could do with it in an open environment like Summer League, says Benedict. We know that we have full
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NBA Summer League Spotlight, Part 1: Reimagining How You Watch the NBA With Vertical View', SkyCam View' The league, ESPN look to innovate with alternative live-game experiences By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
