From Messi to All-Star to Leagues Cup, NEP Group Navigates Unprecedented Run of Live MLS Productions All-Star event, giant tournament, arrival of Lionel Messi complicate normally busy schedule By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Wednesday, August 2, 2023 - 2:06 pm
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The month of July has been, without question, the most groundbreaking period in the history of Major League Soccer. Between the arrival of the greatest player of all time, one of its annual crown-jewel events, and the start of the largest U.S.-Mexico club tournament in history, the league is hurtling toward a new level of relevance. And the cavalcade of historic moments is being brought to fans live via Apple TV's MLS Season Pass courtesy of NEP Group's comprehensive offering of broadcast services.
Coverage of Leagues Cup tournament deploys separate resources for English broadcast and Spanish broadcast. Some resources are shared, but each production has separate sets and talent.
Although MLS, Apple, IMG, and NEP knew the second half of July would be busy, given the MLS All-Star Week and start of the Leagues Cup with undefined locations for some of its knockout rounds, the arrival of Lionel Messi at Inter Miami CF took things into a whole other stratosphere.
The culmination of these high-profile and complex shows creates all sorts of technological factors, but it's also a great example of the team's preparation meeting opportunity, says Jeff Jacobs, SVP, production, NEP U.S. Broadcast Services. Together, we've developed a series of sophisticated workflows capable of expanding and contracting to fit the production's needs.
MLS is quite the league and not afraid to think differently or call an audible if the need arises. IMG really has their finger on the pulse of soccer and studio production, and our friends at Apple TV are super smart and constantly concerning themselves with the consumer's experience and how as partners we can elevate that together. It's an honor to be a part of this, says Jacobs.
NEP Operations Team Spans Coast to Coast - and Beyond Throughout the inaugural year of MLS Season Pass, NEP Group has overseen all broadcast services and provided all mobile units, technical crews, and operations; remote and centralized production support; commercial integrations, studio facilities in NYC; and infrastructure and systems management. IMG, meanwhile, is handling all live match and studio-show production and oversees editorial tone, look, and feel; production enhancements; producer/director staffing; and talent logistics.
From left: IMG Coordinating Producer John McGuinness; MLS EVP, Media, Seth Bacon; NEP Broadcast Services SVP, Production, Jeff Jacobs
A typical week of MLS production is plenty busy, with NEP and IMG producing six studio shows out of its NYC studios including its 6-hour long whip-around show, MLS 360, and 14 matches out of onsite mobile units every Saturday and some Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Although MLS NEXT events are produced onsite, MLS NEXT Pro events are captured onsite, backhauled to one of NEP's connected facilities, where graphics are integrated, announcers call the events off monitors and/or via remote announce kits, and the broadcast is assembled and encoded for distribution.
All matches are produced in 1080p for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV and between Domestic, World, Canadian, English, Spanish, French feeds and more, there are over 100 video and audio channels leaving the venues, totaling over a thousand per match day. Highlight clips produced from remote EVS servers direct to VOD are fully managed on MediaBank, NEP's media-asset-management solution, and amount to thousands per night. Also, NEP works with MLS Broadcasting in producing broadcasts as a third-party producer for MLS linear partners, such as Fox and Univision.
On July 18-19, the MLS All-Star Skills Challenge and MLS All-Star Game represented two of the biggest MLS productions of the year. In addition, the VISTA team was onsite and fully packaged the broadcast of the MLS Next Pro All-Star Game live from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD, the morning of the MLS All-Star Game.
That was followed by the July 21 start of Leagues Cup, which features five games per night five nights a week during group play and 77 total matches in the U.S. and Canada over four weeks. When the knockout round begins, all venues are TBD depending on the results.
The NEP Production ecosystem spans six states and multiple continents: studios in Manhattan; engineering in Pittsburgh; media management in Washington, DC; production and distribution at VISTA in South Florida; the company's datacenter in Dallas; operations in Los Angeles; and some systems architecture in the Netherlands. NEP connects the dots at its centralized production data center which feeds the transmission, and commercial control operation is located at NEP's Van Nuys Production Center.
The NEP MLS operations and engineering team, overseen by Director, Engineering, Nicholas Romano and Director, Remote Operations, George Williams, not only books 15 tech managers and 600 crew members each week but ships EVS replay systems, ingest servers, POVs, Vizrt graphics engines, and more. Steve Grigely and Steven Thorpe helped develop and manage the NEP datacenter and network operations center in Dallas and the Live Operations center in Los Angeles, with both serving as the nerve center when MLS Season pass is on the air. Jay Deutch works with the MLS Content Team utilizing NEP's Mediabank solution for media and asset management. Executive Producer Mike Freedman runs the production at the VISTA HUB, including all MLS NEXT and MLS NEXT Pro broadcasts.
The NEP team is special, says VISTA Worldlink President Joshua Liemer. We have the best engineers, project coordinators, and broadcast ex
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From Messi to All-Star to Leagues Cup, NEP Group Navigates Unprecedented Run of Live MLS Productions All-Star event, giant tournament, arrival of Lionel Messi complicate normally busy schedule By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
