Live From Overwatch League Grand Finals: Blizzard Entertainment Rolls Out Its Largest Esports Production Ever Besides being live-streamed, the show will air on ESPN and Disney XD By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, July 27, 2018 - 6:01 pm
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The inaugural Overwatch League season comes to a close this weekend with the Grand Finals at Brooklyn's Barclays Center, and the Blizzard Entertainment production team is lending it the Blizzard polish. With a sold-out crowd at Barclays Center and millions more expected to tune in online and on TV, the tournament represents one of the largest live esports events in North America to date and the culmination of a whirlwind first Overwatch League season.
The Overwatch League Grand Finals show at Barclays Center features a massive new 165'x'36' LED wall above the stage with 10x 4K resolution that weighs 23,636 lbs.
From a Blizzard Entertainment perspective, this the largest standalone esports production that we've produced, says Pete Emminger, senior director, global broadcast, Blizzard Entertainment. BlizzCon as a whole project is bigger since we have actually have five of our esports finals there, but, in terms of a standalone final, this is just massive. We have an internal term adding the Blizzard polish,' which basically means all of us are constantly driving to make every single [element] better for every single show. So everything we're doing here is based on what we learned during Overwatch League Season 1, and, every week, our goal is to make it better than the last week. Our goal this week is to make [Grand Finals] the best show of the season.
The main Overwatch League Grand Finals control room is inside NEP's EN3 A unit
In addition to a sold-out crowd at Barclays and millions streaming via Twitch, MLG.com, and OverwatchLeague.com, this weekend will mark one of the biggest splashes on television for esports when live coverage airs on ESPN tonight and Disney XD tomorrow (as well as recap show on ABC on Sunday) as part of a recently announced rights deal.
NEP's EN3 and Custom Observer-Room Truck
With an operation involving more than 100 crew members, Blizzard aims to replicate its production workflow at Blizzard Arena in Burbank, CA. NEP's EN3 mobile unit (A and B) is serving as home to the main production, with A housing the primary control room, audio, EVS replay, and camera shading while the B unit houses the edit, transmission, and IT teams.
NEP's EN3 A and B units are on hand at Barclays to serve Blizzard's Overwatch League Grand Finals Production along with its BT-1 truck for the observer room.
In addition, NEP's BT-1 auxiliary unit has been fully customized Blizzard by Blizzard to serve its observer-room needs. The show's main control room inside EN3's A unit handles the overall show, while the observer room produces the in-game Overwatch action, including live first-person POV, Free Cam, cinematic-style, and bullet time (following a bullet frame by frame) coverage.
Similar to Blizzard Arena, we run a very customized environment here because we have so many special workflows around the esports and game environment, Emminger explains. We use the outboard auxiliary unit because it's basically a truck shell, so it's a lot more customizable and allows us to basically recreate our observer room from Burbank.
A temporary observer room has been constructed inside NEP's BT-1 truck to serve the Overwatch League Grand Finals production
The auxiliary unit was rolled out this week and integrated onsite to become a fully functional observer room. EN3 and the observer unit are fully integrated, with all the signal flows -a hybrid of HD-SDI broadcast feeds and DDI digital computer feeds - integrated through same router.
We're truly a hybrid between HD-SDI workflows and DDI workflows, which I think is definitely unique [in the industry] in terms of how integrated we are between those digital computer signals and the traditional broadcast workflow, says Emminger. We've used NEP on many of our other large events, so they definitely understand what's needed in the truck.
The LED Bonanza: Grand Finals Feature a Grand Video Wall
Not surprisingly, the LED video complement inside Barclays for the Grand Finals is monumentally large, headlined by a massive newly-constructed 165'x'36' LED wall above the stage with 10x 4K resolution that weighs 23,636 pounds and required 21+ semi trucks to roll in. Blizzard Entertainment worked with NEP's Creative Technology to deploy the main board along with the plethora of additional LED boards scattered throughout the arena.
Senior director of global broadcast says the Overwatch League Grand Finals is the largest standalone esports production Blizzard Entertainment has ever done
Blizzard is also leveraging the Barclays in-house infrastructure and all its LED ribbon boards and concourse monitors (the center-hung board is not be used because of sightline constraints). Prior to the event, Barclays updated its graphics system to add the capability for live playout in order to serve Blizzards needs.
Barclays worked with us and updated some of their signage tech in advance so that we could integrate all of their systems directly into our custom programming that we use to create some of the game highlights and our stat systems, says Emminger. They were really cooperative and have been great to work with.
Blizzard Entertainment is debuting a new studio set at Overwatch Grand Finals this weekend
Blizzard uses a custom software program (similar to the platform used at Blizzard Arena) to operate its entire show. The in-venue production and the live broadcast are heavily integrated, sharing the same control room and outputting the same live-coverage feed. The in-v
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Live From Overwatch League Grand Finals: Blizzard Entertainment Rolls Out Its Largest Esports Production Ever Besides being live-streamed, the show will air on ESPN and Disney XD By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
