Coming of Age: How NBA 2K League Became a Hotbed of Production Experimentation in Just Its Second Season League prepares for THE TICKET, a three-day tourney to be held at Full Sail University By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital
Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - 3:28 pm
Print This Story
Story Highlights
Esports is many things: lucrative, polarizing, intriguing, and even (at times) surprising. From a broadcast standpoint, esports represents a whole new world of production experimentation. What makes for a good viewing product? How can this be different and (in some ways) better than watching traditional sports?
It's that exciting prospect that enticed Matt Arden, executive producer/head of content and media, NBA 2K League, to embrace a property that, in just its second year, is already finding its legs as a top-flight live esports production.
In its second season, the NBA 2K League has made a wealth of changes to both the in-venue and live-stream viewing experience of its competitions. Regular-season matches are held at the NBA 2K League Studio Powered by Intel in Long Island City, NY.
In season one, it was amazing that such a small team got a broadcast off the ground. Everything was focused on Can we get this up on the bird and get it out for people to see?, says Arden, who joined the NBA 2K League in December after a career during which he spent more than a decade at Turner Sports in Atlanta and, most recently, worked on the agency side in New York City. Now we have had a little bit of time to look at the whole thing contextually and look at technology changes that we can bring to the studio itself or storytelling changes that we can add.
Currently in week eight of its second regular season, NBA 2K League productions look largely different from those of its inaugural year, with many of the changes related to creating a more engaging product with a greater focus on storytelling.
Most notably, the number of cameras inside the NBA 2K League Studio Powered by Intel has been expanded to 21, and the hard cameras have been taken off tripods and placed on the shoulders of the operators, who are directed to move around and go in more tightly on the action.
I want them in. Get in that moment, says Arden. We play in the round. Players get hyped. It's exciting. There's a lot of good-natured trash talk in our league, and it's been great, but that energy can be difficult to translate in a broadcast [when you have static cameras]. Get those cameras in there when [the players are interacting].
Matt Arden became the NBA 2K League's new executive producer and head of content and media this past winter.
The in-arena experience is vastly improved. The studio, located in Long Island City (a short subway ride across the East River from Manhattan), now features two large video screens: one is an arena-like center-hung videoboard above the players; the other is off to the side of the playing stage, and players are introduced in front of it prior to the start of a game. Behind each player's chair is a smaller, vertical screen displaying a live shot of the player, their name, and other important data to make it easier for a fan sitting in the stands to identify the players on the stage and in game action.
In the studio, the league has also altered the positioning of its game announcers and show hosts. Play-by-play man Scott Cole and color commentator Jamie Dirk Diaz Ruiz (both in their second season) have a higher perch position than last year. Meanwhile, studio host and moderator Phil The Phenomenal EE Visu is now working solo (he had a co-host last year) and has been directed to spend much more time interacting with fan comments on each of the league's live streams to Twitch and YouTube.
We realized we were sitting on two broadcasts, Arden explains. One was the broadcast we were sending out, and the other was the broadcast that was organically happening within the Twitch streams. We weren't reciprocating that as actively as I thought we could be. So Phil is active in both the Twitch and YouTube streams and is communicating with fans.
The NBA 2K League's control room features a Ross Video Carbonite production switcher at the front bench. Producer Chad Perry and director Rick Phillips (far left) are back for their second season with the league.
This season, under Arden, the production team has been aggressive in trying new things within the game production itself, from segments in the show to playing with camera angles within the game engine. Experimentation has been met with both praise and derision by the league's many viewers on both Twitch and YouTube, which should be of little surprise to anyone who has spent time in a Twitch chat.
We've been cognizant of not taking the first few comments on the stream as gospel, says Arden. We've learned to develop a thick skin, but we also have tried things that haven't lasted longer than a week or two of trial.
One area where Arden and his team have been trying to push the envelope, despite varying levels of resistance, has been with in-game camera angles. Typically this year, a 2K League broadcast will stay on the classic camera angles within the game engine that players have come to expect.
To go beyond the 13 camera angles that the game itself offers, a position in the control room has been dedicated to taking control of those in-game cameras and offering unique views of the action. The initial effort was met with much resistance from viewers, but, after receiving encouragement from players, coaches, and others within the league, Arden's team kept plugging away. They decided to offer fans the opportunity to select new camera options, making them more a part of the creative process. They even made the person operating the position in the control room, Mathew Glitch Testini, a
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
Coming of Age: How NBA 2K League Became a Hotbed of Production Experimentation in Just Its Second Season League prepares for THE TICKET, a three-day tourney to be held at Full Sail University By Brandon Costa, Director of Digital 
