Miami Heat Raises the Game-Day Thermostat With New IP-Based Control Room, Flame Ball Centerhung Important partners on the projects include Alpha Video, Anthony James Partners, WJHW By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor Wednesday, October 9, 2024 - 11:58 am
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At 25, Kaseya Center is in the middle of the NBA pack in the age department. The Miami Heat - a three-time NBA champion and an Eastern Conference representative in two of the past five NBA Finals - needed a complete tech overhaul at their home venue on the shore of Biscayne Bay. Taking a walk-not-run approach, the organization invested $50 million to flip its control room to an IP-based environment prior to last season and erect a centerhung featuring a nearly 50-ft. Flame Ball with 2,525 sq. ft. of LED.
This entire project has been under way for several years after starting in 2016, says Ed Filomia, senior director, broadcast services, Miami Heat. It has been a learning process that didn't really start until the end of last season, but now we feel like we're ready to run.
Long Time Coming: Eight-Year Control-Room Project Comes to Fruition A ceiling-to-floor glass window allows the crew in the control room to see the entire lower bowl.
Most renovation plans materialize through dedication to a goal, but, for Filomia and his game-presentation/broadcast-services crew, patience was truly a virtue as the once aspirational dream was transformed into a tangible work space. Sights were set long before Jimmy Butler joined the Heat - he was still playing for the team that drafted him, the Chicago Bulls - and three years before Dwyane Wade retired in 2019.
Because the existing control room had been built in 2009 during the transition to HD, plans called for grandiose upgrades. These included a new private network for video-feed ingest and distribution to lower-bowl LEDs and other workflows, including IPTV, media-asset management, lighting, internal editing on Avid and Adobe systems, and the Dante audio infrastructure. Also planned were an IP-based and 1080p HDR-capable control room and a refreshed centerhung display with the latest and greatest videoboard technology.
The new control room at Kaseya Center during Brooklyn Nets vs. Miami Heat game on Nov. 16, 2023.
Once approved in 2018, the project had a start date in the 2019-20 fiscal year, but the COVID-19 pandemic hit just as the work was ready to begin. Construction was halted for a full year, but talks resumed in 2021, coincident with increased enthusiasm after the club made it all the way to the championship round of the memorable NBA Bubble in 2020.
The first phase centered on the private network and was completed in April 2023. A few months later, changeover of the control room was delayed by another battle for the Larry O'Brien Trophy against the eventual champion Denver Nuggets.
We had to push that whole portion back by six weeks, which wouldn't allow us to be set to go by the next season's home opener, says Filomia. We had to produce these games out of a production truck for the first few games [of the 2023-24 season]. When the umbilical cord for our production is on the press level and we're trying to do something by the truck dock, it isn't easy.
Temporary Setup: Crew Works from Local Production Truck for a Handful of Games Many professional teams strive to pop champagne bottles and celebrate a championship, but postseason runs are rarely ideal for in-venue production crews during a massive tech reset. Forced to adapt, the organization turned to local mobile-unit provider Cinemat to supply a single production truck to house the crew while the control room was finished. The truck pulled up to Kaseya Center on Monday, Oct. 2, just under a week before tip-off of the Miami Heat's 2023-24 home schedule.
A Grass Valley K-Frame is the operation's primary production switcher.
We rolled with three cameras and our [Ross] XPression graphics but had someone sitting just inside the truck dock with their own set of replays that were connected to our Evertz DreamCatchers in the control room, Filomia explains. We used the truck mainly for switching and for corralling all the video sources and playback graphics. Once the truck arrived, the vision was to not use this production model more than once, so we made sure to set it up the way we wanted. Once we were ready to launch the control room, we'd break everything down and send the truck on its way.
A total of seven games were produced via the temporary setup in 2023: the annual Red, White, and Pink Game for cancer research on Oct. 9; three preseason games on Oct. 10, 15, and 18; Opening Night vs. the Detroit Pistons on Oct. 25; Nov. 1 vs. the Brooklyn Nets; and an NBA Cup matchup vs. the Washington Wizards on Nov. 3. The Cinemat truck was initially slated to leave on Nov. 10 but left Nov. 7, the day after the crew worked its first official game in its new digs: against former player Lebron James and the Los Angeles Lakers.
During the development process, Filomia reached out for advice from industry peers Barclays Center VP, Arena Technology, Kyle Love and United Center Senior Director, Scoreboard Operations, Sergio Lozano. As production lead of the group, he also relied on the technical expertise of two colleagues: Director, Broadcast Services, Blake Engman was critical in designing the layout of both the private network and the control room, and Director, Arena Video Production, Kurt Doster was the voice that instilled confidence that the new workflows would indeed work.
Kurt knew we had to rip the Band-Aid off and get to it, says Filomia. It took about 20 games into the season before we got a full grasp on HDR and how to paint our cameras correctly, but we're in a much better position now.
A Vizrt TriCaster TC2 is backup pro
