January 30, 2018
Sports Video Group
Video Production
Services unit helped produce events for the Cardinals, Bills, Jaguars
With the Madden NFL 18 Club Championship Finals in full
swing this week and the recent announcement of a new TV and streaming deal with
Disney/ESPN, EA’s Madden NFL Championship Series is squarely in the esports
spotlight. The series has been moving toward this moment for months, with 11
NFL teams hosting events in which fans competed to advance to the Finals in
Minneapolis this week. In its first foray into competitive gaming, SMT’s Video
Production Services (VPS) group produced events for the Arizona Cardinals,
Buffalo Bills, and Jacksonville Jaguars throughout the end of 2017.
“SMT’s experience with supporting top football shows like
the Super Bowl and Sunday Night Football makes us uniquely positioned to
attract Madden gamers to the NFL through the medium they are most attracted to:
esports,” says C.J. Bottitta, executive director, VPS, SMT. “With a worldwide
fan audience now estimated at 280 million, approaching that of the NFL, SMT is
excited to enter the growing market of competitive gaming.”
Although the level of services SMT provided varied from show
to show, the base complement for all three productions comprised a full
technical team of broadcast specialists operating six cameras, multiple replay
machines, and a telestration system. SMT kept pace with the Madden’s
lightning-quick style of play for the three-hour shows streamed on EASports
YouTube channel, Twitch.TV/Madden, and the EA Sports’ Facebook page. In
addition, SMT’s Creative Studio customized EA’s promotional trailer with
team-specific elements for each of the three events.
“We started doing [Madden events] with teams last year, and
there has been an evolution from wanting a [small-scale] podcast-level
environment to almost a broadcast-level show,” says Bottitta. “What I loved
about the three teams this year was how passionate and excited they were to be
doing this. Teams were handling events very differently, but all of them had
great people to work with and did a wonderful job.”
Inside the
Production: University of Phoenix Stadium, Glendale, AZ
The Cardinals’ Madden NFL 18 Club Championship took place on
took place on Saturday Nov. 11, soon after the team’s Thursday Night Football
home game against the Seahawks, creating a quick turnaround for SMT and the
team’s production staff. SMT provided the producer (Bottitta), director, tech manager,
and lead camera operator and advised on what should be added for the
production.
“We primarily provided leadership for the Cardinals,” says
Bottitta. “They have a fantastic facility, so we reviewed with their tech group
what they had and what they needed to add for [a competitive-gaming production]
like this. They have a fantastic control room, and they used the crew that they
normally use except for the producer, director, tech manager, and lead
cameraman, which we provided.”
Inside the
Production: New Era Field, Buffalo, NY
In Buffalo, SMT provided a similar level of services for the
Bills’ event on Saturday Dec. 2, the day before the team faced off against the
New England Patriots. SMT worked with the Bills to manage other shows using the
team’s studio at New Era Field: a simulcast radio show, pre/postgame show for
the Buffalo Sabres, and Bills GameDay on Sunday.
SMT once again used the team’s crew primarily but provided
its own producer, director, tech manager, and camera ops and added a stage manager.
“Buffalo was on a real-time crunch,” says Bottitta, “so they
told us the studio they wanted to use, the schedule of the studio, and asked us
what was reasonable to expect. We guided them through what would make the most
sense, so we could get in there, have a rehearsal and set day and then do the
show while also allowing them to still do their normal duties.”
Inside the
Production: Daily’s Place Amphitheater, Jacksonville, FL
SMT ramped up its role at the Jaguars’ event, which took
place the morning of a home game against the Seahawks on Dec. 10. Since it was
a game day, the Jaguars crew was occupied handling the in-venue production, so
SMT essentially handled the entire Madden production at Daily’s Place
Amphitheater, which is connected to EverBank Field. Since the two events were
happening concurrently, the Jaguars provided SMT access to their router,
allowing live camera views of warmups to be integrated into the Madden show
throughout.
“The Jaguars [production] was the most unique of the three because
it was on game day,” Bottitta explains. “They wanted to host it on the morning
of what ended up being a very meaningful December football game for the Jaguars
for the first time in a long time. Since the game-day crew was obviously busy,
we did the whole show. We were taking Seattle and Jacksonville warming up on
the field as bump-ins and bump-outs for our show, which was great and really captured
the energy of the game.”
The Broadcast
Mentality: Madden NFL Coverage Continues To Evolve
As the Madden NFL Club Championship grows (all 32 NFL
franchises were involved for the first time this year, with prize money
totaling $400,000 at this week’s Championship), the property has made an effort
to boost its production value for live streams. Bottitta believes that SMT’s
experience on A-level NFL productions, including Sunday Night Football and this
weekend’s Super Bowl LII, was integral in the league’s selecting SMT: “I think
that made a big difference: knowing that we weren’t just a group that’s doing
one more esports tournament; this is a group that does professional sports
production.”
He adds that VPS aims to leverage this broadcast-level
expertise by bringing in such tools as replay systems and telestrators, which
would be standard on an NFL telecast.
“We tried to bring a [broadcast] philosophy to these shows
and want to make it more consumable for the viewers,” he says. “We brought
telestrators and replay to all of the [productions], and that was not the norm
when EA launched [the Club Championship] last year. I did that not only because
SMT has a very portable, very easy-to-implement telestrator system but because
it really adds to the show. If you went to a game and didn’t see replays or the
key camera angles, you’d be in shock. So that became a big part of our
production plan.”