TORONTO—Sometimes in sports, as in life, it’s the little things that matter, and that aphorism will be on full display tonight when the Toronto Blue Jays take on the Los Angeles Dodges in Game 1 of the 2025 World Series—at least when it comes to Fox Sports’ production of the game.

“We’re in a place with those smaller, portable cameras where they match exactly with everything else,” sa Brad Cheney, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports. “They just look like another part of the puzzle of what we're doing.”

(The 2025 World Series begins tonight on Fox. Games will also be streamed on Fox Sports platforms, including Fox One, the Fox Sports app and Fox Deportes. Sportsnet will air the series in Canada. Fox pregame coverage begins at 7 p.m. ET. All games start at 8 p.m. ET.)

Camera Coverage
The camera complement Fox Sports is deploying for the Series is quite familiar for large events. In addition to the 20 operated cameras—including 10 high-speed systems—the network will deploy two RF MOVI units, three point-of-view (POV) cams, a Flycam (at Dodger Stadium), two Phantom high-speed cameras, a drone cam (two in Toronto), DirtCAM and an Ump Cam.

What’s different is the smaller cameras have caught up with the broadcast cameras, not only in terms of the images they produce, which now are native HDR, but also when it comes to control. “As time goes on, we get smaller and smaller, better and better cameras,” he said.

Cheney pointed to new robotic cameras deployed in the batting tunnels in the locker room areas as an example. “We’re talking little, tiny robotic heads the size of your two fists with Proton cameras,” he said. “We’re seeing great images out of them,” he says, adding that because of their placement in the batting cages, the units occasionally get hit by a bat.

Shots from these cameras help Fox tell better stories, Cheney adds. “As we get into these [post-season] games, we’re starting to see things you don’t necessarily see a lot in the regular season, like batters coming in for one at bat,” he explains. “These cameras give us a good view into that.”

Ump Cam, Drones and AR
Augmented reality (AR) enhancements have contributed to the broadcaster’s postseason coverage.

For the World Series, Fox Sports is premiering AR graphics combined with drone shots. “We’ve done a lot of work with Major League Baseball to do AR on top of the drone inside the building,” Cheney said.

During the postseason, MLB permits drone flights inside venues when teams are not on the field. Fox Sports has built a full AR graphics package that will be used occasionally during those times to “do all kinds of different graphics to show what’s going on” as the drone flies above and beyond the scoreboard, he said.

“We spend about half an hour every day tracking the drone around in different spots to make sure that we can visually lock that in, and then we work with MLB and the Bolt6 [optical tracking] team to actually drop those graphics in,” Cheney said.

Another new AR application for postseason coverage has been the Ump Cam with pitch tracking. “We’ve seen some amazing shots from the Ump Cam the entire run—watching the tilt of the umpire’s head following a homerun ball,” he says. “Now, we’re seeing pitch tracking on it that actually gives the viewer another detailed point of view of how difficult it is to hit some of those pitches.”

Relying on the knowledge base of MLB Statcast data and optical tracking, Fox Sports lays its AR graphics with full tubes tracking the ball through the strike zone on shots from Ump Cam. The broadcaster also adds pitch sequencing to the same AR set from behind the plate, he adds.

Base Size
When it comes to audio, it’s all about that base—size, that is. MLB approved a plan to make the bases bigger beginning with the 2023 season. Increasing the size of first, second and third base from 15x15 inches to 18x18 inches has had an unexpected broadcast benefit: better sound.

“When you listen to the World Series, you really do hear players moving around the bases a lot more than we ever have before,” Cheney said. “To a large extent, that’s because the bases are larger. You’re getting more sound quality coming out of them, not because we put bigger mics in them. It’s the same system in there, but because there’s more movement of air and more size to it, we’re getting a better sound of what’s happening.”

The larger size means the bases are not as tightly compacted when players are standing on them, and that extra space makes all the difference when it comes to sound quality, he says.

For the Series, Fox Sports is deploying a total of 53 effects microphones as well as three parabolic mics.

Home and Away
With the Series involving the Blue Jays, Fox Sports travels back to Toronto, “not a place we’ve been in nearly 10 years,” Cheney said. Aside from requiring a little more logistical work to get into Canada, though, “it’s been a really great experience up there,” he said.

Fox Sports is relying on mobile production units from both Game Creek Video and NEP with their full complement of cameras. It is also working with Canadian broadcaster Sportsnet, which will provide shots from its drone outside Rogers Centre as well as shots from its Ronin rig. Both Sportsnet’s Ronin rig and Fox Sports’ two MOVI rigs are outfitted with Sony FX6 4K full-frame sensor cameras.

As it has done in the past, the broadcaster will use additional replay and graphics resources in Los Angeles to augment its on-site coverage of the Series. In total, it will have 142 replay records and 32 playouts at its disposal. For graphics, it will leverage two Vizrt systems and a FoxBox for on-screen score graphics.

As it did for the American League Championship Series, Fox Sports will also integrate its large Los Angeles studio into coverage. “That was phenomenal to see [during the LCS] and led us to collaborate a lot more with the L.A. facility, sending extra feeds and coordinating interviews with the team on-site,” Cheney said.

“So, we’re excited to see the studio join us this time back on the road, and we’ll see them for Game 1 on Friday.”

BASINGSTOKE, England — At-home production as an alternative to rolling OB production vehicles to a venue is growing in popularity as broadcasters, leagues and conferences look for ways to maintain a high level of sports production while shedding much of the expense of sending trucks and crews to distant events.

Sony Professional Solutions Europe has taken this concept to the next level by removing the need for centralized production and pushing video switching, graphics and other production elements into the cloud.

[Read: NBC Sports Live Streams Of Major Events Rack Up Big Numbers]

Last weekend, Red Bull Switzerland deployed Sony’s Virtual Production solution for its livestreaming coverage of the Alpenbrevet motorcycle race in Sarnen, Switzerland. The remote, mountainous region where the race takes place made deploying mobile production infrastructure challenging.

However, by leveraging 4G connectivity and cloud-based services, Red Bull was able to capture the race and stream it with just the cameras it deployed and a single laptop used to access the Sony Virtual Switcher GUI.

“While the scenic route of the race is a big draw for our participants, it poses a significant challenge for our broadcast team who want to capture and livestream the event across the globe,” said Hubert Zaech, production manager at Red Bull Switzerland. “Sony’s Virtual Production was the perfect solution for our event as it gives us the freedom, flexibility and agility to capture and distribute content quickly, without having to deal with the logistical nightmare of installing physical infrastructure in these remote locations.”

The Sony Virtual Production workflow is straightforward. Production personnel using Sony’s acquisition kit, log cameras into a personalized virtual production portal, synchronize cameras and stream content on a pay-as-you-go basis. Cameras on location feed their signals via wireless transmitters to a virtual production switcher hosted in the Amazon Web Services cloud.

At the same time, a video switcher located anywhere around the world logs into the Virtual Production service using an ordinary web browser. Camera feeds can be switched, graphics, logos and captions added and the show streamed to various platforms, including YouTube and Facebook Live, from the cloud.

Sony is positioning virtual production as bridging the gap between traditional live production and consumer live streaming and with good reason. Two seconds of switching latency reportedly was introduced by the virtual production setup; however, depending upon circumstances a short delay may be acceptable.

Brad Cheney, Fox Sports VP, Field Operations, put the latency question into perspective. “On events where we are one of many parties with production rights, two seconds is a long time to be delayed in production, as it becomes additive to the entire distribution chain,” he said.

“In other cases, where we are the single production provider, a delay of two seconds becomes more acceptable as the benefits outweigh the delay. With multiplatform uses expanding with cloud production, this timing gives us more capabilities for producing content for our viewers. We know the delay will only continue to be reduced in the coming year and garner more attention as an alternative to current production practices.”

Sony will make its Virtual Production Service available throughout Europe beginning in September. It also will be discussing the service at IBC 2018.

[Want more information like this? Subscribe to our newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox.]