BURLINGTON, MASS.—We all know that football is a team sport, well so is producing a broadcast of the year’s biggest football game, the Super Bowl. Fox Sports will handle coverage of Super Bowl LI this year and is reportedly using Avid equipment as part of its team for the broadcast. Avid technology will be on hand to facilitate collaboration between production teams in different locations, provide easy access to footage, and create virtual reality experiences.
Fox has implemented Avid’s MediaCentral platform to aid the various needs of its productions. In addition, the Avid iNEWS platform is managing rundowns and scripting for Fox Sports studio programing, most of which is being produced on site in Houston. The iNEWS system will also be used for on Super Bowl Sunday for the broadcasters seven-hours of pre-game coverage.
While the shows are being produced in Houston, finishing touches are being completed in Los Angeles and Charlotte, N.C. To handle this distribution, Fox is using Avid’s flexible deployment options to network all of its iNEWS systems together, allowing all materials to be shared on a single rundown and updated in real time.
Avid has also provided Fox with 320 TB of storage that acts as a central repository for all Fox editing systems, including 27 TB of archival footage of the New England Patriots and Atlanta Falcons. The productions main compound at NRG Stadium and three remote locations throughout Houston are all connected to this storage system.
Additional Avid technology in use for the big game includes the Avid 3DPlay graphics and video processing system, which is powering LiveLike’s virtual reality platform that will help create a virtually reality suite available through the Fox Sports app. Avid’s HDVG rendering platform will also be on hand to add augmented graphics to the field during the game with Twizted Design’s Flowgic real-time data integration application.
Super Bowl LI between the Patriots and the Falcons will take place in Houston at NRG Stadium Feb. 5 at 6:30 p.m. ET.
