The Utah Talons completed a dominant run through the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) season on July 26, sweeping the Chicago Bandits to capture their second consecutive league championship. Behind every pitch, swing and celebration was a production effort led by GameTime Productions, whose REMI workflows, production personnel and collaborative approach with sister companies TNDV and Live Media helped deliver and/or support national broadcasts across ESPN platforms, CBS Sports Network, MLB Network MLB.TV, and Scripps Sports Network.
Produced over nearly three months across seven market locations, the AUSL season challenged GameTime to manage one of its most ambitious live sports productions to date. While mobile production units supported every venue including two championship games and one playoff game at Davis Diamond in College Station, Texas, most broadcasts were produced remotely from Nashville using TNDV’s purpose-built “Dugout” control rooms. These recently constructed control rooms allowed production teams to manage simultaneous games from multiple locations while maintaining consistent broadcast quality across every network partner.
“The AUSL season represented exactly the type of project our organization was built to support,” said Patricia Lowry, President of GameTime Productions. “It required the production expertise of GameTime, the engineering innovation of TNDV and the mobile production resources of Live Media working together as one team. From our first conversations with Athletes Unlimited to the championship celebration, every division played a critical role in delivering a consistent, high-quality broadcast experience that reflected the league’s vision and values.”
GameTime supported productions in Rosemont, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; Round Rock, Texas; Oklahoma City; Salt Lake City and other host markets, often managing up to three games in one day across different market locations and providing dedicated production personnel for 12 regular season games. The production workflow combined onsite camera crews and mobile units with centralized production teams in Nashville, where producers, directors, replay operators, graphics specialists and audio engineers collaborated in real time. GameTime also provided a small production team to assist with the integration of Spanish-language announcers for ESPN Deportes feeds.
The production also incorporated advanced storytelling tools that enhanced the viewing experience, resulting in a series of memorable production assets managed through Lowry’s vision. These included timely integrations of POVORA live on-player and umpire wearable cameras for POV field perspectives; on-player and umpire microphones for live sound capture from the field; and iPhones for live and replay capture. Additionally, most games featured separate reporter stories and interviews with live player-to-booth interview integration, as well as remote guest integration for the “Call to the Bullpen” segment on MLB Network.
Other technologies of interest included customized graphics packages, integrated statistical dashboards and Trackman data that provided exit velocity, pitch speed and other advanced performance metrics.
“Our engineering strategy was designed around flexibility and scalability,” said Chris Payne, Vice President of Engineering for TNDV. “We were simultaneously transporting dozens of synchronized video, audio and data feeds from ballparks across the country back to Nashville, where our production teams could produce multiple live games at once. That workflow allowed us to efficiently support a demanding national schedule, while giving every broadcast the same production quality audiences expect from major league sports.”
The championship series also saw, for the nationally televised playoffs, Live Media deploy one of its mobile production units onsite to produce the ESPN broadcast. The truck then remained in place for the two-game Championship Final, providing the production infrastructure and technical resources for the ESPN production team as the games aired on ABC and ESPN.
The successful AUSL season further demonstrated the unique advantages of the integrated Live Media Group organization.
— Brian Galante, for Weekly Tech Roundup
