SVG College Summit: Industry Celebrates SVG College Pioneer Award Recipient Imry Halevi

Harvard University Athletics' Associate Director of Athletics - Content & Strategic Communications is the award's 10th honoree

At the 2022 SVG College Summit in Atlanta, Sports Video Group celebrated the career of Imry Halevi with the presentation of the SVG College Pioneer Award.

In his current role of Associate Director of Athletics – Content & Strategic Communications for Harvard University Athletics, Halevi is one of the industry’s leading innovators in live sports production and is a constant resources for the college sports industry nationwide.

Halevi leads Harvard Athletics’ Content & Strategic Communications group, uniting the multimedia and communications teams in a new and unique structure for collegiate athletics departments. He oversees the production and streaming of 38 of Harvard’s 42 varsity teams. He worked with his counterparts from the Ivy League office and the other seven league schools, to launch and develop the league’s integrated platform for live and on-demand content – the Ivy League Network. In 2018, Halevi helped the Ivy League launch a new league-wide partnership with ESPN, and establish the “Ivy League on ESPN” network.

During his time at Harvard, he has reorganized video board productions and live game broadcasting, bringing these efforts in house, and expanding their scope and reach. His efforts include the completion of two central control rooms, and the building of a NCAA-leading fully automated streaming infrastructure for tennis and squash meets. The Crimson have seen their online viewership more than double and their subscription revenues triple within his first year.

Harvard University’s Imry Halevi is the latest recipient of the SVG College Pioneer Award.

Halevi established partnerships between Harvard and ESPN and NESN (New England Sports Network), as well as other national and regional networks, to broadcast the Crimson’s in-house productions of live sporting events, the first such relationship in the Ivy League. Staffing the productions almost exclusively with students from local area colleges, Halevi and the multimedia team were able to provide real-world hands-on experience for dozens of students looking to develop their production and broadcasting skills.

In the early days of his career, Halevi served as Associate Director of Video Production at Northeastern University. There, he directed live event broadcasting, post-production, branding and graphic design for the Huskies while overseeing hiring and training for the video production team and managing capital and operating production budgets for the Athletics department. He also led the re-branding efforts at Northeastern Athletics in 2009, a process that streamlined and simplified the marks and branding guide for the department. Before coming to Northeastern, Halevi served as video production and graphic design assistant at Boston University’s Agganis Arena, where he created commercial spots for national and local television broadcasts, and produced original content for the center-hung video board at the 6,000-seat arena.

Halevi is a member of the SVG College Summit Advisory Board and chaired the Sports Video Group’s 2016 College Sports Summit. Additionally, he chairs the Ivy League Digital Strategy Committee and the Ivy League Multimedia Directors Group and co-chairs the Harvard Athletics Multimedia and Technology Advisory Committee.

SVG College Sports Summit Pioneer Award Honorees:
2021-22: Imry Halevi, Harvard University
2019: Tom Odjakjian, American Athletic Conference, Big East Conference, ESPN
2018: Rick Bagby, Clemson University
2017: Chris Taylor, Ball State University
2016: Jim Nachtman, Pennsylvania State University
2015: John Kvatek, University of Central Florida
2015: Jeff Schmahl, Texas A&M University, University of Nebraska
2014: Rick Church, Michigan State University
2013: Mark Rodin, Florida State University
2012: Ken Norris, University of California, Los Angeles

The SVG College Pioneer Award is selected in a multi-step voting process by a panel of past Pioneer Award honorees, current and former SVG College Summit chairmen, SVG staffers, and members of the SVG College Advisory Committee.