Live From Daytona 500: Game Creek Video Handles Three Major Cross-Country Productions in Three Consecutive Weeks

The mobile-unit provider was onsite for Super Bowl LVII in Arizona six days ago

The entire sports calendar is a busy time for Game Creek Video, but this three-week-long stretch in February may be its toughest time of the year. Having traveled from the Busch Light Clash at the Coliseum in Los Angeles on Feb. 5 to Super Bowl LVII in Arizona on Feb. 12, the crew is now in Florida for the 2023 Daytona 500 on Sunday, Feb. 19 with its Cleatus mobile unit in the compound.

“It has made our jobs a little bit easier since we don’t have to rebuild our show for the Daytona 500,” says Alex Harmon, engineering manager, Game Creek Video. “We did a lot of the legwork over the past two weeks in Los Angeles to scale it up to Daytona 500 levels, and we’ll scale it back down for next weekend’s race in Fontana, CA, and the rest of the NASCAR season.”

A Glimpse at the Compound: Multiple Trucks Are Assigned Roles

As with previous Daytona 500s in recent years, Game Creek Video has a large presence in the broadcast compound, with a total of four production trucks parked at Daytona International Speedway for this weekend’s high-profile race. On the production, Fox Sports’ race and prerace production teams will be working in Cleatus’s A and B units, and robotic cameras will be controlled from Game Creek Robo1. Edit1 will be onsite as well.

Game Creek Video’s presence in the compound is headlined by the Cleatus production truck.

One mobile unit that wasn’t on hand last year is Game Creek Larkspur. It will house production personnel from NASCAR, The Famous Group, and SMT for the special mixed-reality open commemorating NASCAR’s 75th-anniversary season. In addition, Game Creek is integrating Fox Sports’ employees working remotely from The Vault in Los Angeles or other locations around the U.S.

“We’re doing everything in native 1080p HDR with archive and EVS replay,” Harmon explains. “We have 13 12-channel XT-VIAs onsite, with Fox Sports staffers tapping in from The Vault and NEP’s facility in Pittsburgh. There’s also a remote audio mixer working off a Calrec Brio in his home in Indianapolis and an in-car–radio editor at their home in Georgia.”

To supplement the show, Game Creek is providing 22 total cameras, including 14 hards and eight handhelds. The onsite team of a few more than 10 staffers is also managing video feeds from 20 robos, multiple drones, the Goodyear Blimp, a roaming Megalodon, and various DreamChip POVs on the turns and pit boxes. The number of in-car cameras has been increased by 33, with 12 of them having dual paths.

Game Creek Video’s onsite team in Daytona: (from left) Donald Thomas, Christopher Barrett, Nicholas Bogannam, Steffan Lucio, Bryan Rule, David Greene, Alex Harmon, Shawn McStay, Jared Bunder, Sean Stanley, and Josh Wiggins.

The 2,500-Mile Trek: Cleatus Travels From California to Daytona Beach

To accommodate back-to-back-to-back weekends of production efforts with Fox Sports, Game Creek Video assigned specific mobile units to the appropriate compounds. As the main NASCAR on Fox mobile unit, Cleatus was on hand for the Busch Light Clash in Los Angeles. Deployed for the lead NFL on Fox game package, Encore took center stage at Super Bowl LVII at State Farm Stadium in Arizona. The following weekend, Cleatus traveled the 2,500 miles between Los Angeles and Daytona, FL, to be onsite for tomorrow’s season-opening race.

“Our drivers did a tremendous job driving [Cleatus] all the way here,” adds Harmon. “They left on Sunday, Feb. 5 and arrived in Daytona on Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 1 p.m. They’ll double back to [head to] Fontana on Sunday, Feb. 19 and arrive on Thursday, Feb. 23 [for the Pala Casino 400 at Auto Club Speedway on Sunday, Feb. 26].”

Fork in the Road: Encore Heads to NFL Combine; Cleatus, to Pala Casino 400

Game Creek’s two premiere mobile units, Cleatus and Encore, will continue to travel the nation through the end of the month. The former will go to Fontana and beyond for coverage of the 2023 NASCAR season; the latter goes to Indianapolis for the 2023 NFL Combine Feb. 28–March 6.

The crew handling these tentpole events deserve a lot of credit. To focus on one broadcast at a time, the team that was onsite for the NFC Championship game in Philadelphia was on hand for Super Bowl LVII; the team working the Clash at the Coliseum will pitch in on NASCAR’s season opener.

“Our Daytona 500 team is made up of the core group that’ll handle productions for NASCAR during the entire season,” say Harmon. “It’s unlike last year, when the team that’s assigned to Encore had to come [to Daytona] without having worked on a NASCAR event before. With our Cleatus team back onsite, our production is a bit easier, but this show is also a little bigger than in 2022.”