Baltimore Ravens Gear Up for AFC Championship With Updated Content Management at M&T Bank Stadium

Two longtime partners, Beck TV and Ross Video, were involved in the project

As the Baltimore Ravens roll through their side of the NFL Playoffs bracket, the in-venue production team that fires up the Ravens Flock has a new tool for game day. With the help of two partners from the club’s 2019 control-room renovation, Beck TV and Ross Video, the AFC’s No. 1 seed is deploying a new content-management system (CMS) to deliver content more efficiently to various LED displays within M&T Bank Stadium.

Over two offseasons, the Baltimore Ravens upgraded their content-management system for maximum efficiency.

“The Ravens’ production team executes one of the highest-level shows in the league,” says Matt Weiss, VP, business development/senior engineer, BeckTV. “We worked toward simplifying the infrastructure between video production and the final fiber to those boards.”

Two-Part Approach: Project Receives Two Offseasons’ Worth of Effort

The system is already paying dividends, after work that began more than two years ago. Looking to enhance the original CMS installed in 2017, the Ravens launched the project in February 2022. With prior knowledge of the technology used in the venue, the Ross Video team worked closely with Baltimore Ravens Director, Broadcast Technical Operations, Steve Groff to come up with a plan.

Refurbished in 2019, the Ravens’ control room received a technology update with the help of BeckTV and Ross Video.

“We worked with BeckTV to redo their core infrastructure since [the Ravens] wanted to upgrade all their Tessera engines to newer versions,” says Stefan Tribble, solution specialist, sports and live events, Ross Video. “We designed a whole new system with newer solutions that make their workflows more efficient.”

Ross Video used the first phase during the spring and summer of 2022 to commission the new Tessera engines and install them into the control-room space. The work coincided with a graphics revamp, which was done by Art Director Matt Zidik, Senior Graphic Designer/Programmer Chris Kaptein, and the rest of the team working with Ross Video’s Rocket Surgery offering. With a majority of the work done in the spring and summer of 2023, the effort focused on display processing and scaling, as well as further syncing the Tessera engines to the venue’s LED displays. Besides Tribble, Ross Video staff assigned to the project included Technical Solutions Manager, Sports and Live Events, Andrew Sampson and Technical Support Specialist Eve Renaud.

“This past season,” Tribble explains, “we switched everything that was originally being done through a Christie Spyder over to Ultrix and Carbonite Mosaic. A total of 12 Tessera nodes make up [the Ravens’] whole system and go along with a ton of their graphic inserts.”

In-venue shows are powered via a Ross Acuity production switcher.

BeckTV was in charge of the overall scope of the project. As systems integrator at the center of the 2019 refurbishment, it has witnessed the transformation of the control room into its current iteration and helped transition it from Evertz ASPEN 2110 to SMPTE 2110 for an enhanced IP environment.

“[The Ravens] wanted to bring their gear to where they’re at the forefront of what most NFL control rooms are doing,” says Tribble. “They also aimed to future-proof their control room and have the ability to continue to expand as the industry moves along.”

The control-room team operates on new Tessera engines at M&T Bank Stadium.

BeckTV’s working relationship and collaboration with Ross Video, along with the expertise of BeckTV Senior Engineer Brock Raum and Broadcast Engineer Brendon Rusch, were main drivers of the effort.

Says Tribble, “They’re always on top of industry trends and technologies and constantly pushing us to be better. We’ve always enjoyed working with them on projects.”

Sidestepping Challenges: Temporary Setup, Lingering Supply-Chain Delays

Ross Video XPression drives graphics to the videoboard.

The two-phased approach was adopted to ensure that the project was completed with precision and accuracy, but the decision to conduct the work over two offseasons was also to accommodate the state of the industry in 2022. Only two years removed from the onset of COVID-19 in the U.S. and around the globe, the project had to deal with one of the pandemic’s consequences.

“In 2022, we still had supply-chain issues,” Weiss points out. “It was [late spring] by the time we
got all the components, so we didn’t want to risk going into the summer with a new system and not have enough time to make sure that everything was working.”

To that end, in the first iteration of the final project, the Ravens deployed one set of tools for the 2022 NFL season. For that one season, the production crew — which is led by VP, Broadcasting and Gameday Productions, Jay O’Brien — worked with equipment that was then removed after the Week 18 matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers on New Year’s Day 2023.

“We had to integrate the new Tessera engines to the LED displays with the old Christie Spyder system,” says Tribble. “After BeckTV swapped them out, we had to re-create this workflow within the same system [to match the operation established] the previous year.”

Critical Player in the Playoffs: CMS System To Be Used This Sunday

With the system fully deployed for the 2023 regular season and the current NFL Playoffs, Ravens fans haven’t skipped a beat and are enjoying the prompts and content being shown on game day. When Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs — along with superfans Taylor Swift and Jason Kelce — come to M&T Bank Stadium this weekend, the production team will be tapping into the new CMS and making the home fans go wild.

“The Ravens do an amazing job with fan engagement and creative storytelling,” says Tribble. “It has been pretty awesome, and I take a lot of pride in being involved in [their show].”

The AFC Championship, featuring the Baltimore Ravens and the Kansas City Chiefs, kicks off at 3 p.m. ET Sunday on CBS.