CONCACAF W Gold Cup Production Shows Commitment to Growing Women’s Football

Female grads of HBS Broadcast Academy take on key producer, director roles

The first-ever CONCACAF W Gold Cup concludes this weekend at San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium with the USA national women’s team squaring off against Brazil’s national women’s team. The 14-match tournament continues CONCACAF’s commitment to make women’s soccer just as vital and important as men’s soccer from a production and programming standpoint.

A Cablecam was added for the semi-finals and captured the dramatic penalty shoot-out between the U.S. and Canada on Wednesday night.

“We have to make a big investment,” says Oscar Sanchez, director, broadcast operations/executive producer, CONCACAF. “This is the largest women’s tournament in our region since the Women’s World Cup in Canada in 2015, and we need to have the same quality as the men’s games because sometimes the stories are even more impactful, like Mexico beating the U.S. for the first time ever. It has to look similar to what fans saw last summer in Australia and New Zealand.”

The tournament is being broadcast on CBS/Paramount+ in English in the U.S. (ESPN has the Spanish-language rights), OneSoccer in Canada, and ESPN throughout Latin and South America (there is also radio coverage, which Sanchez says is still very important for the sport, especially outside the U.S.). Group Stage matches were held at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, CA; Shell Energy Stadium in Houston; and Snapdragon Stadium. The quarterfinals took place at BMO Stadium in Los Angeles; the semi-finals on March 6 were at Snapdragon Stadium, which will host the final on Sunday, March 10.

There are two core production crews. One is based in California. The other was in Houston and moved to Los Angeles for the quarterfinals.

The Paramount+ studio show for the CONCACAF W Gold Cup illustrates the growing commitment to enhancing women’s sports coverage.

“We had an expanded camera plan for the Knockout Stage onwards,” notes Sanchez, “so we needed more people. For the Group Stage, we had 12 cameras and went up to 20 for the other games. We added Pico Cams because they provide really good replays, and we will add a Cablecam for the semis and final in Snapdragon.”

Women are being celebrated on the pitch, and CONCACAF is celebrating them off the pitch as well: it has tapped the HBS Broadcast Academy, which was launched four years ago with the goal of giving women training to become production leaders in the industry.

“Ashley Moore, who started in the HBS Academy program four years ago, directed the matches in Houston,” notes Sanchez. “We have seen her grow and take on leadership positions within our competitions. Her producer is Laura McDonald, who also is from the Academy, and seeing them work together makes me feel happy for them and what they’ve accomplished.”

CONCACAF is also bringing in a team of production professionals from Scotland. Led by Director Grant Philips, that team was in North America two years ago for the CONCACAF Women’s Championships in Monterrey, Mexico.

“The biggest challenge is manpower,” says Sanchez, “not because there are not enough great talented people here in the U.S. but because there are not enough that understand soccer. MLS and IMG are doing a good job on a weekly basis creating teams that work together.”

HBS is once again providing core production staff and facilities. Among other key partners is Game Creek Video, which provided trucks for matches at Dignity Health Sports Park.

“Game Creek has been a really good partner through HBS,” says Sanchez. “It’s always great working with them because their engineers are proactive, young, talented people. And they combine the knowledge of a traditional EIC while also understanding the IP setup.”

Mediapro is providing trucks (Alto in Houston and OB 56 in San Diego) as well as commentary facilities in Miami.

“We have a long relationship with MediaPro,” says Sanchez. “It’s a good combination with Game Creek because our challenge now is that we are competing with so many things going on, like college sports. But we also have our Champions Cup with games in Orlando, Philadelphia, and Houston.”

NEP Vista, also in Miami, provides and manages fiber and satellite-transmission paths as well as creating the final clean feed by adding in graphics and commentary remotely.

The growing interest in and importance of women’s soccer means not only providing better production resources to make images sparkle and shine (all the action is being shot in 1080p SDR and is available to rightsholders in both 1080p and 1080i) but also making sure there are no failure points with respect to power.

“That is always one of our most important things,” says Sanchez. “We’ve been working with HBS on a nice power setup. For example, in Houston, we used UPS systems, which is a new setup for us that also helps us be greener.”