ESPN, TNT Sports Tag-Team on Emirates NBA Cup Production in Las Vegas

The broadcasters will share resources, compound space at T-Mobile Arena

The long and winding trek to the Emirates NBA Cup will conclude over the next few days at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and Saturday’s doubleheader will decide which two teams will battle it out for the second-annual trophy. In a March Madness–esque effort, ESPN and TNT Sports will each produce a semifinal matchup from the arena, relying on help from each other and the league’s broadcast-operations department.

“[These games] feel different because we’re in a neutral venue and working much closer with the NBA,” says Eddie Okuno, senior remote operations specialist, ESPN. “We’re able to do things that we wouldn’t be able to do in an ordinary NBA arena.”

A Different Production Beast: Ops Teams Ramp Up Tech To Match Heightened Intensity

After a successful inaugural competition in 2023, the NBA Cup tourney’s start a month ago demonstrated the teams’ buy-in, with new jerseys, newly designed courts, and an enhanced commitment to play with heart and grit. Fans have turned up to the venues to watch in person, and viewers have tuned in to broadcasts on national and regional networks. As the tournament hits its final stage, the tension on the court will continue to ratchet up. And the championship-level game will be matched by championship-level technologies and workflows.

T-Mobile Arena will host the Emirates NBA Cup Semifinals on Saturday and Championship Game on Tuesday.

“It feels like we’re in the playoffs despite being in the middle of the season,” says Chris Brown, VP, technology and operations, Warner Bros. Discovery. “This year, it has been a little bit easier after last year’s tournament and with the great working relationship that we have with the league.”

TNT Sports, which will broadcast the first semifinal, will deploy an impressive tech arsenal, including 10 hard cameras, six handhelds, four super-slow-motion cameras, its standard above-the-rim robotic camera at each basket, an RF Steadicam, and live coaches mics heard in real time. Another TNT Sports’ standard is remote graphics production from its Techwood facility in Atlanta, an effort that began on NBA Opening Night back in October.

A full-length RailCam will run alongside the players on the court.

Airing on ESPN, the second semifinal and Tuesday night’s final will be the first NBA on ESPN productions to boast five shallow–depth-of-field cameras: a Sony FR7 PTZ robo on each bench, a new Canon C80 on an RS-4 Pro gimbal, and an RF handheld with capabilities to add virtual graphics. Other tech toys include an ARRI ALEXA35 4K Live Production System camera with a Fujifilm DUVO 25-1000mm box lens, SMT Optics strategy tracker and shot-distance tracker with NBA Hawk-Eye data, and TGI Sport on-court virtual advertising.

Each broadcaster will have a dedicated configuration in the compound. TNT Sports will roll with its West Coast workhorse, NEP Supershooter 8 A and B units, as the main game truck and NEP TS2 for an onsite edition of Inside the NBA emanating from the outdoor plaza of T-Mobile Arena. ESPN will be working from NEP EN3 A and B for game coverage and Live Media Group MU-14 for onsite versions of NBA Countdown and NBA Today. The game truck will share multiple camera feeds for studio coverage, and the studio team’s virtual jib camera will be integrated into the live game telecast.

Cross-Network Doubleheader: Networks Tap Shared Resources for Semifinal Round

On Saturday, TNT Sports and ESPN will come together to produce two semifinal games in a single night. Although the schedule at T-Mobile Arena is a lot more favorable this year — the tech infrastructure for last year’s portion in Las Vegas was constructed later than usual because of a Vegas Golden Knights game — key to the tournament’s success is to reflect on last year’s effort and adapt strategies for this weekend.

Along with the RailCam, a Skycam will be shared by ESPN and TNT Sports.

“We tried sticking to the blueprint and made the necessary adjustments for replicating it,” says Brown. “The NBA made some tweaks, but we looked to leverage the lessons learned from last year.”

A neutral-site production for a trophy game is reminiscent of the NBA Bubble during the COVID-shortened season in 2020. As two of the NBA’s domestic rightsholders, TNT Sports and ESPN had long had a strong partnership, but that effort at the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando strengthened their relationship. Four years later, that time together is reflected in Las Vegas.

“The camaraderie and friendship that we have with TNT Sports is unmatched,” says Okuno. “When it comes to operations, we’re always there to help each other out. When the NBA Cup came into our schedules last year, we took the approach of doing it together.”

This willingness to work together in the same venue has translated into sharing selected resources and equipment. TNT Sports’ RF Steadicam, for example, will be used on ESPN’s nightcap on Saturday. ESPN, for its part, is offering Skycam, court-length RailCam, a Sony HDC-5500 low-slash camera, and robotic PTZ cameras. The ESPN-provided cameras will be operating in 1080p/59.94 fps SDR for both semifinal games. Audio will be shared via MADI and Dante paths, along with comms between the broadcasters’ onsite trucks.

Camera positions, including this one near center court, will be shared by the two broadcasters.

To free up space in the shared broadcast compound, the broadcasters will deploy a few remote workflows. Besides TNT Sports’ remote graphics from Techwood, ESPN graphics, clock and score, and four EVS replay operators for game coverage will be located in Bristol, CT. The final cut of the studio show will be distributed from ESPN’s production facility in Los Angeles. In addition, to manage the respective team’s workload, the broadcasters split their crews to produce the two remaining quarterfinal matchups in New York City and Houston on Wednesday.

More Flair: TNT Sports’ Last NBA 2K25 DataCast; ESPN Refines Player Mics

ESPN’s NBA Today and NBA Countdown will be live from outside the venue.

The new NBA-sanctioned competition is bringing in new viewers on its own, but, to offer more viewing options, TNT Sports will execute its last NBA 2K25 DataCast. Having debuted on the quarterfinals doubleheaders on Tuesday and Wednesday, the alternative broadcasts will once again place the roster of the teams into the world of NBA 2K25, with player icons, badges, and energy bars. When you add this activation to a full plate of production responsibilities, it’s another wrinkle that Brown and his crew have to account for.

“This will add some complexity to our setup,” he notes, “since we’ll have a couple of dedicated cameras for this altcast. We’ve really leaned into alternative telecasts, and, for the avid basketball fan, it serves as an awesome companion. The [DataCast] trails about four seconds behind the main telecast, so it gives fans a chance to react to what they’re seeing on TV and then look over to see the stats associated with that same play.”

An overhead look at the broadcast compound in Las Vegas

On ESPN, the broadcasts will bring on-court sound to life via new Digital Q5X Player Mic-Xs. A staple of NBA on ESPN for many seasons, their use has been refined over the past two years, particularly for better sound quality and less obstruction on the player and uniform. A tech playground for the league and ESPN, the two latest NBA Summer Leagues at the Thomas & Mack — a short, 2.5-mile drive down Tropicana Ave. from T-Mobile Arena — was the perfect place to experiment with the refined implementation.

“We had to test it very thoroughly and incorporated the players’ input [into our testing],” notes Okuno. “We also had to make sure that it was transmitting [the signal] accurately.”

Sophomore-Year Growth: NBA Cup Finds Its Rhythm in Second Go-Round

Many sports fans look forward to the holiday season, to settling down with loved ones during a relatively slower time of the year. For sports-production professionals, it’s an extremely busy portion of their work schedule, but the crews at ESPN and TNT Sports are made up of hardworking folks who value their time together.

NEP production trucks are on hand to assist ESPN’s game coverage.

At ESPN, Okuno is joined by Senior Operations Specialist Alan McDonald, Operations Specialist Paul Kucharski, Operations Manager Shane Smith, Senior Operations Producer Kelley Nagi, Operations Producer Justin McIntosh, Senior Operations Coordinator Luis Manuel Lopez, and Operations Coordinator Kim Conrad of game operations and Operations Specialist David Baker, Operations Manager Judi Weiss, Operations Producer Kristianna Bryant, and Senior Operations Coordinator Gianfranca Focareta of studio operations.

At TNT Sports, Brown is joined by Senior Director, Tech and Remote Ops and Crewing, Vanessa Lindsey; Senior Director, Strategic Production Planning, Lee Estroff; Senior Director, Remote Engineering and Operations, Dan Nabors; Manager, Technical Operations, Brent Brown; and Manager, Strategic Production Planning, James Bligh.

The common goal of producing a quality televised product, along with viewers flocking to watch the action, results in a highly anticipated three-game ending to the tournament in its second year.

“The standard was set very high last year to produce an NBA Finals–level production in 2023,” notes Okuno. “This year’s Emirates NBA Cup is about elevating our camera and audio technology.”

The Emirates NBA Cup will host three games in four days in Las Vegas: Saturday’s semifinals — Atlanta Hawks vs. Milwaukee Bucks at 4:30 p.m. ET on TNT, Houston Rockets vs. Oklahoma City Thunder at 8:30 p.m. on ABC — and Tuesday’s championship at 8:30 p.m. on ABC.