TCL Team Boxing League Prepares To Wrap Third Season

Young league focuses on team aspect, deploys REMI production model

Season 3 of the TCL Team Boxing League concludes Sunday in decisive fashion. Defending champion Philadelphia Smoke and Season 1 champ NYC Attitude will compete in Mega Brawl III at the Renaissance Glendale Hotel in Glendale, AZ.

For this season, Larry Meyers — who most recently served as EVP, content, for Pac 12 Networks for six years — has been overseeing broadcast productions for the upstart league, which has 12 teams and consists of 24 one-round fights.

TCL Team Boxing broadcasts are produced out of The Plex production facility in Fort Worth, TX.

In February, Meyers, while on vacation in Vietnam, received an unexpected call from Merit TV CEO Ken Solomon. The pair had been colleagues at Tennis Channel for years when Solomon was CEO and Meyers oversaw live production and original programming.

What was the ask from Solomon? Help Merit TV, which has rights to air TCL on its channels, get the boxing property on the air. “I said, ‘Okay, well, it’s not a lot of time,’” Meyers recalls, laughing. “Ken said, ‘I know.’ We decided to go for it.”

Meyers, who has also had career stops at FOX Sports and Spectrum, got involved in March, and TCL hit the Merit TV airwaves, on both linear and digital, in April with single and doubleheader broadcasts. Weekend events have typically been split between Friday and either Saturday or Sunday on Merit TV, continuing while parent firm Merit Street Media is engaged in legal conflicts amid ongoing bankruptcy proceedings.

“It has been a lot of work because it was fast and furious,” says Meyers. “It has also been rewarding to see it come together the way it has.”

TCL Team Boxing has operated as a REMI broadcast from The Plex production facility in Fort Worth, TX. Its studio and on-air broadcast talent are positioned there, supported by a strong Plex engineering team, and the ringside reporter is onsite at the event. The boxing producer partnered with Nashville-based facilities and video-production company TNDV to create two flight packs for cameras and audio effects for the events. Gear is shipped site to site.

The production effort has two four-channel Haivision encoders are onsite, with matching decoders at the studio in Texas, plus Haivison-based return video. Normally, TCL deploys six HD cameras — four operated, two locked-off — for the events, including a jib that provides complete coverage around the ring.

Inside the TCL control room at The Plex facility

TCL wants to create a theater-like environment, where the ring is the center stage, Meyers explains. A key differentiator in the Team Boxing genre is that the entire roster of fighters sit together in “The Corral” ringside, cheering on their teammates, and, in an on-deck circle, the next fighter prepares for the next of the 24 one-round bouts that make up the matchup between two teams.

“I look forward to getting even more inside the event in terms of small cameras and high-frame-rate cameras,” he says. “We could have cameras on the refs and cameras on the boxers. There could be cameras on the ring poles. I think we will grow into that quickly as the league continues to grow.”

For onsite connectivity, TCL is using, almost exclusively, Internet provided by the venues.

“I’m not an engineer, but I’m a technology-oriented production person,” Meyers says. “Transmission technology has come a long way from my early days of hooking up to the local phone company or having large expensive uplinks onsite.

“In all my years in live production,” he continues, “connectivity is always a spot you have to watch carefully, right? This is working really well. Doing the events with public Internet at little additional cost provided by the venue is, after all [my] years in the business, amazing, game-changing.”

For the event experience, TCL, led by Commissioner Kevin Cassidy, believes the “venue should be an experience that goes beyond what happens in the ring,” Meyers says. At the start of each night, TCL highlights both teams’ fighters through a flashy, walk-out entrance where fans can see everyone’s face, all to promote the team aspect of the sport. The two fixed cameras are also aimed at each bench’s players, and the ringside reporter interviews players during the bouts, too.

About 15 production-team members, including the play-by-play caller and analyst, are at the Texas-based Merit TV facility and TCL Team Boxing studio. Justin Shackl and Beto Duran have done the bulk of the play-by-play with boxing veteran analyst Dave Bontempo. Newcomer (and still active boxer) Amelia Moore is working ringside. Meyers, noting that nearly everyone who works on the show’s broadcast from Texas is a local freelancer, is also stationed at the facility for the events. Sports-production veteran Jason Moon serves as director/producer. Eight to 12 individuals are typically onsite at the venue.

TCL Team Boxing has worked with Ross Video Xpression on all graphics for the events. PSS oversees all event lighting and the interface with sound and the public-address system.