Live From Dublin: Vikings–Steelers NFL Dublin Game Kicks Off 2025 Europe Slate

Airing on NFL Network, the show was produced by FOX Sports

The NFL’s 2025 international tour rolled into Dublin for Week 4 of the 2025 season, with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ defeat of the Minnesota Vikings a 24-21 thriller at Croke Park marking the first-ever league game in Ireland.

The Vikings–Steelers Dublin game aired on NFL Network with play-by-play announcer Joe Davis, analyst Greg Olsen, and sideline reporters Pam Oliver and Jamie Erdahl on the call. Mike Pereira served as rules analyst. Additionally, Vikings–Steelers was available on broadcast stations in Minneapolis (KMSP) and Pittsburgh (WTAE). Croke Park’s normal 82,300 capacity was reduced to 75,000 to accommodate the NFL stadium overlay.

The broadcast was a collaboration, with FOX Sports producing for air on NFL Network and the FOX B crew core group onsite. In addition, FOX client NFL Network had a team onsite. Bill Morris, founder/CEO, BMTV, supported with technical plan, local crew, and equipment.

In Dublin’s Croke Park compound: (from left) Bill Morris, BMTV; Michael Davies, FOX Sports; Tim Deacon, NEP UK; and Clyde Taylor, FOX Sports

Vendors onsite included NEP Europe (facilities), Film & TV Services (power), Chapman Grip London (carts), and Trans-Sport.tv (rigging, transport, and storage). IP-based NEP Ceres and Mercury triple-expanding UHD HDR A and B units were in the compound: Ceres handling FOX host production, engineering, and EVS; Mercury providing audio submix, graphics, control for all robotic cameras (booth, goal, and corridor robos for team walkouts), and accommodation for NFL Network executives.

NEP UK Caspian truck was on hand for NFLI Screens. NEP Atlantic OB was working for Channel 5 UK, with Hungry Bear Media producing coverage. NEP Ireland provided facilities for Virgin Media Ireland’s live broadcast, and NEP Germany’s Edit 8 OB was in the compound for RTL Germany. Additionally, Sky Sports was onsite with an in-house presentation unit for its remote-production live coverage, and NEP provided fiber interconnect around the stadium for M6 France.

The camera plan was something Croke Park had certainly never seen before: a full NFL game setup involving near and far RF line-to-gain; three pylon cams on each corner flag provided by BSI USA; four-axis Spidercam overhead; six Sony HDC 5500 super-slo-mos; 100:1 carts high and low; two pitch-side Steadicams; two RF handhelds, far left and near left slash; goal robos at each end; three 14:1 NFLN field set cameras; far-sideline handheld and reverse 50; near- and far-side reporters with SWIT field monitors; talent-spotter camera; home and away coaches’ booth POVs; and Steelers and Vikings locker PTZs. Game- and play-clock Sony HDC-3500 cameras were provided by NEP UK.

Brand NFL: Super Bowl Protocols in Dublin

“At NFL Network,” says Margaret Thompson, manager, production operations, NFL Media, “we don’t traditionally do a lot of our own game coverage, so we don’t have the same crew infrastructure as other American broadcasters. In the past, we have hired one of the broadcasters to do the games on our behalf as they have the full infrastructure. We have our producers here giving creative input, and some of the talent is ours, but the game crew — the director and the nitty gritty of the production — is all FOX Sports.

Chad McKelvey (left) and Margaret Thompson in NFL Network’s TX MCR cabin onsite

“Bill Morris and NEP, Trans-Sport.tv, and a small NFL Network team are going to do the whole international series,” she says. “It’s definitely a competitive game for NFL Network. Our network team here would be 20 people, and there’s a larger NFL Media group on the ground as well.

“The Croke Park people have been very accommodating,” Thompson continues. “We did a scouting visit in June to view the location and to ensure we would have the facilities we needed and that we would make Croke Park look good on camera and [excite] the fans. The Appear kits for our encoding and decoding are shipped all over the U.S. for our games, and we’ve shipped them to Dublin. We use Lumen for our primary transmission and Tata Communications as diverse backup.”

Transmission technology for all unilateral broadcasters was provided by NEP Connect operating out of a TOC cabin onsite, a central point where broadcasters came to send and receive feeds, with NEP Net Insight Nimbras sending the feeds out to the world.

Says Thompson, “I’m operations manager for shipping, logistics, crew schedules, coordinating with Populous [which runs mapping and space usage for these major events], NFL Events, and the full broadcast. Essentially, we’re running all the international games as ‘Super Bowl lite’ with not quite the same specification as the Super Bowl but with a lot of the same protocols. With a normal game in the U.S., you wouldn’t see the NFL coming in and branding everything around the city, with IT and security as well.”

Adds Chad McKelvey, who is serving as transmission tech for NFL Network in the compound, “Our Appear chassis is encoding HEVC over IP, 20 encodes and 16 decodes. This kit is built for tallies as well, so, when we send back cameras for remote stuff, we can tally them. It’s our second season with Appear kits. We also have Blackmagic Design frame converters here in the cabin to convert from the production in 50 Hz to 59.94 Hz for the United States and back again.”

Trickiest game: Overlay and unique camera plan

BMTV’s Morris serves as technical supervisor for NFL London and European games for CBS, FOX, ESPN, and NFLN. He was formerly COO of CTV Outside Broadcasts and EMG UK (now part of Gravity Media)

“Here we are,” he says, “in Dublin with, what is fair to say, the trickiest game of the six for the European series. The only reason it’s tricky is that the legacy rig and facilities at Croke Park are not capable of producing an NFL game, and therefore we have had to create a compound here in the Davin car park: the legacy parking lot inside the stadium is capable of housing three trucks, and we are looking at 24 trucks plus 16 cabins in the compound.

“However,” Morris continues, “Croke Park has a relationship with the NFL, and, therefore, we have put the correct overlay in to make it possible. I have to say that Croke Park are a delight to work with in terms of their management and, at every juncture, have made everything possible for us. At first, it’s fair to say they were probably amazed at how much equipment and infrastructure was required for the game, but they got on-message very quickly, which is great.

“By that I mean team infrastructure,” he adds, “because, of course, NFL is unique in its team infrastructure in terms of technology: everything from coaches booths to comms, instant replay, analysis, and so on. Broadcast is also quite far-reaching in terms of its technology and analysis as well and its requirement for real estate. Field sets, booths, reporter positions, pylons — the whole 10 yards, to use an NFL analogy — for what is required.

“Just the physics: the NFL field is much smaller than the Croke Park pitch, so we have a field which requires us to build an apron around it, and a lot of LED infrastructure goes around that, and, behind those LED walls, of course, we have multiple unilateral broadcasters and the host broadcaster plus game presentation.

“Let’s not forget NFL is a show,” Morris adds, “so there is a lot of screens and event production going on as part of the game, both for the audience in the stadium and the audience at home. That takes up a lot of real estate, and requires a lot of labor and a lot of technical operational space as well.

“In addition,” he continues, “we have 16 cabins [housing] transmission facilities plus Hawk-Eye and Tempus analysis — NFL technologies capturing every single camera used for the shows with a direct conduit to the NFL for archiving and analysis. Hawk-Eye are also doing the ring cameras around the roof of the stadium capturing the virtual game. That’s a very big installation in itself.

“There are seven main transmission outputs from Ceres, one of which is the clean output that goes to NFL International. They have a cloud-based production that adds NFL graphic and filler content, which then comes back to the NEP TOC cabin onsite and is distributed to the overseas unilateral broadcasters.

The Croke Park OB compound, from the stadium

“They take the international output,” says Morris, “which is seven frames delayed, and meld that into their own production — which means that, if they have in-game cameras themselves, they have to delay their own cameras by seven frames to match the NFL International feed, which is produced into the unilateral shows with the various facilities onsite. This allows the NFL to have their own bespoke content within the international contribution. We have a crew of about 200 in total here, split between U.S. and UK people.”

In producing the game presentation, Van Wagner took the real-time feed from Ceres and added its own complete production layer, including unilateral camera and production from an NEP-supplied truck. The in-house show covered national anthems, halftime, and commercials run in the stadium when the host broadcast went to play stops and commercials.

Nonexistent Positions: ‘Bending the Venue to Our Will’

The NFL rebranded Croke Park and surrounding vicinity as an NFL venue for the one game: everything from branding on walls to in-venue–show production and stadium perimeter security.

“This show, Dublin, is most important because we’re setting up for a tour here: a six-show NFL tour, that’s how we see it,” says Michael Davies, EVP, field and technical management and operations, FOX Sports. “It’s going to be the same trucks and the same European crew that will travel from event to event. Obviously, I’ll swap out my crews, but everyone who came from NEP will stick together, and that was the concept.

“We also have Populous here, a consulting company that works for the NFL and does the actual event overlay,” he continues. “They give us the area for television and work with Bill Morris to determine where the camera positions are and work out where everything is: they are ultimately responsible for the entire overlay for the event. They have been on the ground for a long time working on TV, security, and perimeters across the area.

“NFL and IT service provider WBL Services decided that the compound in the stadium wasn’t big enough,” Davies adds. “Hence, we’re in this parking lot across the canal from the stadium. With the Croke Park organizers, they put in a fiber box and built the fiber interconnect and ran it under the canal for this event. It’s a patch field that connects into the system, an external dark-fiber demark with 400 single-mode ST fibers.

“This is what I would call an A show, with the cameras and pylons and robos,” he continues. “There is not anything unusual in how we cover this event; what’s unusual is how we get the cameras into the required places, with camera positions that don’t exist. We bend the venue to our will in that regard.”

Says NEP Tech Project Manager Tim Deacon, “I would say this is a Champions League spec plus plus plus! I think we’re up to 120 facilities crew just on game-day host plus all the unilaterals.

“The legacy install [at Croke Park] is minimal,” he continues, “and most of it is triax. It wasn’t ever going to be a starter. By the time we came out for the first scouting visit in June, they had finalized a plan to install fiber from the legacy compound in the stadium to this compound. What that is doing is getting us into the stadium. At the other end of the connection, we have a team of engineers who are cross-patching into fibers we have run in, to get us around the stadium. We go over ST fibers into the legacy compound and break out those fibers into Sony SHEDs, which lets us insert SMPTE into the workflow. It is a very strong engineering team.”

NFL International Tour Continues

Next on the NFL’s 2025 international slate, the Vikings travel to London to play the Cleveland Browns at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the only purpose-built NFL stadium outside the U.S., on Sunday, Oct. 5.

The New York Jets take on the Denver Broncos on Sunday, Oct. 12, also at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The third and final game in London will feature the Jacksonville Jaguars against the Los Angeles Rams at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 19.

For the first time in Berlin, the Indianapolis Colts will host the Atlanta Falcons at the Olympic Stadium on Sunday, Nov. 9. The 2025 international slate will culminate in Madrid on Sunday, Nov. 16 with the Miami Dolphins taking on the Washington Commanders at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, in the league’s first-ever regular-season game in Spain.