College Hoops Preview 2025: TNT Sports Puts Multi-Feed Production Model Front and Center for Largest Slate Ever

TNT Sports will deliver 98 games headlined by its new Big East package

As TNT Sports’ rights portfolio has undergone a drastic makeover in recent years, so too have the production workflows behind the scenes. That is perhaps nowhere more apparent than in the tip-off of its college hoops season this week. TNT Sports’ most expansive slate of regular-season men’s college basketball ever — 98 games in all — will be almost entirely Multi-Feed Productions (MFPs), with the majority of the crew located at its Techwood campus in Atlanta.

TNT Sports College Basketball Pregame on TNT, truTV, and HBO Max is hosted by Adam Lefkoe and produced at the Techwood Studios in Atlanta.

In addition to a new 50-game package of Big East Men’s basketball, TNT Sports will produce 15 Big 12 men’s games, 30+ other men’s college games, 15 Big East Women’s games, 67 NCAA March Madness matchups (jointly with CBS Sports), 13 Big 12 football games, and a pair of College Football Playoff games (sublicensed through ESPN). That’s more than 500 hours of live college sports this year, which marks a 60% year-over-year increase for TNT Sports and Bleacher Report.

“We are excited about this era with TNT Sports,” says Chris Brown, VP, technology and operations, Warner Bros. Discovery. “College sports is one of the most exciting sports on television or streaming. Managing this [Big East college basketball] package is going to be like having the playoffs for four months. We are going to have some bumps along the way, but, with everyone’s commitment to delivering and keeping with the TNT Sports [mentality] and keeping the fan first, it will be an exciting run.”

Over the past two years, TNT Sports has refashioned its Techwood campus in Atlanta into a remote-production hub with a variety of control rooms for various levels of events. This year, the majority of both MLB and NHL productions have been handled as MFPs out of Techwood, and this fall’s college basketball shows will follow suit.

In addition to housing TNT Sports’ Multi-Feed Production facilities, the Techwood campus is home to TNT Sports’ college basketball pre/postgame and halftime studio show.

“I think that, first and foremost, there is the mindset change here,” Brown says of how TNT Sports prepared for the expanded college hoops schedule. “Like Big 12 football or even the NHL, this is different. In each of these cases, we have to represent each brand uniquely but, at the same time, provide the same level of storytelling and coverage that TNT Sports is known for.”

In the field, TNT Sports is deploying a trio of mobile units specially outfitted for MFP workflows: NEP Supershooter 63 and Supershooter 64 and Live Media Group MU 28. Thanks to the flexibility of the MFP model, TNT Sports is also able to use other trucks, such as NEP M-12, ST28, NCPII, and ND7 D. As part of an edict from the TNT Sports production team, the producer and director are onsite for all games, along with the on-air talent. However, the rest of the production team — TD, A1, graphics, EVS operators — will remain at Techwood and work out of an MFP control room.

“High-volume, back-to-back games is what the MFP model was made for,” says Brown. “As many of these games do not have set days, this model was created for this. Using many different trucks, we are able to reuse our control rooms and crew depending on how the scheduling works. But it does create flexibility.”

Each game this season will have a minimum of six cameras (at least one of which will be super-slo-mo, with more depending on availability of camera positions) and three EVS replay servers. The production team will increase equipment levels on a game-to-game basis depending on the matchup.

TNT Sports’ opening week continues with No. 13 Arizona hosting Utah Tech Trailblazers at 9 p.m. ET tonight from McKale Memorial Center in Tucson, AZ.