Follow the Money, Episode 3: Inside the Sports-Media Biz With Sam McCleery and Ken Aagaard

Discussing the business case for live-sports-broadcast innovation

Welcome to the Sports Video Group’s new interview series, Follow the Money, designed to help SVG members and sponsors have a deeper understanding of the sports-media rights, technology-investment, and financial communities. Hosted by Sam McCleery, an Emmy Award–winning executive who has worked for ESPN, Cablevision, Adidas, Prince Tennis, and Under Armour, each episode will feature experts in the sports-innovation and investment community discussing a wide range of topics.

Live sports production is a booming business, but where does broadcast innovation fit into the equation?

On Episode 3 of Follow the Money, host Sam McCleery sits down with Ken Aagaard, a longtime sports-broadcast executive and former CBS SVP of engineering, operations, and production management, for a wide-ranging conversation on how innovation has shaped his career and how he sees the future of innovation in sports production.

WATCH: Follow the Money, Episode 3 – Ken Aagaard

Aagaard is one of the true connective figures in modern sports television: a production executive, technologist, and operations leader whose career has been at the intersection of live event coverage, emerging technology, and large-scale broadcast transformation.

Across nearly six decades in the business, he has helped shape the way major sports are produced and delivered, from the NFL, MLB, and the Olympics to the FIFA World Cup and professional golf. He has overseen some of the industry’s biggest productions and, just as important, has introduced tools and workflows that later became standards: notably, early network adoption of high definition, 360-degree camera technology at the Super Bowl and Protracer ball-tracking for golf broadcasts.

His leadership roles have spanned the full sports-production ecosystem. At NBC, he ran sports operations and Olympic operations, overseeing Super Bowls, World Series, and the 1988 Seoul Summer Games. At CBS Sports, he served as SVP of engineering, operations, and production management, guiding technology strategy and large-event execution while also contributing to the launch of MLB Network and consulting on Discovery/Eurosport’s Olympics coverage.

Beyond network television, Aagaard founded and continues to lead CBT, a production and consulting company that has produced major international events and helped design and build broadcast facilities, including Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando.

Today, he remains actively engaged across the industry. Consulting with such organizations as CBS Sports, Discovery Olympics, the PGA TOUR, MLB Network, and NEP gives him a current, cross-market perspective on where live sports production is heading, how technology decisions actually get made, and what it takes to scale innovation for real-world operations.

For future episodes of Follow the Money and to watch other original interviews from Sports Video Group, visit our free video platform, SVG PLAY.