Legendary February: Production Leaders at NBC Sports Pull Back the Curtain on Olympics, Super Bowl, NBA All-Star Plans

Tech innovation will mark a month of extraordinary productions

As NBCUniversal heads into an unprecedented month of live sports programming, several NBC Sports production leaders gathered at 30 Rock on Wednesday to provide a sneak peek at some of the innovations viewers can expect during coverage of the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games, Super Bowl LX, and the broadcaster’s first NBA All-Star Game.

NBC Sports brought together production leaders from across its Olympics, NFL, and NBA properties along with other top NBCU/Comcast execs at 30 Rockefeller Center on Jan. 7 to preview what’s ahead for NBC and Peacock’s ‘Legendary February’. Photo courtesy of NBC Sports.

“I think we look at [the Olympics] as the absolute holy grail of what this company can do and what we can do for the nation,” said Comcast Chairman/Co-CEO Brian Roberts, describing the Olympics as the company’s laboratory for technology. “It’s the proudest part of the year. And, oh, by the way, there’s a Super Bowl and an NBA All-Star game, too. It’s just legendary. We can’t wait for it to be here.

Milano Cortina 2026: ‘Our Most Technologically Innovative Winter Games Ever’

“We’re going into these Winter Games [with the] mantra that we want to make the best seat in the house even better,” said Molly Solomon, executive producer/president, NBC Olympics Production. “How do we do that? Well, this is going to be our most technologically innovative Winter Games ever.”

The broadcasts will feature more-extensive use of live drones, she said, noting that the broadcaster is working with Olympic Broadcast Services to enhance aerial coverage. In addition, NBC is looking to enhance its access to athletes during competition, including miking U.S. men’s and women’s hockey players for the first time, along with freestyle skiers and snowboarders. In addition, NBC will tap into team radio communications during such events as Alpine skiing (using AI-powered translation when needed) to get behind-the-scenes audio.

“Imagine Lindsay Vonn calling back up to the top of the hill; we’re going to have that instantaneously,” said Solomon. “We’re so excited about access. We’ve pushed everybody to go places they’ve never seen before because winter [athletes are] covered with goggles and head gear; we need to [have access] into a place before they put the stuff on. We need to see faces. The International Olympic Committee has been great about granting us that access.”

Similar to NBC’s philosophy for Paris 2024, that access will also apply to athletes’ friends and family on hand. In addition to miking loved ones in the stands, NBC will add a LiveU camera to all its venues to capture cutaway shots of friends and family and, to enhance the drama, will periodically use heart-rate monitors on family members with a corresponding on-screen graphic.

“We doubled down on audio and miking friends and family in Paris and will do same in Milan Cortina,” said Solomon. “Our team has been meeting with all relevant parents, coaches, and loved ones about miking them and building up that trust in advance. We won’t use it live so they know we’re not going to compromise them, but it will be featured a lot because that’s the richest storytelling we can offer.”

Super Bowl XL: Hyland To Take Front Bench; New Graphics Package To Debut

Having worked on five Super Bowls — including as replay producer for three of them — Sunday Night Football Coordinating Producer Rob Hyland will be at the front bench as lead producer for the first time on Feb. 8. He takes over for Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer Fred Gaudelli, executive producer, NFL coverage, NBC Sports, and will be working alongside another Hall of Famer: Drew Esocoff, directing his eighth Super Bowl.

“Freddy has set the standard,” said Hyland. “We’ll have every camera angle, every replay source, every microphone covering Levi’s Stadium, and we will cover the game expertly. We will have some new technological advances available should the game take us in [a new] direction.”

He noted that NBC tested several of those advances when at Levi’s Stadium during last month’s Sunday Night Football Bears–49ers matchup: among them was Weather Applied Metrics, which provides reports that quantify how much past, present, and future weather conditions affect the outcome of sports events.

“They have an interesting way of interpreting wind data and presenting it graphically three-dimensionally,” Hyland explained. “If we were to get wind on Super Bowl Sunday, for the first time, we could graphically illustrate how the wind affects the flight of ball. The problem is, there was no wind [during the test], and we might get zero wind on Super Bowl Sunday. But, if the [opportunity] presents itself in the game, we will use some things that you haven’t seen on Sunday Night Football [this season].”

In all, NBC will deploy 80-plus cameras (including SkyCam, jib, live drone, and Steadicam systems), more than 150 microphones, and augmented-reality graphics on multiple cameras. However, Sunday Night Football is such a massive production that NBC’s camera count will be largely similar to its week-to-week complement.

“My monitor wall for the Super Bowl as it exists for Sunday night is not changing [since] we do a very big show right now,” noted Hyland. “There’s a whole other row of monitors for the supplemental cameras, which are really enhancement cameras. It’s a big show already, but, yes, we will have a lot of fun bells and whistles to have at our disposal if the game takes us there.”

One big change will be on the graphics side, where NBC is debuting a brand-new insert package and scorebar on its Chargers–Patriots Wild Card Weekend game this Sunday. It marks a departure from other Super Bowl broadcasters, who have waited until the Big Game to debut new graphics packages.

“The scorebar that you’ll see on Sunday in the Wild Card game will be the scorebar for the Super Bowl,” said Hyland. “I want our team to get a couple of reps with it. Our insert package will also be the DNA of the Super Bowl [package]. The Super Bowl animations and all that will be reserved for Super Bowl Sunday, but I’ve always thought, why save it for the Super Bowl? Let’s get it right for the Super Bowl, not save it for the Super Bowl.”

The team will also take a page from NBC Olympics’ playbook (Hyland has worked on 13 Olympic Games and oversaw the primetime production for Paris 2024), adding player’s hometown to the new lower-third graphic. This is part of a larger effort to bring the NBC Olympics “friends and family” mentality to the broadcaster’s NFL coverage.

“You will see a pretty extensive friends-and-family production plan,” said Hyland. “We’re hoping to have a connection from each team’s family miked in the stands, which we’ve never done in the Super Bowl. If any one of the stars on the team makes a play, we’ll know where to go and will have great audio associated with it.”

As for the marathon of pregame programming, Gaudelli said NBC will focus on celebrating the 60th Super Bowl by looking back at the previous 59. In addition, NBC will interview several Super Bowl Legends from its various studio locations throughout the Bay Area and historic sites. He is also looking to add a current coach and player to the on-air mix.

All this leads up to what Hyland said will be a memorable show open prior to kickoff. “We’re excited about our show open. It’s in production right now. We are traveling around the country with a Super Bowl memory booth [where] we’re talking to real fans about what this game has meant to them and how it changed their life. And it’s going to be a very powerful piece to begin the six o’clock hour.”

NBA All-Star Weekend: NBA Brings New Style, Cameras to the Festivities

The next weekend after the Super Bowl, NBC Sports will produce the third pillar of its Legendary February celebration. NBA All-Star Weekend (Feb. 13-15) will mark the dawn of a new era, when NBC produces the festivities for the first time since 2002 and Sunday’s signature event adopts a new U.S. vs. the World format.

“We’re going to have plenty of [production] toys and all that,” said Sam Flood, executive producer/president, production, NBC Sports, “but the most important thing is, we have the USA vs. the World [format] right in the middle of the Olympics. Director Pierre Moossa has more cameras to play with than he’ll ever dream of. We’re going to make sure it is high-flying and special.”

NBC has worked closely with the league and the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on deploying multiple new camera positions for coverage of the NBA All-Star Game, NBA All-Star Saturday Night, and the NBA Rising Stars Game on Friday.

“We were able to go into the Intuit Dome early in the process and work out where we want to put the cameras before they figured out where the seats would be so that it won’t [result in] a seat kill,” said Frank DiGraci, coordinating producer, NBA, NBC Sports. “We’re going to have one camera that’s dead-eye on the rim, as well as the standard above-the-rim and below-the-rim cameras. We’re doing anything we can to get us closer to the action.”

NBC will also deploy what DiGraci called a “mouse cam,” a miniature Nucleus Pico mini camera with an ultra-wide lens positioned in a mouse-size hole at floor level in the basket stanchion. Other key tools will include a SkyCam and super-slow-motion capability on nearly every camera in the building, as has been the case all season for NBC’s NBA coverage.

“We have super-slo-mo everywhere across the board,” said DiGraci. “All our cameras are capable of 6X super-slo-mo, and that has been a huge part of [our coverage so far] this season.”

In addition to All-Star Weekend, NBA games will bookend NBC Sports’ Legendary February lineup. It all tips off with the debut of Sunday Night Basketball (featuring the Lakers visiting the Knicks at Madison Square Garden) on NBC and Peacock on Feb. 1 and closes out with an iconic Celtics–Lakers matchup at Crypto.com Arena (one of the marquee venues for LA 2028) on Feb. 22, coming out of the Milano Cortina 2026 Closing Ceremony. NBC will travel its NBA pregame show for both games and will continue to do so for the remainder of the Sunday Night Basketball slate.

“It was a very easy decision,” Flood said of opting to take the studio show on the road for SNB. “Frank and I went to games last year as we were getting ready to take this project on, and the one thing we wanted to bring back to the broadcast was that excitement of being in the building. What better way to lead to the biggest game of the week than having our all-star crew there on the court before the game begins.”

SVG’s Samanatha Gabay contributed to this article.

Stay tuned to SVG for live, onsite coverage of NBC’s production efforts at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games, Super Bowl LX, and NBA All-Star Weekend throughout the month of February.