HOUSTON—ESPN and Fox Sports are geared up with some new production technologies to cover the second season of the UFL, which kicks off Friday March 28, with the aim of bringing viewers closer than ever to the action and giving them deeper insights into games.
“Access is important. It’s what defines this league alongside, the technology and the play,” said Brad Cheney, vice president of field operations and engineering at Fox Sports.
Both Fox Sports and ESPN are deploying new or improved technologies to take advantage of that access. The broadcasters, which are splitting the league’s schedule, will deploy a chest-cam on a defensive player to give viewers a better sense of what it feels like to be on the field in the midst of action. One, the other or both will also use ref-cam footage from the back judge, sensor chips in balls and embedded in players’ gear, AI audio interrogation, telestrator-enabled sideline Apple iPads and drone footage from behind defenders.
All of it aims to give viewers a better understanding of what they’re watching, whether it’s the speed and strength of players, the strategy and tactics that unfold or the performance of individual players.
Chest-Cam and Ref-Cam
The new MINDFLY chest-cam mounted in the center of custom vest donned by a defensive player debuted in a different configuration on officials last season.
“We found great success with it on officials, and this year we worked with the league… and MINDFLY to develop a player vest that they feel comfortable with,” said Bryan Jaroch, ESPN vice president of sports production.
The new chest-cam, which will be used during one game apiece by Fox Sports and ESPN each weekend, is an enhanced version of the MINDFLY camera systems deployed in the past with new image stabilization technology to steady the footage captured, he said.
Before giving a nod to the chest-cam, the league put the system through impact testing in the lab to ensure it could withstand the punishment dished out on the field. “They’ve [the league] has done a lot of offline test to make sure it is safe, and they feel 100% comfortable with it,” said Jaroch.
For instance, the system is equipped with “a shatterproof piece of glass” in front of the camera that’s designed to crack like a spider web if the stress from a hit is too great, rather than shatter and fall onto the field, he said.
The breathable vest unit adds so little weight and heat from the camera battery that players will “almost forget that they’re wearing it,” said Jaroch.
From a coverage perspective, chest-cam brings a whole new sense of what it means to be in the game to viewers, said Cheney.
“We’re putting it on defenders so you can see what’s coming at you,” he said. “You can see the speed of what’s happening. We’ve been working on making viewers aware of just how fast this game is. Just how fast [having] an arm in one spot versus another in half a second is [to] the receiver catching a ball or the safety knocking it out of his hands.”
Similarly, the ref-cam, deployed each game by Fox Sports, will deliver a unique perspective and better understanding of what’s happening on the field, said Cheney.
“Being on the back judge, looking straight across the line and being able to see the play develop and move gives us that understanding of what the quarterback is facing, what the running backs are trying to run through—all of those pieces of the puzzle,” he said.
Audio and AI
The access the league has given Fox Sports and ESPN includes audio in a big way. The chest-cam, for instance, is equipped with a microphone that will pick up the checks at the line. Other player mics, coach mics, sideline parabolic mics, sideline camera mics and others contribute to an audioscape that aims to make fans feel more engaged.
Fox Sports will deploy artificial intelligence to understand better how to manage all of those audio sources. While AI will assist the broadcaster in producing better mixes, Fox Sports has even bigger plans for the technology, said Cheney.
Throughout the season it will rely on AI and machine learning to perform speech-to-text transcription of incoming audio to create data models other AI algorithms will analyze to identify and extract mini-storylines developing in real-time that can be fed to announcers to help them with game analysis and to producers to help tell the overall story of the game, he said.
Without AI and machine learning, these storylines would likely go undetected. “There’s just so much stuff that you couldn’t put enough people on it,” he said.
“Think about a head coach telling the offensive coordinator this is what we should be doing in the next set of downs,” said Cheney. “The offensive coordinator talks to his staff. You're hearing that. There are those conversations, and then it goes from the offensive coordinator to the quarterback to call the play. If we can start to track that and gain an understanding of what's going on, a quick storyline emerges.”
Those revealed storylines will also assist Fox Sports later on in the week to reveal “amazing” storylines post-game, he added.
A Better Sense From Sensors
Sensor chips are being deployed to enable the broadcasters to give viewers a deeper insight into what’s happening on the field. The broadcasters are working with Sportable to track the velocity and spin rate of the ball as it’s passed, the speed of a player running down the sidelines and other data, said Jaroch.
“This is in development, so we may not have it ready for this weekend,” he said. “But as we progress throughout the year [we plan] just using that player data… that the teams… keep to themselves. This is stuff that we're going to try to use on the air in real time.”
Cheney is confident that the technology will be deployed at some point in the season. “We’ve got some interesting examples that we’ve seen work in the scrimmages this year,” he said. “We’re really bullish on the fact that the tracking is there.”
Sportable will embed tracking sensor chips in the balls and “hopefully players” as well, said Jaroch.
“They're going to start, hopefully, on quarterbacks, and then, hopefully, expand to the point where they have almost every skilled player with a chip on their body, whether it's on their shoulder pads or on their body,” he said.
Coupled with the data from the optical positioning system in place, the sensing data from the chips will enable the broadcasters to paint a detailed picture of game action with relevant stats, he said.
Sideline iPads
ESPN is taking its use of Apple iPads on the sidelines in the hands of players and coaches to a new level this season, said Jaroch. Working with DVSport Software and the league, ESPN will air one sideline iPad with a built-in telestrator function.
“As a player comes off the field, we’ll be able to hand them an iPad that we have access to,” said Jaroch. “So, instead of shooting over their shoulder and sometimes dealing with sun glare on the iPad, we can literally get the output of what that player or coach is looking at, and with the built-in telestrator see as they’re drawing on it…and take that exact output to air.”
Unlike during the league’s inaugural season when ESPN had a reporter on one sideline and a field analyst who once played on the other, this season it will assign field analysts to both sidelines to take better advantage of the iPad.
“Whether it’s the iPad with the output to air or not, having a field analyst on each sideline is a huge benefit. They can just… really dive into the X’s and O’s with a player or a coach at any point in the game. I wish we had that in college football and the NFL, to be able to use that access and advance the story through technology,” he said.
Drones Use
Once again, Fox Sports will rely on a drone flying over the field behind defenders for a unique aerial perspective on the action. Taking advantage of the experience gained during last season, the drone operators are better equipped this season to react to what’s happening on the field.
“Quite honestly, the pilots have become so good at understanding and reading the play that they're in the right spots at the right time,” said Cheney. “They’re right in the mix. They’ve come to understand extremely well where to be in the situation. [They have an] awareness of what they’re around. ‘Oh, it’s a pass play. OK now I need to come up and get some air because they’re going to throw.”
Disney, the parent company of ESPN, is more restrictive on drone use, so the sports network will not be using the airborne platform for its coverage of the UFL—at least for now. “We have a lot of protocols in place where we can’t fly over people or even animals,” said Jaroch.
However, ESPN is working with Disney’s internal drone group and its legal team to address the restrictions and possibly open a path to using the aerial platforms in the future. “We’re not there yet in terms of flying in the stadiums like Fox, but we’re hoping to get there. I’m hoping that maybe by the championship game we can get to that point.”
Regardless of how those discussions turn out, one thing is clear: the UFL has placed a high priority on engaging fans more deeply with its product by allowing its broadcast partners to take advantage of the opportunities they have to deploy technology in unique and interesting ways.
“The great thing about this league is what Dwayne Johnson and Danny Garcia [two of the league’s owners] talk about,” said Jaroch.
“The UFL is a league of opportunity for players and for coaches. We've seen Reggie Barlow [former DC Defenders and now Tennessee State football coach] move on to college football. But it's also a league of opportunity for us as a TV partner to test new things and bring them to college football, NFL or even coverage of other sports.”
(Editor’s note: The UFL season begins tonight at 8 p.m. EDT with Fox Sports coverage of the St. Louis Battlehawks vs. Houston Roughnecks from TDECU Stadium in Houston. This weekend’s lineup continues Saturday, March 29 at 4 p.m. EDT with the San Antoinio Brahmas vs. Arlington Renegades from Choctaw Stadium in Arlington, Texas. ESPN will produce two games: the Michigan Panthers vs. Memphis Showboats, Sunday, March 30 at noon EDT from Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium in Memphis and the Birmingham Stallions vs. DC Defenders at 3 p.m. EDT from Audi Field in Washington, D.C.)
