BILLERICA, MASS.–The Tampa Bay Rowdies North American Soccer League franchise has upgraded its production facilities at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg, Fla with a new HD production including a four-camera setup, custom animated graphics and a Broadcast Pix Granite 1000 integrated production switcher.
The upgrade was a result of the NASL team negotiating for the right to broadcast all 13 of its Saturday night home soccer matches during the 2014 season on WTTA, the MyNetworkTV affiliate in the Tampa/St. Petersburg market (DMA #14). All matches are also streamed to the North American Soccer League’s live streaming site, NASLlive.com, and some are streamed to ESPN3’s Web site. The first three seasons were produced exclusively for a Web audience.
Hi-Tech Enterprises in Clearwater, Fla., was the integrator for the HD upgrade. According to Ed Griswold, Hi-Tech engineer, the new control room was built in about three weeks, and the system was operational in time for the first Rowdies home game on April 12.
Since the Rowdies began calling Al Lang Stadium home in 2010, VideoArt Productions of Palm Harbor, Fla., has been providing live coverage of their matches. Established in 1982, VideoArt has produced thousands of hours of live programming, and worked with a number of Florida-based professional sports teams and content providers.
The new Granite system replaced a Stream Breeze Pro, which is now tasked with encoding the broadcast (and changing some ad content) for the Web. Griswold said the Broadcast Pix created a “more traditional workflow” for the on-air broadcasts.
