Production manager Richard Beard
The Croke Park encounter between the Minnesota Vikings and the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday (29 September) was the first regular-season NFL game in Dublin. The Irish government committed to providing almost €10 million in public money, including city activation, transport, security and venue arrangements, to bring American football to Ireland, with a view to hosting further regular-season games in the future.
Sky Sports has also made a huge commitment to the sport. It recently announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending the long-standing partnership with the league to over 30 years. The broadcaster has the first-pick exclusive game on Sunday at 6pm live on Sky Sports NFL and the first pick for the Sunday 9pm game. There is also more choice as a second game at 6pm and up to an additional two games at 9pm are now shown live on Sky Sports concurrently.
In another first, all London and Europe games this season will be broadcast live on Sky. Combined, this equates to a near 50% increase in the number of live matches available to Sky Sports viewers. The NFL RedZone programme continues to be shown live on Sky, alongside every Thursday Night, Sunday Night and Monday Night Football, Thanksgiving games, the Playoffs and the Super Bowl.
The Sky Sports NFL team was live on-air from Croke Park with its own dedicated presentation studio located on the stadium’s historic Hill 16, hosted by presenter Hannah Wilkes and regular NFL analysts Jason Bell and Phoebe Schecter. Along with presenters the Sky Sports team on-site comprised one camera, sound and lighting operator, make-up artist, production coordinator, and production manager.
“We want to keep things as compact as possible and keep on-site crews to a minimum while utilising a premium broadcasting position, created bespoke for Sky – with open air – so we could have the best possible sound and vision pres position, and it certainly helps our green credentials,” says production manager Richard Beard.
“Core technology we’re using on this production are two LiveU 800 units. Providing you’ve got a stable internet connection and power it allows us to plug up and play anywhere. I’ve been using them a lot in the last few years, whether for cricket in India or on a golf course somewhere.
“You do have the option to use SIM cards in there, but obviously once the stadium is full of fans it becomes tricky to rely on SIM data. But generally, when you are somewhere like this you can get stable internet from the venue, it allows cameras and eight different feeds to be sent back, having plenty to play with.”
He continues: “We have two presentation cameras here, one a more traditional manned camera and then we have a DSLR-style camera which is doing our wide shot. Our camera operator Simon will use the two cameras, but mainly be on the tight single shot to go in on our presenter and guests. And at the end of the game Simon will de-rig the ENG camera and go down to get some shots in the locker room and come back here to feed it into the LiveU back to the gallery. The gallery at Sky is doing our game initially and then they’ll do later games as normal with Neil Reynolds presenting at Sky Studios.
“NEP is the host broadcaster’s facilities company and our connection is getting six additional feeds from the host. They have put in a fibre line for us and NFL has arranged a dedicated internet connection. We’re pretty much self-sufficient after that, which is a nice way to operate and means you don’t have to run back and forth to the compound if things aren’t working.”
“It’s great that they’ve been able to bring NFL here to Croke Park,” adds Beard. “You can see how much the city has embraced it; even when we arrived at the airport there were balloons everywhere with the team colours.
“We have done GAA games here in the past, but it’s our first time doing NFL from this stadium, with a different technical set-up. It’s always great coming to Dublin and doing games.”
The Sky Sports NFL channel was launched in 2020, signalling the first time the league had teamed up with an international broadcaster to launch a channel dedicated to the sport. The in-season channel is again the round-the-clock home of the NFL on linear in the UK and Republic of Ireland from the regular season through to Super Bowl LX, which will be live from Levi’s Stadium in California on Sunday 8 February.
