Live From NBA All-Star: Mixon Digital Drives In-Venue LED, Graphics Ops For Jam-Packed Weekend

Two very different venues get end-to-end support

NBA All-Star Weekend is always a feast for the eyes, with an array of LED displays and dynamic graphics filling the arena and surrounding events. For this year’s edition, the league added plenty of Hollywood flair to the festivities at the Staples Center and the Los Angeles Convention Center. Driving the visual experiences was Mixon Digital, which provided all LED- and graphics-display services for NBA All-Star, including data templates, system rentals, social-media displays, and onsite technical expertise.

Mixon Digital provided end-to-end support at both primary venues for the All-Star events: Staples Center hosts Rising Stars Game, All-Star Saturday Night, and All-Star Game; the convention center is home to Celebrity Game, NBA Cares Unified Games, G-League Dunk contest, G-League All-Star Game.

Mixon Digital provided the content and tech for all the LED screens at All-Star weekend, as well as the judges dunk table.

According to Managing Director Christina Mixon, the weekend showcased how Mixon Digital can execute in two very different settings: an existing venue (Staples Center) with LED displays and other videoboards and a remote venue (L.A. Convention Center) that requires a complete fan-friendly experience. To accomplish this, the company over the years created a solution that allows extensive planning and previewing of the final product for the league long before the events take place.

“We started this process while I was staff at NBA, since none of the venue applications could script for All-Star Saturday Night scoring offline,” says Mixon, who founded Mixon Digital in 2012 after several years as a producer for the NBA and ESPN. “This allows us to create and preview timing/scoring data, as well as sponsorship execution from the NBA office, to give confidence to execs and [give] marketing partners full-venue previews before arriving onsite.

“Every year,” she continues, “we try to push the envelope on how we can make the display more dynamic, like the Verizon Judges Dunk Table LED [display this year].”

Mixon Digital’s modular application for NBA All-Star can scale as needed for additional display requirements, TV and streaming broadcasts, replacement LEDs, and 4K (and beyond) production.

“All of our applications were created with the needs of our customers in mind first,” says Mixon.

Mixon Digital’s work with the NBA isn’t limited to All-Star. Over the past year, the company has worked on all of the league’s major events worldwide — including the NBA Draft, Draft Combine, and Draft Lottery — and all international games. It also worked with the NHL on its first-ever games in China, in Shanghai and Beijing last fall and continues to work with the China Basketball Association on various events.

Mixon believes that her company’s ability to understand all aspects of in-venue video production for major events — from the technology to the creative — makes the company unique in the market.

“Simply put, we understand the technical and operational aspects of these undertakings,” she explains. “We understand the content and creative aspects, and we understand the IT and ops aspects. We bring it all together, seamlessly, under one digital engagement solution.”

For more of our coverage from the 2018 NBA All-Star Weekend, CLICK HERE.