ESPN Dials Up Fun Factor in Vegas-Style Approach to NHL All-Star Weekend

Unique camera angles, mic’ed up players aim to deliver ‘all-access’ feel to festivities

Between the NFL’s Pro Bowl and the NHL’s All-Star Game, the Las Vegas strip is shining with more stars than even its used to this weekend. As a result, Las Vegas is feeling a bit like Bristol West.

ESPN is attacking the NHL All-Star Weekend, specifically, with an impressive deployment of staffing and technology to continue its year-long celebration of its return to carrying the NHL.

Live coverage from T-Mobile Arena begins Friday night with the NHL All-Star Skills Competition (ESPN, 7:30 p.m. ET) followed by the NHL All-Star Game on Saturday (ABC, ESPN+, 3 p.m. ET). This marks the first time that NHL All-Star festivities are back on the ESPN family of networks since 2004, when, similarly, the Skills Competition aired on ESPN while the Game was carried on ABC.

“It’s totally invigorating to be back,” says Doug Holmes, who will direct the All-Star Game for ESPN and actually directed ESPN’s last All-Star Game in St. Paul, MN in 2004. “It’s so much the same but yet so different that it’s very dynamic in that way. The big thing has been ‘fun’ from the very beginning and that comes down to pace. How can we increase the pace? With the NHL, everyone’s on board with that. We all want to make it a better show in that regard.”

ESPN is blanketing this event with nearly 200 staffers on site, as well as with 50 total cameras and a bevy of unique microphone placements to deliver deeper access to its shows. Inside T-Mobile Arena, the number of cameras dedicated to game coverage is in the upper 20s and includes SupraCam (a four-point cabled aerial camera system), and three roving RF cameras on Ronin gimbals (including two carried by camera operators on skates with access to the ice surface and shooting in shallow depth-of-field).

Those units are accompanied by more traditional placements of cameras for a hockey game like inside the nets, on the base of the centerhung videoboard, and robos in the penalty boxes. Outside the arena, there will also be both a helicopter and a drone capturing live aerials.

One event in the NHL All-Star Skills Competition will have players shooting pucks while standing on platforms in the famous Bellagio Fountain on the Las Vegas Strip. (Photo Courtesy of NHL)

According the ESPN staff, planning for this All-Star Weekend began all the way back in June and NHL and ESPN execs were actually on calls together the day before the network’s season opener back in October discussing this event. That, All-Star Game producer Jeff Dufine points out emphasizes how important this event is to both the league and ESPN.

“It’s a massive event in the sense of the planning behind it,” says Dufine. “You’re dealing with tons of equipment, studio shows, other broadcasters. We’re all in conjunction with them and all funneling through the league. The amount of access and cameras; the overall bigness and feel of the show that we’re trying to present here over the course of these few days is incredible. Being in Vegas, it is even more of a show. It’s going to be super exciting.”

Audio will also be a star of this weekend’s coverage as ESPN is planning to mic up multiple players and hope to outfit select players with IFBs so that on-air talent can have live conversations with players competing in real-time.

All of the extra assets and enhancements are designed with one goal in mind: make these broadcasts as fun as possible.

“It’s entertaining and it’s supposed to be,” says Dufine. “There’s not a lot of stoppages. It’s up and down the ice. Goalies are just getting pelted. It’s great and what we’re asking for from certain cameras to audio, to mics around the rink to backstage access, to players access, to bench access, is all done in conjunction with the league and with the goal of this being an entertaining, all-access type of show.”

ESPN is also bringing plenty of studio support to surround this event with shows like The Point and In The Crease all hosting like programming from Las Vegas. In addition to utilizing its sports-betting studio at The Linq, ESPN has also taken over the iconic Golden Knights’ castle for its between-period studio programming. According to ESPN coordinating producer Linda Schulz, its tight quarters up there. There’s not enough room for traditional tools like a jib, so the operations team (which is being overseen on this event by Erin Orr and Jeff Werner) needed to get creative when it came to camera positioning.

“The coolest thing about being part of this project, for me, is that it’s like starting a project, a sport from scratch,” says Schulz. “You don’t get a lot of those opportunities working at ESPN because we’ve all been involved in so many different sports and ESPN has been around doing so much for so long. To build coverage of a professional sport from scratch is a really unique challenge and opportunity.”