Designed and integrated by Diversified, the centralized facility supports in-venue production across multiple athletic venues as well as ESPN+ broadcasts and student training.
Sports Production: University of Utah Opens IP-Based Hub
The University of Utah has opened a centralized sports production facility designed and integrated by Diversified to support live production across multiple athletic venues.
Located in the university’s Language & Communications building, the facility is built around SMPTE ST 2110 and IP infrastructure. It can support in-venue productions, ESPN+ broadcasts and potential future productions for linear broadcast partners.
Centralized production
Rather than maintaining separate production resources for individual venues and sports, the new facility provides a shared environment from which Utah can produce content for multiple locations and distribution platforms.
Diversified worked with the university from design through commissioning, creating an infrastructure intended to accommodate additional production requirements as Utah Athletics expands its output.
“This new facility embodies where collegiate sports production is headed,” said Aaron Jester, assistant athletics director of broadcast operations at the University of Utah. “Now we can produce more content, support more of our athletic programs and continue expanding how we tell Utah’s stories across broadcast, streaming and in-venue platforms.”
The production hub is also part of a collaboration between Utah Athletics and the university’s College of Humanities.
Students will have access to professional broadcast technology and workflows, allowing the facility to operate both as a production environment and a teaching resource. The university says the aim is to provide experience with technology similar to that used by professional sports organizations and major broadcasters.
Pete Emminger, global chief technology officer at Diversified, said shared IP production environments allow universities to centralize resources while increasing production capacity and flexibility across their athletic programs.