IABM Awards 2020 – Most Successful Virtual Event
Mon 04, 01 2021
Freeman & Sound and Vision Entertainment – NFL Draft 2020
For the first time ever, the annual meeting of NFL franchises to select newly eligible players for the upcoming season was held via video conference as a result of worldwide travel restrictions. Instead of the planned spectacular live event in Las Vegas, all team selections took place virtually, with league broadcasting picks taking place from the commissioner’s basement as well as various other locations. This historic Draft was broadcast live by NFL Network and ESPN from April 23 – 25.
Freeman, Brady Belavek of SAV and engineer Dave Ragains of Show Machine were hired to handle all production communications between the NFL, the networks and all production staff. Freeman, along with Belavek and Ragains have been providing the communications solution for the NFL Draft for over a decade, but never in a virtualized setting.
Belavek said, “When the decision was made to virtualize the Draft broadcast, we were tasked to come up with a reliable and secure remote communications solution that would enable a large number of production staff to operate from their homes while still being able to communicate on the production intercom freely over many channels. What turned out to be one of the biggest challenges was managing ISP connections in individual’s homes and offices, not to mention the security requirements from the NFL, who were understandably concerned about cyber security threats.”
Nominated by Clear-Com, whose Eclipse® HX digital matrix system along with LQ®-R4W8 was the chosen intercom solution to support the large network of remote Agent-IC® intercom app clients required for this broadcast.
Related Content
Based on your recent activity and preferences we recommend the following pieces of content

IABM Awards 2020 – Technology Leader of the year
Jackie Howes, Director – Media Infrastructure Architect, Discovery Inc This award was kindly sponsored by Avid. She is a fabulous employee, a huge asset to our g...
IABM19 days ago

IABM Awards 2020 – Most Creative Digital Campaign
Bein Sports – “Love it Like the First Time”, the first major international campaign To retain viewers’ and subscribers’ passion for sports and football in partic...
IABM19 days ago

IABM Awards 2020 – Broadcaster/Media Company of the Year
Latakoo This award was kindly sponsored by Bridge Technologies. Nominated by DISH Mexico, Marketing Director Eduardo Peniche says, “latakoo provides the fastest and e...
IABM19 days ago

IABM Awards 2020 – Andrew Jones Young Person of the Year
Aditya Panikker, Digigram “Aditya joined Digigram in 2018 as a product and digital marketing intern, while simultaneously pursuing his Master’s degree. Over the last t...
IABM19 days ago

IABM Awards Ceremony 2020
The IABM Awards (Including IABM BaM Awards®) were presented at the virtual BaM LIVE!™ event on Wednesday 2 December 2020. View the full list of winners and judg...
IABM45 days ago

Technical Localization – Designing Global Media Supply Chains
Caroline Ewerton Head of Operational DeliveryCaroline Ewerton, Dazn outlines their Virtual Production case study; what they set out to deliver, what they have ach...
IABM50 days ago

Caringo at the IABM BaM Live Event
Caringo joins IABM’s BaM Live virtual event to discuss Swarm object storage’s data management capabilities for optimizing workflows With Thanksgiving today...
By Sarah Cook, Director of Marketing, Caringo52 days ago