Importing quality: ESPN on bringing the American gold standard of NBA production to France for All-Access Paris

ESPN’s NBA All-Access Paris 2025 is ready to roll from the French capital
In Paris this weekend, NBA fans are all set to enjoy ESPN’s All-Access Paris 2025, where behind the scenes content of the San Antonio Spurs and Indiana Pacers visit to the French capital, as well as exclusive content from the match being played between the two teams on Saturday 25 January, is being made available.
ESPN is making sure that its workflow and key technologies, such as its Above the Rim cameras, match up with its regular standards of production in the US so that fans in America and globally can see the quality on screen that they have come to expect.
On the workflow for this event, ESPN is ensuring the highest quality content is created and transmitted back to the US. The NBA World feed is being produced using ESPN’s REMCO on site production model, which it defines as having production hardware on location, and machine control set up to send content straight back to ESPN’s base in Bristol, Connecticut.
Meanwhile the ESPN feed is a REMI production model, produced and integrated from a Bristol, Connecticut-based control room.

The broadcast compound for the NBA and ESPN Paris production
REMCO and REMI
Speaking from Paris shortly before the first game that played out on Thursday 23 January, Okuno tells SVG Europe: “What we decided to do for the world feed is what we call at home our REMCO model, which is basically production on site. Just like before pre-COVID, everybody’s on site doing a production inside the OB truck.
“Meanwhile the production model for the ESPN show is we’re sharing the world feed truck, but we’re using a REMI model, which means we’re sending isolated feeds back to ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut. We have a control room there that’s integrating all of our feeds; we have eight feeds and we’re putting it all together and they will put out the final show.”
“What we try to do is try to keep everything from the United States, all our workflows and all of our transmissions and everything else. We wanted to keep it identical so that the learning curve for crew was very small, but we had to make sure that the connectivity from Paris back to the United States was robust and I think we’re in a good spot with that right now”
The production REMCO workflow is saving ESPN valuable milliseconds of latency. Okuno states: “This is the beauty of the collaboration of ESPN and NBA is that – and I don’t think this has really been done before on the NBA side – is that the world feed truck is creating that world feed, it’s creating a clean feed, but it’s also simultaneously creating an ESPN feed and that ESPN feed basically has all the ESPN logos, the bug, the replay, wipe, all the branded elements of ESPN for NBA games. We’re able to do that because our crew, our production folks, are in the control room, so we’re able to simultaneously create this feed, which is going to be fantastic, I believe, because we get the quality of the world feed, but it is our ESPN branding.
“Our integration control room in Bristol will take all these feeds, glue it all together, plus also take care of the ESPN business in the States so the world feed does what it needs to do.”
Hand in hand
ESPN has imported key members of its crew from the US, as well as specific technologies and its preferred workflow, to ensure that the production from Paris is up to the same standard as its US-based NBA productions. Its technical services provider for the production is AMP Visual TV.
Explains Okuno: “The NBA has partnered with ESPN, the United States broadcast rights holder, to produce the world feed simultaneously because ESPN is the domestic rights holder for the Paris Games event on Saturday only [not for game one]. So ESPN’s producer, ESPN’s director, and many ESPN senior lead people flew over from the United States to take key positions, and, along with AMP Visual’s crew and OB truck, we are working together hand in hand with to create this world feed [for both games].”

ESPN’s Above The Rim camera point of view provides audiences at home the opportunity to watch the game from above, with robotic cameras located directly above each basket with full coverage of both ends of the court
He goes on: “We are creating up to 19 transmission paths from the mobile unit for all of the feeds. ESPN has brought our REMI technologies over from the States to here, to have consistency in our workflows and our technical workflows. We also are doing file transfer with Tata Communications; they’re providing that connection between Paris and back to ESPN and the NBA in the US, and to all of our broadcast rights holders.”
Solutions from Creative Mobile Solutions (CMSI) from the US are connected to ESPN’s Paris ENG teams and the OB truck to manage, transcode and transport content to and from ESPN in Bristol, Connecticut, and the NBA headquarters in Secaucus, New Jersey.
“What we try to do is try to keep everything from the United States, all our workflows and all of our transmissions and everything else,” Okuno adds. “We wanted to keep it identical so that the learning curve for crew was very small, but we had to make sure that the connectivity from Paris back to the United States was robust and I think we’re in a good spot with that right now.”
On site in Paris there are three other broadcast rights holders, which are BeIN Sport, Canal+, and ProSieben. Says Okuno: “They’re all on site producing their studio productions, pre-game shows, post-game shows, as well as setting up commentary positions because they have rights to broadcast.”
Above the Rim
ESPN’s All-Access Paris NBA event is getting the gold standard treatment by the broadcaster, which means bringing technological innovations to Europe to match the NBA productions that ESPN carries out in the US.
To that end, as well as importing key technologies such as player mic’s from the US, ESPN is being supported by several NEP departments for various aspects of the production, including specific cameras and graphics systems.
The matches are 14 camera shoots. NEP’s specialty capture group is providing ESPN with two Fletcher robotic camera systems using Sony P-50 cameras for its unique ‘Above The Rim’ point of view of the court.
Above The Rim provides audiences at home the opportunity to watch the game from above, with robotic cameras located directly above each basket with full coverage of both ends of the court.
“The specialty is we do have super slowmo cameras,” notes Okuno. “I think we have one super slowmo camera at Centre Court, which is not often done in Europe, but we were able to get the position that’s a very traditional legacy camera in the States. So we were able to secure that. And then the two above – the Rim robotic cameras – which are on top of the Tissot clock displays. They’re operated underneath the grandstand with their remote control panels.”
The Rim cameras will enable ESPN’s directors to get a gamified style of visual. Explains Okuno: “You basically see right down below you in the paint, in the key, and you also see on the back, on the other side of the court. So you’re able to what we call cross shooting; you’re able to see all 10 players from the side, and then you’re able to see the fast break come down and tilt down. You’ll be able to see all the players right below you. So you’re above all these very tall players because the camera is mounted on top of the score on the display.”
Adds Okuno: “In the States during our NBA championship rounds, we would add SkyCam. We would have over 10 super slowmo high frame rate cameras. Unfortunately we could not do that here. But what we did is we worked with the NBA together to say, “let’s bring the world feed quality to our ESPN REMCO level” and everybody was on board and now we’re here.”
Mic’d up players
NEP Rentals is supporting ESPN’s RF audio focus – Q5X player, coaches and referee mics – with Gen5 VizRT gear for ESPN’s graphics and ‘clock & score’ systems from the US. ESPN mic’s up players on all of its weekend primetime games as standard, as well as on all playoff games, NBA conference finals and NBA finals. For All-Access Paris, it has bought all its usual RF audio equipment including the mics from Q5X.
Comments Okuno: “So we’ve brought our RF audio equipment, which is also our specialised player microphones – part of the All-Access treatment is putting microphones on players and coaches – and what we’ve done is create an edit room inside the AMP truck, which is an EVS and a producer that takes on all those live microphones. They listen to them and they build edited packages to playback into the show. They are not allowed to be on live because of censorship and making sure the content is protected.”