Rick’s Media Picks - Tech Dreams Brought to Life
By Rick Alessandri, Managing Director at TurnkeyZRG
This past weekend saw two amazing technical achievements come to life for both sports fans and music lovers as the NFL partnered with Disney/ESPN and Beyond Sports to deliver an incredibly compelling fully animated telecast of the Jaguars/Falcons game, while the band U2 opened MSG’s $2.3B Sphere, an idea that started on a napkin. I believe both experiences will revolutionize the ways fans experience sports and music going forward and will clearly continue the trend of technological innovation and integration to deliver fan engagement on a new level and attract new fans to the game (in the case of the NFL execution).
If you’re a fan of the Toy Story franchise, as I am, being both a former cast member and dad to three young ones when the franchise launched, you know that Andy’s toys come to life in his bedroom when humans leave the room. In this case, Andy’s room became the famed Wembley Stadium in London, and Buzz, Woody, Bo Beep were joined by Trevor Lawrence, Bijan Robinson and Evan Engram.
The tech deployed by Sony’s Beyond Sports, and which had been used earlier this year in an NHL game on ESPN between the Capitals and Rangers during the Big City Greens Classic, was coupled with two separate tracking systems: AWS-powered Next Gen Stats and Hawk-Eye’s optical tracking system. In addition, ESPN’s Creative Studio designed the cartoon football players and on-air talent with Beyond Sports animated the players and Silver Spoon animated the motion-captured suit wearing talent.
The game had a couple of minor glitches in the beginning but worked exceedingly well the rest of the game and delivered a very compelling viewer experience. Taking an informal poll amongst some friends and family, many said their young kids were watching in awe while – in my case – my two daughters (28 and 31) – watched a football game for the first time in years. The halftime show featuring Duke Caboom was a favorite of mine. You even got to see an easter egg of X Games legend Travis Pastrana in the scene.
According to Zoomph, the “Toy Story"-themed telecast totaled 124 million impressions/views across official feeds for the NFL, ESPN and “SportsCenter”.
Seven years ago, James Dolan, Executive Chairman of Madison Square Garden and owner of the New York Knicks and Rangers, sketched an idea on a napkin of a circle with a stick figure inside it. This past weekend with U2 taking the stage for the first of a 25-performance residency, that vision, and a reported $2.3B, made that sketch come to life with the opening of The Sphere.
The Sphere is an absolute marvel and has been captivating passersby since leading up to its grand opening as it depicted various images on the massive 366-foot structure. Could the promise of revolutionizing the live events business ring true upon opening? After reading numerous reviews and seeing countless social media posts from attendees this weekend, the answer is a resounding, YES!
From the immersive and largest concert-grade audio system with over 1,500 loudspeaker modules, 167,000 speaker drivers, amplifiers, and processing channels to the 1.2M LEDs on its exterior, 268 million pixels on the interior and 160,000 square feet of screen inside delivering a resolution 100 times better than the typical home television. Reportedly, advertising rates for the exterior of The Sphere are $450,000 for the day and $650,000 for the week and its estimated 4.7M impressions will be delivered daily via both in-person and through social media outlets. The Sphere is unlike anything ever created or experienced.
The project was originally budgeted in 2018 at $1.2B but began to creep over that amount to $1.7B in 2020. Given the pandemic and supply chain issues, the cost skyrocketed to a final reported amount of $2.3B exceeding the Allegiant Stadium’s $1.9B cost as the most expensive entertainment venue in Las Vegas history.
Plans have been announced for a Sphere in London but ground-breaking has not yet happened. Can this amazing venue be replicated at scale? Will artists be limited or unleashed in terms of their creativity given the structure’s shape and sightlines for the 18K spectators? I believe there will be many artists that will be able to tailor their performances to optimize the venue’s capabilities, but I do wonder how many Spheres can be constructed and deliver profitability for MSG’s bottom-line.
In both technological achievements this past week, one thing is clear, organizations in media, music and entertainment will continue to grow their organizations in terms of both technology, engineering and content and will require resources and strong relationship networks to do so. TurnkeyZRG, ZRG Partners, Sucherman Group and Hub Recruiting can be that solution. We have significant experience in the technology, engineering and content areas helping organizations identify, recruit, and retain strong executives at all levels.
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Founded in 1996, TurnkeyZRG is a highly specialized talent recruitment/executive search firm filling C-level, senior-level and mid-management level positions throughout sports, entertainment, music and media. Over the past 25 years, TurnkeyZRG has filled more than 1,400 positions throughout sports, entertainment and media. TurnkeyZRG helps teams, leagues, stadiums, arenas, theaters, college athletic departments, events, sponsors, agencies, media companies, private equity companies and other clients identify, recruit and hire the very best management talent. Turnkey now benefits from ZRG’s global footprint, full array of industry practice groups, data-driven, analytical search tools, and technology investment in changing the way executive search/talent recruiting is done. TurnkeyZRG becomes a tech-enabled disrupter of the prior executive search model.