ESPN's sweet World Cup setup
The MLS website breaks down the massive project that brought ESPN’s World Cup set to life in Brazil. The results are staggering.
As someone who works in news, I’m fascinated by the 2-story control room:
The control room was first built offsite, too, in a Los Angeles warehouse. Drake and his crew examined it thoroughly and tailored it with such detail that monitors were moved inches at a time during the drafting phase in California. Then it was all replicated to the same exact measurements months later and 5,000 miles away.
The entire compound is powered by three giant generators that Drake calls “the beasts.” They are each twice the size of a meat freezer, and they hum quietly outside the control room in a space formerly reserved for a fish market. There’s also a fourth generator that powers the studio’s lights, a satellite truck connected to the IBC in case of emergency and bundles of cables winding down back corridors and around scaffolding, all just steps from the ocean.
ESPN has done a truly excellent job with this. It’s a temporary set which looks infinitely better than it’s new monstrosity in Bristol.
After 2014, Fox owns the rights to cover the next two World Cups. I hate its coverage of the Champions League, thus I am not looking forward to its World Cup coverage.