34 ESPORTS FOCUS Rocket League
Words by Neal Romanek
Live broadcast veterans NEP are putting themselves at the centre of esports broadcasting with this year’s Rocket League Championships in London ocket-robots playing football” is perhaps the best way to
to how we had supplied similar sorts of kit and crew in the past, and to what NGE was already used to. This is such a new area for everybody, we are kind of finding our feet. Everybody is, in this new genre. “But it is something of definite interest to us. It’s a market that is in excess of $900 million. It’s expected to top out at over a billion by 2020. Audience figures are just staggeringly high – 380 million people have watched some form of esport event so far in 2018. And over 160 million of those are rewatching, or avidly watching, esports broadcasts.” NEP is so enthusiastic about the possibilities in esports broadcast that it has created a global esports working group, which engages in regular conversations across its offices in the US, UK, Europe and Australia. The group shares opportunities and tracks the work of companies such as NGE and other NEP esports clients, like Gfinity. “We look at these companies to see what sort of events they’re doing next and where they’re looking to take their particular brands of esport games and see how we can support that.” PUTTING ON A SHOW Though NEP is relatively new to esports, the company has clocked many thousands of hours producing live TV all around the world. Does that old school broadcast experience translate to the world of esports? “The interesting thing is there isn’t a whole lot of difference from working on an eSports event to any other live sporting project we
might work on,” says NEP’s Bullen. “The difference tends to be the platform on which that content is distributed. Predominantly esports is distributed online via gaming platforms such as Twitch or YouTube.” The Rocket League Championship Series 5 employed NEP’s Sargasso broadcast truck. The production employed seven Sony 4300 HD cameras and a 24ft jib, along with six HD minicams for close-ups of each of the players. Being able to get tight close-ups of players at any point in the competition is a luxury that distinguishes gaming from most other broadcast sports. “You can get action shots of the players grimacing during the game. If there was a particular move that a player was undertaking, often the director would cut to that person during
describe the game at the centre of this summer’s Rocket League
Championship Series 5 (RLCS). In June, Rocket League’s biggest gaming tournament, the World Championships, left North America and for London’s Copper Box Arena in front of a crowd of cheering fans. It was the first time the RLCS had been operated by the game’s developer Psyonix, instead of being outsourced to streaming network Twitch. LA-based Next Generation Esports (NGE) produced this year’s RLCS. The competitors were the top ten teams from North America, Europe and Oceania, selected through heats on Twitch, with each match comprising a series of five, three-on-three games. And the winners of the Rocket League Series 5 World Championships were… …well, you have to read to the end to find out. GLOBAL SOLUTIONS NGE employed global broadcast systems integrators NEP to provide production facilities for the finals – three days of competition, broadcast live via Twitch. NGE had already been working with NEP on eSports events stateside and was looking to continue a reliable and consistent service in its first production abroad. NEP’s John Bullen extolls the advantages of NEP’s global reach. “We were able to work with our US colleagues to ensure the look and feel of the show were in line with their expectation,” he says. “We could look
ROCKETING IN VALUE The esports industry is expected to be worth over $1 billion by 2020 and audience figures are already impressive
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