DEEP DIVEspotlight DIVE
Thursday Night Football: Inside the Kickoff of Amazon Prime Video’s Historic NFL Package
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n September, the NFL kicked off its first-ever broadcast package carried exclusively on a streaming platform with Amazon Prime’s Video’s Thursday Night Football. Over the ensuing 15 weeks, Prime Video’s TNF coverage proved to be among the most robust and technologically advanced productions in the history of sports broadcasting, including the launch of arguably the most state-of-the-art set of mobile units ever built: Amazon’s Prime One and Prime Two nativeIP fleet from Game Creek Video. Here’s an inside look at it was pulled off on an ultra-tight timeline from Marie Donoghue, VP, global sports video, Amazon; Fred Gaudelli, executive producer, Thursday Night Football; JP Palmer, senior manager, live production technical operations, Prime Video; and Jared Stacy, director, global live sports production, Prime Video.
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SPORTS PRODUCTION 2023 YEARBOOK
On the key production philosophies for Thursday Night Football: Stacy: The most important thing for us from the very start was how we could make Thursday nights special for fans and provide that big-game ritual for fans and families for a long time. That was our north star as we started looking at how we produce the game, how we deliver that game, and who calls that game. And, in terms of the pregame show, we also knew right away that we wanted to take the show on the road every Thursday for 15 cities in 15 weeks. On building the TNF production team behind the scenes: Stacy: We knew [the producer] was one of the first pieces we needed to put in place. And we were lucky enough to bring in Fred Gaudelli. Fred is not only the best person to ever produce NFL football but also a great leader. We started working with him to build this team together. And we will also have
