‘A very Paris flair to it’: Inside ESPN’s broadcast plans for USC vs. Notre Dame
Ahead of South Carolina women’s basketball’s historic opener against Notre Dame in Paris, ESPN vice president of production Sara Gaiero spoke with The State about how the network is putting the broadcast together and some of its specific coverage plans to kickoff the 2023-24 season.
“It’s often that we see in other sports international competitions,” Gaiero said. “NFL goes internationally, NBA goes internationally. For women’s college basketball to have an international presence, I think just speaks to the growth of the sport and the league.
“And my hope is that we can celebrate that, and we can set the tone for the college basketball that you’re going to see this season. ... Two terrific teams with great championship legacies.”
Gaiero oversees ESPN’s NCAA women’s basketball and WNBA coverage. She started leading WNBA production in 2020, documenting the league’s return to play in the “Wubble” and guiding her team through broadcasting during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gaiero added college basketball to her responsibilities over the summer.
USC faces Notre Dame at 1:30 p.m Monday on ESPN.
Q: When you started in this role, what was your reaction to news of the Paris game, knowing you’d be part of it and knowing South Carolina and Notre Dame would be the teams participating?
Gaiero: I think it’s awesome. It’s awesome, right? There’s no better way to come out to start the season than with these two really, really strong teams. They have such a great history and lineage throughout college basketball, and certainly, the star power that they bring as well really resonates with our fans. So to have these two teams kick off the women’s college basketball season this year, it’s tremendous for us. It’s such a great way to start the season. And so we looked at it just as an awesome opportunity to come out of the gates really, really strong with our women’s basketball coverage this year.
Q: Coverage-wise, promotion-wise, what goes into putting on an event of this caliber?
Gaiero: From an overall perspective, I think the first question was, ‘Will we, as a group, as a production and operations team, will we fully be on site and produce it from Paris? Or will we do a modified production as what we’ve seen in how we’ve created different production workflows with our REMI (remote integration) productions and things like that?’
It was important to us to be there physically on site for the entire production. So our whole production team will travel over there. We have a team of operations folks who will travel over there. We are working with a local team over there as well. So our mobile unit, our NEP (group) partners (a global broadcasting and connectivity provider). We have partners over there that we’ve worked with on other events, so we’ve leaned into them to provide a lot of the technical aspects of it. Mobile unit, cameras, EVS (the playback equipment used for replays during games). So we’re partnering with a team there locally to provide those resources for us.
Those conversations, again, started in August. And it was very nuanced about, ‘Here’s what we’re sort of looking for from specs situation, and what can you provide?’ And working with the local venue team, in partnership with Lea and her team, about schedule and setup and security and safety. We took all of those things into consideration as we were planning out and mapping out our overall plan.
Q: You kind of addressed this one, but how many crew members will be on-site in Paris versus remote? How do those numbers compare to a typical regular season game?
Gaiero: From production standpoint: producer, director, associate director, graphics, tape, so we’ll probably about 10 production people that will be on-site. And then we’re sending probably another 10 to 12 technicians, operations producer, technical specialists. So we probably have a group of about 25 to 30 people that will be boots on the ground in Paris.
I’ll tell you, it’s equitable. When we looked at the level of the show and from an equipment complement standpoint, it was important that we have enough cameras and EVS in position to document the game appropriately. So I would say it’s on par with one of our top-level regular season shows that we would do stateside.
Q: How many cameras will be there? Microphones? How does those numbers compare to a typical regular season game?
Gaiero: We’ll have six cameras. So all of your basic documentation cameras. Again, that’s equitable to what we roll out for a regular season ESPN, ESPN2 game.
I’m not quite certain that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re doing in-game access with microphones and such, but we are doing a handful of pre-produced content with the teams.
But from an in-game resource perspective, six cameras, two EVS, and that’s equitable with what we do on an ESPN mobile show.
Q: When will everyone from ESPN get to Paris? How early before the event will folks start setting things up?
Gaiero: It’s a rolling delivery of humans. We’ve got some folks leaving Tuesday and Wednesday, to arrive onsite Thursday. And then we’ve got some of our talent are coming in a little bit later over the weekend. It’s a little bit of a cascading group.
And then we are working with the venue and our local partners there. They actually have a basketball game in the building on Sunday. So we’re going to work around that. But we’ll get our truck parked in place on Saturday, and we’ll get some things laid out and prepped to be positioned where they need to go — cameras, cables, etc. And then the venue has another basketball game on Sunday, and then we’ll come in after that game is over and do a big part of our setup on Sunday. And then finish it off Monday morning, and then we’re playing Monday afternoon.
Q: How is tip-off time (1 p.m. ET) determined, particularly when the game takes place in a time zone six hours ahead of EST? Is that a collaboration between the production and programming teams?
Gaiero: I think it’s really finding that sweet spot. Because you have to take into account the local time. And you don’t want to play too early or too late over there locally because so much of the success of the game itself is that local experience, too. We want tons of fans in the building. We want the atmosphere to be really, really great. So that gets taken into account as well.
And then you’re sort of backing into from a stateside perspective. Where does that fall? And then from a programming standpoint, what else is on the network that day that we sort of need to work around or reschedule or shuffle the lineup. But those are the collaborative conversations that our programming team has with the organizing team.
You really just got to figure out how to how to serve both (domestic and French) fan bases.
Q: Are there any audience expectations on your end for this event based on tip-off time, the fact that this is a season opener and the fact that big basketball brands South Carolina and Notre Dame will be playing? Or do you simply plan to produce the best show possible and the numbers will be what they’ll be?
Gaiero: Yeah, I think that’s the key, right? I mean, we’re gonna do our best to promote it and drive awareness to the game with all of our ancillary partners. With “SportsCenter,” with “NBA Today,” with social, digital. So we’ll tap into our internal resources to drive awareness to the show as best we can.
We can’t control that piece of it. So if you tune in, you tune in. We hope that you do. But what we will control, and what we do focus on, is putting out the best product possible so that when fans do tune in we’re just giving them a really, really awesome show.
Q: Any plans for the broadcast you can share?
Gaiero: The teams have been great partners. So we’ll take advantage of of working with them with our talent team.
Talent team on-site for this game will be Ryan Ruocco, Rebecca Lobo, Andraya Carter, Holly Rowe.
Andraya Carter is really going to tap into some of our hosting skills and spend some time in the city with the teams and the players. So we’ll capture some content with Draya and some select players walking around Paris and just sort of experiencing life over there and turn that into some feature content that will roll out throughout the show.
And additionally, we’ll capture a sense of place and really just embrace the local vibe. And that will become a thread that we are running through throughout the show. So when you tune in, it’s not just a regular basketball game in November, but instead it’ll have a very Paris flair to it.
We’ll have some French music that we’re using in and around commercial breaks and in and around features and packages. We’ll get content with the teams that we’ll roll into the show that’ll be great. There’s a couple other (team activities) in and around the city that are happening that we’ll capture and turn that around as well.
So the idea is that we’re sort of giving you Paris on top of basketball, and really just bringing the two things together for a really unique vibe for those two hours.
Q: Aside from wanting things run as smoothly as possible, what are you’re general hopes for this broadcast?
Gaiero: That’s a great question. My hope is that we can celebrate the game. My hope is that this is an opportunity for us to sit to say, ‘Look at how much this game has grown and expanded and just been elevated’ over the last few years, particularly.
It’s often that we see in other sports international competitions. NFL goes internationally, NBA goes internationally. For women’s college basketball to have an international presence, I think just speaks to the growth of the sport and the league. And my hope is that we can celebrate that, and we can set the tone for the college basketball that you’re going to see this season. I mean, again, two terrific teams with great championship legacies. And that’s how ESPN is starting off our coverage of women’s college basketball this season.
Super excited to just put our our spin on it and to be the carriers delivering this great game. And I hope it just kicks off what will be a tremendous season for all of us women’s basketball fans.
Q: How have you seen television coverage of women’s sports, more specifically women’s basketball evolve throughout your career? How does this game in Paris fit into that evolution?
Gaiero: I’ve been at this for 23 years at ESPN, and I can tell you as part of that, I’ve been part of women or women’s basketball coverage in different parts of my career there. And what I’ve seen in the last four years specifically, I think is just, like, I don’t know that I could have anticipated that this is where our coverage of women’s sports would be in 2023.
I just think that we are tapping into an an untouched gem. And how we have elevated women’s basketball at ESPN in the last four years, I just think has been incredible. To show our commitment to wanting to tell the stories, the stories of these great athletes.
I oversee our WNBA coverage as well. We’ve enhanced our coverage of that sport tremendously in the last four years. And it’s paid off. We see it in the ratings. We see it in the viewership. We see interest.
What we know is that there’s a whole population of people out there that want more coverage of women’s basketball. They want it. And when we can deliver it, when we put it out there, people come. And they want to consume it. And I think that we have to stay committed to that and continue to make it available to people. And then when we do that, elevate our coverage of it to make it as high level as we possibly can. And if we can continue to do that, I just think we will keep growing and growing and growing and getting bigger, bigger, bigger. Which is really exciting.
