Canes Gear Up to Broadcast on New ACC Network

After picking up a pair of season-opening wins in Texas last week, the Hurricanes women’s soccer team will take the field Thursday at Cobb Stadium for its home opener against FAU.

Yes, Miami will be looking to open its home schedule with a win. Yes, South Florida bragging rights are at stake. But there’s another reason the match is significant for the Hurricanes.

Thursday night’s match will be the first event Miami produces and broadcasts since last week’s launch of the ACC Network. That’s a moment both the Hurricanes’ video production staff and their colleagues across the ACC have been preparing for for years, in conjunction with ESPN.

The match will be carried online as part of an ACC Network broadcast, while on cable, the network will carry its first football game, a showdown between defending national champion Clemson and Georgia Tech.

Both broadcasts will make their own impact for the network and across the conference itself.

“As a conference, we’ve been meeting on this for so long, talking about what programming will look like, staffing, training up our production staffs and we’ve been working with all the different schools for so long that while we’re not all on a broadcast [Thursday], it’s a pretty big moment for all of us,” said Deputy Director of Athletics Jason Layton. “It’s exciting to see more games out there and this will be just another big part of the launch of the network.”

Across the conference and in Coral Gables, of course, the ACC’s member schools have ramped up their production staffs, equipment and broadcast capabilities to prepare for this month’s network launch.

At Miami – where the Hurricanes have been producing dozens of digital broadcasts for many of their teams since the 2014-15 season – those upgrades have meant making sure the video production team can put together linear television broadcasts along with the digital broadcasts that have been available for years.

Additional cameras were purchased. One of the Miami’s two control rooms was retrofitted to handle television broadcasts. More student employees have been recruited and trained to assist with productions and a studio controlled by ESPN is now online, giving Hurricanes coaches and student-athletes the ability to appear on ACC Network programming without having to leave the Hecht Center.

Meanwhile, Assistant Athletic Director Drew Thomas and Director of Production Services Anthony Lestochi have spent time training directly with ESPN personnel to make sure they are ready to carry out some of the new responsibilities that have come with the network’s launch.

Sometimes, that’s meant trips to Bristol, Connecticut and sometimes, that’s meant having network staffers come to Miami, all with the goal of helping the Hurricanes’ staff produce as professional a broadcast as possible, whether it’ll be shown online or on cable.

“I think we have a very solid relationship with ESPN because we’re willing to take the criticism and suggestions they have and see how we can implement them,” Thomas said. “Our colleagues at ESPN send us clips to look at and I enjoy when they send those because I’ll watch to see what other people are doing and see how they do this or that. They’ll also come down a couple of times a year to mentor us and have given us an idea of what we were going to be in for with the broadcasts and I think it’s a testament to our staff that we’re willing to take constructive criticism and really learn how to do it.”

For Thomas, getting Miami ready to join the ACC Network has been a journey itself.

A former video staffer for the Hurricanes’ women’s basketball team, Thomas transitioned into his new role in 2015 as Miami began producing more digital game broadcasts online.

During his first year on the job, there were no online productions of UM games. By his second year, the Hurricanes had produced 110 broadcasts, a number then that was double what most schools in the ACC were producing.

“We’ve been kind of chugging along ever since,” Thomas said.

Now, while those online productions will continue, Miami is set to add cable television broadcasts, the first coming on Sept. 29 when the women’s soccer team hosts Pittsburgh.

By the end of the 2019-20 season, Thomas expects his department will produce at least 15 events that will air on the ACC Network, with other broadcasts potentially being carried on either ESPN2 or ESPNU.

Digital broadcasts will continue, though they’ll now only be available to ACC Network subscribers. And as the network’s footprint increases, that will only mean more exposure and more opportunities for Hurricanes student-athletes all across campus.

“You look back five years ago and alums, fans, parents and potential recruits couldn’t see a lot of these sports and games if they weren’t in Miami,” Layton said. “Now, we’re putting 35 baseball games online. … We broadcast every volleyball match, all of our soccer games, for men’s and women’s basketball games, we pick up five or six a year that may not have been on air if it weren’t for us having this ability. Last year, I think we did five or six men’s and women’s tennis matches.

“Allowing us to have that reach across all those sports that wasn’t really thought about years ago is great for all those teams and their fans. … I think we’re probably a little bit ahead of where we thought [the ACC Network] would be from a distribution standpoint. There are still some gaps, especially with Comcast in our local market here that is such a big provider in this area, but our fans do have other options. They can continue to call Comcast and ask to have the ACC Network and make their voices heard. And ultimately, they still have the option that they can have access because they can switch to a provider that is carrying the network and is ready to go. … I think the good thing is there are options out there and if your provider doesn’t have it, you can find it somewhere and make that switch.”