When 13 NBA teams became TV free agents this past spring -- after the demise of Main Street Sports Group -- each was faced with a flummoxing chore: build their own broadcast business.
They had to choose an outlet (OTA, DAZN, Victory+ or Rangers Sports Network). They had to line up advertising (either in-house or through their new outlet or through Playfly). And, completely out of their element, they had to figure out how to produce games.
But as the clock ticks on the 11 remaining local TV free agents (the Hawks, Hornets, Cavaliers, Pacers, Clippers, Grizzlies, Bucks, T’Wolves, Thunder, Magic and Spurs), the production piece has become far less daunting. Mobile TV Group -- which, little did most teams know, was the production backbone for all of Main Street’s FanDuel Sports Network broadcasts -- has announced a full-stack, turnkey platform Wednesday that it can offer directly to teams.
“It’s what we have been behind the curtains talking to teams about -- the ‘Easy Button,’” said Nick Garvin, MTVG’s CEO.
Even if those teams go straight to the NBA for their production needs, they could even wind up working with MTVG indirectly. The NBA -- with the hire of former NESN COO Matt Volk as GM of local media -- is building its own department to (1) oversee local media operations, (2) develop production solutions and (3) work with teams and partners to enhance local game telecasts. In other words, it’s a burgeoning league-operated production operation, which any of these teams can purchase.
Although the NBA preferred not to comment, the development is especially timely because the league, as soon as the 2027-28 season, will launch an aggregated streaming hub for 20-plus teams, potentially with Google or Amazon, and will need to produce the games en masse.
So, with all of that as a backdrop, it’s conceivable the league -- which has an ongoing relationship with MTVG -- will lean on MTVG’s production resources in the short term (next season) and the long term (the 2027-28 streaming hub) to help augment its production business.
“No matter where the games go or the rights go, the games have to be produced,’” Garvin said. “The league has made it very clear that they will not let the games not be produced or televised. And so that’s us…We’ve been kind of this hidden layer in some of this.”
With Wednesday’s announcement, MTVG will be in the shadows no more. Last season, Garvin said the company produced games for about 70% of the NBA, handled all of MLB’s local media productions and 4,500 overall live events. And they did so, he said, “very behind the scenes.”
The decision to go public now with this new turnkey platform is based mostly on what they’ve just accomplished with the Angels. When the Angels exited Main Street and created their own network from scratch this spring, just a month before Opening Day, they turned to MTVG for what the company called “production, contribution and distribution.”
The production included custom-built mobile units at the ballpark, with a cloud control room that could allow production teams to join remotely so they wouldn’t have to travel. It included robotic camera systems and on-site production tech.
The contribution was essentially game transmission from the mobile unit back to the master control. It meant that all the ad insertion, quality control and closed captioning would be seamlessly taken care of through AI, with 24/7 monitoring.
The last piece was distribution, as in transmitting the signal out via the internet or private lines -- and then monitoring the delivery 24/7 to cable entities such as Spectrum or Charter or to the direct-to-consumer apps. “Just like we would deliver to Charter or Dish or DirecTV, we will deliver to Kiswe, Deltatre, ViewLift -- pick your app,” Garvin said.
All of the tech emanated from MTVG’s picturesque 300,000 square-foot Mountain Media Center in Centennial, Colo. The former Starz Encore master control facility has over 70 Live Media Control Pods; four data halls with uninterruptible power supplies and redundant generators; four satellite uplinks and six satellite downlinks; hundreds of fiber strands from multiple providers; and can operate entirely off-grid without external power.
MTVG has also built a fleet of 58 mobile units, with the 59th under construction. It has 25 cloud control rooms across the country and is about to build one for the Heat, one of the 13 former Main Street teams that just signed an OTA deal with Warren Buffett’s station in Miami. MTVG also handles production for all of Victory+’s current pro teams -- the Rangers, Stars and Ducks -- and for Scripps teams such as the Golden Knights and Lightning.
But the ex-Main Street NBA teams are the ones making their decisions right now, which is why -- after the Angels revelation -- the company is finally promoting its newly branded MTVG Production Platform. Some other NBA teams, such as the Trail Blazers, handle their own production in-house, but none of the former Main Street teams do. Which is why this full-stack MTVG development is an eye-opener for them all.
If a team chooses to go to a local OTA station -- like the Heat -- they might ask that station to handle production. But what might happen, Garvin said, is “the local OTA might say, great, we want to do production. So then we could do a deal with the OTA.”
Or a team could choose to go to the league for production. Or it could choose to go to a streaming service such as DAZN or Victory+. Or it could go to one of MTVG’s competitors -- NEP Group & Game Creek Video -- although they tend to handle national broadcasts. But, in almost every scenario (whether it’s an OTA, a streamer or the league), the teams end up tied to MTVG.
This past season, for instance, the NBA took over production for an ex-Main Street team, the Mavericks -- but it was MTVG that provided the tech services for the games. Even a company such as Fubo, when it was recruiting the Main Street teams, had no idea MTVG was Main Street’s behind-the-curtain production arm.
“[Fubo] said, ‘Well, you don’t do [production] -- Main Street does it,’” Garvin said. “And I said, ‘No, they don’t.’ I wanted to shake ‘em, kind of. We do it, it’s us. You can come right to us if you want.
“It’s been us, and we haven’t really reached out in the past because we’ve been very happy with our clients getting all of the notoriety and being the network. But I think it’s important as we launch this platform to really get in front of all the potential rights holders. We don’t know who is going to end up with this, but, the engine is right here. It’s us.”
