Mercedes-Benz Stadium Overhauls Production Ecosystem With Upgraded Control Rooms, New Integrated Workflows Bulk of work was done after Atlanta Falcons' Week 9 matchup on Nov. 3 By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor Wednesday, February 19, 2025 - 7:00 am
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Among professional-sports venues, Mercedes-Benz Stadium is one of the busiest in the country. After providing world-class experiences for seven years, its in-house production space needed a refresh to keep up with the year-long schedule. Implemented in three phases during 2024, new SMPTE 2110-powered control rooms have upgraded production quality in Atlanta.
We executed a major control-room upgrade over the course of six months, says Julia Chongarlides, senior director/executive producer, game presentation and stadium productions, Mercedes-Benz Stadium. We have a 365-day production calendar at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, so we needed the flexibility to build multiple shows at once.
A Busy Calendar: Refurb Is Completed in Phases The preliminary steps of the process began in October 2022 with a control-room audit by WJHW. Chongarlides and Chief Broadcast and Network A/V Engineer Cole Gallagher selected equipment at NAB Shows in 2023 and 2024. After an onsite walkthrough on April 2, 2024, the project was awarded on May 15, 2024.
The crew tears the control room apart to install new cabling.
By July 2024, the NFL's Atlanta Falcons were in training camp, but the MLS's Atlanta United season was in the thick of competition. The building had already hosted 11 home games, but, luckily, the club played four consecutive road matches and didn't host its first home match until July 17 vs. NYCFC. With ES Broadcast as systems integrator and comprehensive system design by WJHW, which included key contributions from WJHW's Consultant Brandon Martin and Associate Principal Daniel Riess, the crew moved forward with Phase 1 July 1-Aug. 20. This phase covered rack-room organization, prep work, installation of the first Ross Video Tessera stack, and acquisition of 11 Sony hard cameras and two handhelds on a Ronin gimbal, Sony camera shading, and Canon lenses.
The new Tessera system was feeding into our old router, which was then output to the board, Gallagher explains. We had to get that spun up, so, although we were running out of new equipment, we made the decision to keep our creative elements the same to not add more stress to an already stressful time.
Equipment began arriving during last summer's Phase 1.
Not only did the videoboard elements stay the same, but the team also had to find a point in the year when a large chunk of the project would be completed. With the venue home to two professional franchises, the site of college football's SEC Championship since the building's launch in 2017, and many more performances and sports events, there was never going to be downtime for the full transition. Scheduling around the packed slate of production responsibilities, the crew completed Phase 2, installing the second Tessera stack and Ross Video PIERO software Oct. 14 -25.
We had to execute the Falcons home opener the best we could with the new workflows that were implemented at the time, says Chongarlides. Phase 2 in October was when we received new ASUS SDI workstation monitors, tabletops, and the heart of the new system.
Solving the Puzzle: Gallagher and His Team Iron Out the Tech Issues Thanks to a break in the NFL schedule, the final phase started at the beginning of November. The crew was busy with an MLS Cup Playoffs match between Atlanta United and Inter Miami on Nov. 2 and an Atlanta Falcons vs. Dallas Cowboys game on Nov. 3, and then the Falcons were away for two straight weeks and had their bye in Week 12. During the period Nov. 4-23, the third Tessera stack and core pieces of the multiple-control-room setup were put together and tested to their limit: the Ross Video production switcher, Evertz replay system and router, Riedel comms, 17 Panasonic PTZ cameras, and an update to the Daktronics Digital Media Players. From an engineering perspective, Gallagher and his staff put the workflows through their paces to solve any issues that popped up.
Three Ross Video production switchers - two Acuities, one Carbonite - are driving productions at the venue.
We were trying to iron out bugs on top of bugs while also trying to maintain the productivity of the production crew, he explains. We were turning on the new equipment as needed when we were able to, but, luckily, we were able to get our cameras online, our comms working right away, getting our Evertz DreamCatchers and Ross Video production switchers ready to go, and our Evertz router up and running.
On the production side, Chongarlides and her staff had to formulate a plan for the ALTWOOD-themed game in Week 13 vs. Los Angeles Chargers on Dec. 1. Honoring the city's and the state's influence on the television and film industry, this game required an extra amount of attention to bring it all together. We totally blew everything out with new content and graphics, she says. We had to make sure that everything was ready technically for this entirely new show.
Control-Room Tour: Inside the New Tech Powering the Game-Day Experience Except for the Halo Boards, a large number of the workflows in the control room were overhauled in this project. At its core, the SMPTE 2110 setup is driven by an Evertz Magnum router - the control room at Mercedes-Benz Stadium was one of the last to run on the Evertz ASPEN solution - and a Cisco Switchcore for network connectivity. The videoboard is driven by a fleet of products from Ross Video: four total channels of XPression, three Tesseras with 33 total notes for LED elements, three PIERO systems, and three production switchers (two Acuities in the primary con
