February 12, 2013 (Pittsburgh)
With the approach of the Daytona 500 on Feb. 24, which serves as the official opening of the NASCAR racing season, NEP Supershooters is gearing up for its 13th year as mobile broadcasting provider for NASCAR Productions. In addition to providing the industry’s most innovative HD mobile production capabilities, NEP Supershooters has applied its expertise in fiber optics to design and build the fiber infrastructure for each NASCAR venue, including huge racetracks that require more than 150,000 feet of fiber.
“We value our ongoing relationship with NASCAR, and we’re honored to be able to provide technical management, engineering, and facilities for one of the most complex sports broadcasts in the U.S.,” said NEP CEO Kevin Rabbitt. “NASCAR Productions trusts us to work with its rights holders and other vendors to deliver a flawless show every week, and our 12-year track record is a testament to the engineering excellence, innovation, and expertise that we bring to every race.”
Over the years, NEP’s technical expertise and depth of resources have uniquely positioned the company to handle NASCAR events of enormous complexity. The Daytona 500, for instance, is the biggest race of the year, comparable to the Super Bowl in production complexity. Since the Daytona 500 comes at the beginning of the season, NEP Supershooters is required to have a large-scale, highly reliable and well-tested system in place at the outset.
During the 2012 season, NASCAR Productions deployed NEP Supershooters’ SS29 mobile HD A and B units to produce all 38 events in NASCAR’s premier Sprint Cup Series. These units produced the full range of NASCAR Productions’ tier 2 programming, including a two-hour pre-race show featuring in-depth coverage of drivers and cars and four roving announcers located throughout the race track produced in partnership with SPEED. In addition, NEP Supershooters’ NCP11 and ST1 units produced all 22 races for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series in 2012 for live broadcast on SPEED. NEP Supershooters has also provided several other large sports broadcasters with customized mobile production vehicles for their own coverage of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series and NASCAR Nationwide Series, with NASCAR Productions providing logistics and infrastructure support.
In addition, NEP Supershooters provided its SRT mobile unit at all NASCAR premier series venues, acting as a shared resources truck that provided camera feeds and signal distribution for all rights holders. Via the fiber network designed and built by NEP, SRT distributed feeds from nearly 100 robotic, in-car, roof, stage, and studio cameras for the Daytona 500, with data and audio feeds from up to 70 cameras for other NASCAR Sprint Cup Series races. By integrating multiple production facilities for all networks, SRT served as the hub for the entire NASCAR Sprint Cup Series broadcasting compound. The custom designed “condo” unit ST37 provided production space for several other smaller productions and video services. From ST37, NASCAR Productions also produced international NASCAR ancillary programs distributed to 125 countries outside the U.S., in addition to Sprint Vision and FanVision content.
