For more than a decade as art director with FanDuel Sports Network, formerly Fox Sports Detroit and then Bally Sports Detroit, I designed and executed broadcast media environments for the Detroit Tigers, Pistons, and Lions, plus coverage graphics for the Red Wings, across media days, promotional shoots, and broadcast production.
The work covered the full stack. Set design, LED architecture, screen layout and content, custom animation built specifically for each environment, crew hiring, gear ordering, and onsite direction. On the Tigers projects in particular I directed shoots on location in Florida, designed the sets, built all the animation, and ran the video screens live during production.
These are not graphics packages dropped into someone else's environment. The environments were designed around the content, and the content was designed around the environments, as a single integrated system.
Selected projects included multi-surface LED builds with independently controlled walls and reflective floor integration, real-time animation systems triggered during live shoots, and broadcast finishing across multiple campaigns and seasons. Two campaigns came out of this work: the Emmy Award-winning April in the D, a yearly campaign for every Detroit team during the rare stretch in April when they all play at once, and the Tigers Spring Training campaign, a multi-year run of spots that blended unconventional humor with sports identity to reframe what a regional network broadcast spot could be.
Eleven Michigan Emmy Awards came out of this period of work.
The archive below documents behind the scenes and set photography from the Tigers, Pistons, and Lions productions.
