The interior of one of Game Creek's newest mobile television production units. Courtesy photo.
If you’ve tuned into a high-profile sporting event recently, you probably watched it through the lenses of Game Creek Video’s mobile television production equipment. Based in Hudson, Game Creek partners with regional and national networks like NESN, ESPN and Fox Sports to manage video and TV production, for which the company has received more than a dozen Emmy nominations and awards.
Beyond sports, Game Creek has handled production for 2016 primary debates for both parties and the media pool feed for both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions in July. “We’ve had a fairly massive uptick on the political side of our business,” says president and co-founder Patrick Sullivan. “This has definitely been our best political year ever, for sure.”
Sullivan says Game Creek is “fortunate” to be able to produce the conventions regardless of which network is overseeing the feed.
Most recently, Sullivan received the 2016 Entrepreneur of the Year award from the NH High Tech Council in Manchester for his contributions to the Granite State’s tech and business sectors.
In particular, the Council highlighted Sullivan and Game Creek’s launch of the first large-scale IP-based routing system operated in a remote production facility, which communicates information across networks and routers instead of physical wires. Fox Sports tasked Game Creek with creating a mobile production facility that could handle more than 1,000 discreet images, something Sullivan says would have required a vehicle larger than is allowed by Department of Transportation size and weight regulations if traditional wiring methods had been used. So Game Creek turned to IP-routing to create an effective mobile facility, and, in 2015, it was first used at the U.S. Open.
The exterior of a Game Creek truck. Courtesy photo.
“This has opened up a new universe for us and our competitors to be able to move video around a lot more efficiently and quickly,” says Sullivan. “It will eventually mean we’ll be able to build trucks that have massive mobility without the cable restraints.”
Sullivan credits Jason Taubman, vice president of design and new technology and Paul Bonar, vice president of engineering at Game Creek, for acting as the primary architects and coordinating the project’s development with Evertz Microsystems in Canada. “I’m under no illusion; I’m riding on some very big shoulders that helped me to get where I am today,” says Sullivan.
After working in various managerial roles for the New England Patriots, Sullivan founded Game Creek in 1993 when he bought a production company in Ohio.
About three months later, he decided to move the business to New England, choosing to base operations in NH due to the state’s business climate.
Since then, Game Creek has grown from its original staff of eight to 149 employees, 35 of whom are NH workers. The Company has added between seven and 10 employees annually over the past five years. Game Creek’s drivers transport the company’s mobile production trailers and engineers to event locations and coordinate production with the networks and event organizers. Currently, the company is operating 45 trailers, with six more in the design and build process that will be deployed by March 2017. Trailers are typically staffed with one or two drivers and two or three engineers.
In 2014, Game Creek covered 1,500 individual events, and according to Sullivan, Game Creek is on track to cover 5,500 events by the end of 2016. Game Creek has also experienced consistent growth in revenue, with an average growth rate of 12.5 percent annually since 2005.
For more information, visit gamecreekvideo.com.
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