Fanatics Fest 2025 was a celebration of sports, culture, and the power of fandom at full throttle. Held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City, the event brought together tens of thousands of fans, brands, athletes, and media over one unforgettable weekend. For us at ASL, it was a content juggxrnaught, which also happened to be happening the same week we were at Sport Beach in Cannes Lions.
Alongside our partners at OBB and Fanatics, our team was embedded across every square foot of the show floor, covering everything from brand activations to athlete interviews, unscripted moments, and the high-stakes Fanatics Fest Games. In just three days, we shot and delivered over 60 pieces of content for some of the biggest brands on-site—many of them going live the same day they were filmed.
Our role: capture and deliver high-quality, on-brand content in real time.
That meant short-form, social-optimized video for brands like:
Starbucks
Raising Cane’s
Dick’s Sporting Goods
Fanatics Fest & the Fanatics Fest Games
And behind-the-scenes content for ESPN’s Fanatics Fest: All Access – Inside the Ultimate Sports Fan Experience
Our clients needed everything: Reels. TikToks. YouTube Shorts. Broadcast assets. And they needed them now.
Fanatics Fest wasn’t just packed with fans—it was stacked with stars. We captured moments with top-tier athletes, celebrities, and creators including:
Tom Brady
Derek Jeter
David Beckham
Kevin Durant
Jayson Tatum
Sabrina Ionescu
Travis Scott
And more surprise appearances throughout the weekend
Whether it was panel appearances, exclusive interviews, or spontaneous floor interactions, our team had to be ready to roll at any moment—and we were.
Delivering at this speed and scale required a bulletproof system and an elite crew. On-site, we deployed:
12 camera operators, many using gimbals for smooth movement through packed crowds
4 production assistants to help wrangle talent, manage gear, and support crew
Audio engineers to capture clean sound in chaotic environments
3 DITs/media managers to offload, tag, and distribute footage in real time
6 editors, split across on-site and overnight shifts
Field producers coordinating the flow between stages, brand teams, and editorial
We shot in both vertical and widescreen formats, capturing each moment with the end-platform in mind. Our nimble operators worked gimbals through dense fan crowds to ensure buttery-smooth motion, while producers tracked the location of key athletes to make sure nothing was missed.
Once footage was ingested, our editorial team used parallel cutting workflows—cross-cutting scenes from different cameras, different brands, and different deliverable specs simultaneously. Starbucks might need a 9:16 vertical piece with a lighthearted tone while ESPN required a cinematic 16:9 doc-style interview. We handled both without missing a beat.
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