At 11,000 square feet with nine separate sets and 52 monitors, Sportsnet today introduced the largest, most innovative sports studio in the country, providing fans with a sports entertainment playground that places them in the heart of the action and brings the NHL experience to life.
The Hockey Central Studio, which debuts October 8 – opening night of the NHL season – features a rotating main anchor desk with a 360° open environment allowing cameras to shoot from any angle, an 11x38ft. ultra-high-resolution monitor – the largest ever in a Canadian television studio, and an LED floor that displays videos and graphics and leads into a giant video monitor wall. The studio also features up to 14 cameras that can shoot up to three live broadcasts for three different networks at any one time.
Designed by Jack Morton PDG, the company that designed the sets for Canada's Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium at Vancouver 2024 & London 2024, the set was eight months in the making, beginning with the design phase and coming full circle with the construction in mid-June and finishing in late September.
The studio is complemented by a new graphics and animation package, designed in-house by the Rogers Creative Group. It includes 10 different custom opening animations, 250 player animations, and more than 1,000 support animations that enhance storytelling and game analysis for viewers. Hockey fans will hear fresh musical packages during NHL on Sportsnet broadcasts, with renowned Canadian composer Stephan Moccio's enhanced version of the current Hockey Night in Canada song and Sportsnet theme music – both of which are performed by an all-Canadian 50-piece orchestra.