JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Nearly 70,000 lucky fans have a ticket for Saturday's Jaguars game, but millions more fans around the country will watch the game on TV.
All eyes will be on Jacksonville for the Jaguar's first home playoff game in five years and First Coast News got exclusive access to the NBC production compound to see what it takes to broadcast a game like this.
A normal NFL game will have two production trucks and around 50 people working the broadcast. Saturday's Jaguars game is a big deal for Duval County and for the NBC network.
"They are state of the art TV trucks, probably the most advanced in the business right now," said Tim DeKime, the VP of Football Operations for NBC Sports. NBC will utilize the more technologically advanced production trucks in the country for Saturday's game.
"We have about 225 people involved in the show, we have 50 cameras and miles of fiber optic cables going out to the stadium for the various camera positions," said DeKime.
The main production truck is where the director, producer and other key staff stay during the game. Dozens of monitors show practically every inch of the stadium from all 50 cameras.
"This will be completely populated with camera feeds, the director will choose which cameras will be on air," said DeKime.
But that's just one of their six production trucks in what seems like a mini makeshift city outside the stadium.
"One of the biggest challenges for us is finding space in every stadium we go to for all of our trucks," said DeKime.
A normal NFL game broadcast will have a space in one of their trucks for the audio booth and a space for the graphics computer in that same truck. That's not the case for this game.
This broadcast has an entire audio truck that oversees the more than 100 microphones throughout the stadium and a completely separate truck to oversee the graphics, like the yellow first down line that you see on TV at home.
"A lot of people don't realize the set-up involved, for this game our trucks arrived on Tuesday night," said DeKime, "Thursday we continue set up with our sky cam operations."
On Friday the NBC crew went through dress rehearsals to make sure all of their equipment is in perfect working order.
And when there's a huge play that turns the tide of the game, like the scoop and score that put the Jags on top to win the division, the TV production crew goes to work.
"Producer Fred Gaudelli will look at replays, and he interfaces with our talent in the booth," said DeKime.
Part of the First Coast News tour of the NBC production compound included the truck with all of the replay capabilities for the game.
"These are EVS machines, they record each camera, so every EVS machine can record up to 12 cameras," said DeKime.
NBC will use 50 cameras for Saturday's broadcast and has 14 EVS machines to catch every throw, tackle and signature moment of the game, all from one specific truck.
"The producer will be looking at the replays to get the best replay angle, so when you have as many cameras as we have, we could have 3 or 4 different angles, one better than the other," said DeKime.
And through miles of fiber optic cables and a crew of 225 people, NBC instantly brings you those angles right into your living room.
When these production trucks are done with Saturday's game they will head west, specifically to Arizona for the Super Bowl.
The Jaguars are three wins away from joining them there.