Party and Production On! Inside ESPN’s Multi-Platform Presentation Of The 2022 NFL Draft Live From Las Vegas

For the fourth consecutive year, Ryder and College GameDay producer Jim Gaiero oversee ESPN and ABC’s NFL Draft productions, respectively. They discussed their memories of 2020 and approaches to 2022 with Front Row.

 What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned from the 2020 work-from-home-oriented NFL Draft production that applies to this year’s production?

 Ryder: The 2020 work-from-home model was in its infancy. No one had done anything of this magnitude before.  It was essential for us to pull this off, and we did. We had close to 600 feeds from players, teams, and announcers in all the various sites across the country.

Fast forward two years later, we continue to use some of those aspects from the work from home model. It’s just that the technology is better.

Gaiero:  It taught us to be more nimble and be more creative with some of our executions.  For example, we were able to get more player reactions from home as well as interviews from those players, something that hadn’t been done before.

What did you glean from ESPN’s production of the NHL All-Star Game in Las Vegas that might apply to your production?

Ryder:  You want to create that sense of place. We all remember Nashville [2019 NFL Draft site]. The Nashville draft – a lot of people remember Nashville as, “This is crazy. Look at all the people in the streets, up and down the boulevard”. . . The players and the teams will always be central to the draft. But [in Las Vegas] we’ve got this amazing backdrop.

Gaiero: The NHL All-Star Game really showed how you can incorporate a special place like Vegas into your total presentation.  The city itself is a character in our broadcast.

How often are the ESPN and ABC production teams in contact with each other before and during the telecasts?  

 Ryder: We’re constantly in communication with them. We’re in lockstep all the way. But when the show starts, their draft show is more about personalizing, humanizing, analyzing. They’ll get into the more off-the-ball stories, where we’ll keep it the more traditional X’s-and-O’s.

 Gaiero: Bryan and I were friends beforehand and we talk or text almost daily during the draft process. Sometimes we simply talk players or teams or even potential landing spots for players.  Other times, we talk logistics like getting on the air or syncing up for certain moments.  But the most important thing we do is share our resources.  And, during the meetings, we present a team- first, unified culture.  There’s no ESPN versus ABC.  We’re all on the NFL Draft together and we all love it.