A 360-degree video tour of Super Bowl 50’s NFL Media Center in San Francisco

A glimpse into the media machine behind the madness

Shot on a Ricoh Theta S — Feb. 2, 2016

On Feb. 2, I had the opportunity to join Stanford sports journalism students on a tour of the NFL’s Super Bowl Media Center at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

It’s quite a spectacle for the senses — imagine combining thousands of sportswriters, broadcasters, glitzy banners, TV screens, football fans and the NFL’s marketing prowess into one space.

It was later in the evening when we visited, so many of the sports broadcasts were off-air — but a few were still busy reporting live from San Francisco, still days in advance of the Feb. 7 big game.

Using a Ricoh Theta S camera, I experimented with capturing the ambiance there with 360-degree video. Some lessons learned shooting on the Ricoh Theta: it’s better to be closer to subjects and to capture more dynamic action than I did in this experiment. This one-minute tour isn’t the most thrilling, but it provides a sneak peek into a portion of the media machine behind Super Bowl coverage.

(Oh, and go Broncos.)