Meet the Video Team That’s Ushering Minnesota United FC Into MLS

Readying its first videoboard show, the newest MLS club keeps an eye on building its history

Story Highlights

When Brad Baker moved to the Land of 10,000 Lakes in 2012, he was one of three employees of the then Minnesota Stars FC. The staff of the burgeoning NASL club worked out of owner Bill McGuire’s kitchen in those early days.

Four short years later, the senior director of video production for the now Minnesota United FC (MNUFC) is hustling to take Major League Soccer’s 22nd franchise to the national stage.

“When I came here, I think, we had 200 some season-ticket holders,” he says. “Now we have close to 10,000. We’ve been selling out games in a second division in a stadium 15 miles north of the city, and Major League Soccer has picked us as a new franchise. It’s kind of hard to wrap my head around.”

Hello, Big Board!

MNUFC’s video team runs four deep these days (Baker, producer Sam Plucker, motion graphics artist Jonathan Whitney, and production assistant Scott Sikich), but, with a promotion to the top U.S. league comes some pretty big steps. The most significant is being prepared to host games at the club’s new (but temporary) home, TCF Bank Stadium. The big challenge? This is the first time the club will be responsible for producing a top-of-the-line in-venue videoboard show.

In anticipation of the club’s first home match, on March 12, Baker spent a few weeks at the end of last season traveling to various clubs across the league (including the New York Red Bulls and MLS Cup Champion Seattle Sounders) to absorb as much as he could of their stadium shows. Seeing the different philosophies helped him formulate a concept for the style of videoboard production he hopes to bring to MNUFC.

“[As with] any sporting event, a lot of people are going to tailgate and hang out outside the stadium until not long before kickoff,” he says. “So I’m sort of thinking that last 20-30 minutes before kickoff is going to be our sweet spot. I want it to be like the end of a rock concert where you just start annihilating the fans and their senses with all kinds of sensory overload. We want people to be on their feet and jumping up and down, and, by the time that ball is kicked off, I want the kickoff to almost be like a release.

“I think it’s important for us,” he continues, “to build that atmosphere and give us a home-field advantage.”

TCF Bank Stadium — which regularly serves as home to the Minnesota Golden Gophers — boasts one of the largest videoboards (48 ft. high x 108 ft. wide) in all of college football. This presents its own challenges to the video team as it determines content strategy.

Although MNUFC has some history and isn’t a purebred expansion team like, say, Atlanta United FC will be, the video team is still very wary of using footage from its history, simply because many of the players who were on the NASL version of this club are not making the leap to MLS. In addition, the club has a desire to portray a top-flight image, so using highlights and clips from the club’s days playing in significantly smaller stadiums against non-MLS clubs is not footage it wants to play on the big board. So fans will notice a very graphics-heavy videoboard presentation in the club’s first year.

Establishing a Brand Voice … Through Video

Besides the videoboard show, MNUFC’s video team will (for the foreseeable future) also oversee the live broadcasts of home and away matches not covered by MLS partners Fox Sports and ESPN. The video also produces much of the video content that appears on the club’s website and various social-media channels.

Baker takes pride in the “voice” that he feels his team has helped establish through its video content.

“I think it’s one of the things that have helped build and elevate the brand,” he says. “We exist in a saturated sports market. One of the philosophies we have to live by is trying to cut through the clutter. We can’t look like any other team in this market because it just becomes white noise. We try to focus on creative ways of doing that, and I think we’ve always done a pretty good job of that. As we move forward, I think, there will still be some of that outside-the-box, off-the-wall kind of video content that we’ve built a reputation for.”

On the gear end, MNUFC is primarily a Sony house, having started with some ½- and ⅔-in. ENG cameras that could also be deployed for live broadcasts. Three years ago, the team invested in an FS-700, which became the team’s primary ENG camera. For the excitement of its first MLS campaign, the club is also set to buy an F55 to start acquiring 4K footage even though it is not yet producing anything in 4K.

“You only get your first season in Major League Soccer once,” Baker points out, “and we want to have the highest-quality images that we can from that first year.”

In addition, the club made the full switch to Adobe Creative Suite last season, using Premiere and After Effects, among others, to build video content and motion graphics.

Keepers of the Flame

Across the board, MNUFC understands that, although the club has a rabid hardcore fan base (which caught the eye of MLS and helped earn it the promotion), there will be many new faces in the stands checking out the Twin Cities’ newest major professional sports team. Extending a welcoming hand to those folks is critical to the club’s early success, and video plays a key part.

“Frankly, with all the new players and coaches, I think there’s a lot of stories to tell,” says Baker. “So where the hardcore fans who follow the team may know everything about a player before their contract is even signed because they’re scouring football scouting websites from all over the planet, your general fan who lives in the Twin Cities and casually comes to games may not know all that information. So telling the stories of the players — how they got here, where they came from, how they contribute to the team, what’s interesting about them off the field — will help build these personalities throughout the year. That level of storytelling will be very important in our first year in MLS.”

And with that, he adds, comes the responsibility of serving as the archivist of a sports team making the dramatic leap to the top league of its sport.

“We’re trying to do our due diligence in making sure that nothing is forgotten,” he says, “so, in five years, when we host MLS Cup and want to tell the story of Minnesota United’s rise, we have all those bits there.”