Chyron brings its cloud-based production platform to grassroots pickleball event in Kalamazoo, enabling multi-camera coverage, custom graphics, and remote commentary.
Friendly Pickle, a pickleball club in Kalamazoo, MI, recently produced a full live broadcast of its pickleball tournament with the help the cloud-native Chyron LIVE platform. The production featured a six-camera setup, a custom graphics package built in Chyron PRIME, and remote commentary, demonstrating Chyron LIVE’s ability to deliver broadcast-quality coverage for organizations well outside the traditional sports media landscape.
[Broadcast AV Takes Center Stage]
Daniel Higgins, project lead, Chyron, worked closely with Friendly Pickle general manager Kristy Visser and owner Ben Ipema to explore the potential for Chyron LIVE to deliver professional coverage of the event. After seeing Chyron LIVE in action, Ipema agreed to host a full live-streamed production during one of the club’s upcoming tournaments.
“We pride ourselves on giving our members a top-notch club experience, so when the Chyron team met with us about bringing professional-level broadcast production to one of our tournaments, it was an easy yes,” said Ben Ipema, owner of Friendly Pickle. “Our players and their families got to see themselves on a stream that looked and felt like something out of a major tournament, right here in Kalamazoo.”
On March 21, the team produced a full day of live coverage for Mini MLP March Madness, a team tournament played across two skill divisions. The broadcast was built around six camera inputs: three BirdDog PTZ cameras and two Panasonic camcorders, covering the main game view, close-up rally action, and a wide venue shot, all switched live via Chyron LIVE. A custom Chyron PRIME graphics package built specifically for the event included a pickleball scorebug, a breakboard for series scoring, lower thirds, and team-versus-team intro graphics, all controlled through a Master Control Panel configured with saved messaging for instant recall throughout the day-long event. The broadcast streamed live to YouTube in 1080p and incorporated remote commentary, adding a layer of production value typically reserved for much larger events.
“Chyron LIVE was built to bring broadcast-grade production within reach of any organization, no matter the size,” concluded Higgins. “We deployed a full multi-camera workflow, real-time graphics, and remote commentary with a small team that included Friendly Pickle’s own staff stepping in as camera operators. It’s exactly the kind of project that shows what LIVE can do outside of a traditional broadcast truck.”
