Nothing beats catching a Georgia Southern athletics event in person, whether that's a Saturday night at Paulson Stadium with 25,000 of your closest friends, taking in a Saturday afternoon at J.I. Clements Stadium, or watching Georgia Southern men's and women's hoops in their last full season at Hanner Fieldhouse. Sometimes, though, fans can't make it back to Statesboro for everything, and there's one group that makes sure the action can be brought to them, that group being Georgia Southern's own GATA Productions.
Byron Abt is the head of GATA Productions, a position he has held since March 2022. With previous stops at Furman, USC Upstate, and Missouri, he understands athletics in the southeast, and pushes his team to deliver the very best for every sport that Georgia Southern offers.
Abt also says that GATA Productions provides what could be the first glimpse into Georgia Southern for fans, prospective students, and everyone around them.
"If athletics is the front porch of the university, then GATA Productions is the window," he explains. "You see everything that happens in athletics through our lens, through both the creative side (social media, etc.) and the broadcast side (ESPN+). That's the window into athletics, who is the front porch of the university."
GATA Productions is a fairly recent creation in the athletic department. Originally, the group was just known as the Multimedia Development Center, or the MDC for short.
"It [the MDC] was managed through the university side, so they would do projects for the university while producing athletics broadcasts," continued Abt. "But once Jared Benko and Chris Davis got to Statesboro, they moved the MDC in-house and put it under the supervision and management of athletics. They changed it from MDC to GATA Productions, and that's when I came in."
Managing an entire production suite is not a one-person job, and that's where others come into play. Garrett Fisher, Director of Motion Graphics and Design, is responsible for many of the visual elements that you see on the broadcasts, as well as some of the in-game graphics you see on the videoboards and ribbon boards across the athletic facilities on campus.
Fisher discusses how the product has evolved over the short amount of time he and Abt have been on campus, with multiple high-level ideas coming to fruition and gaining some notable attention, primarily from other Sun Belt institutions.
"A lot of our ideas come from Byron," Fisher explains, "He wants to have our broadcasts resemble the linear ESPN broadcasts. Things like having a drone, that was his idea. Implementing the ticker into the broadcast, for example, is another idea he had. You see it on the main linear broadcast, but you don't see it on ESPN+."
Speaking of the ticker, GATA Productions' newest addition, it might seem small, but it has made a splash around the conference. Other Sun Belt institutions have now created their own tickers, as Eagle Nation might have noticed during the November 4th game against Texas State.
"We actually spoke with the Sun Belt and ESPN representatives about it [the ticker], how it works, and how we could provide it to everyone else, but the reception has been very positive."
Since most other production crews do not have a ticker, it was uncharted territory for how GATA Productions wanted to go about running it during games. Enter James Rowe, a student leader for GATA Productions that created the initial ticket and the one who runs it now.
"We started it for one of the Coaches Shows," Rowe explains. "We thought it would be cool to have something that showed updated scores and all during the Coaches Show, but then we moved it to actual games. Now it's something we do for every game."
Since James was so integral to the ticker on the broadcasts, we asked him how he felt to see other schools begin to adopt the ticker as well, and it was very exciting to him.
"It's pretty cool to see that we started it, and now others are following," he said. "I think it's something that will be amazing for the schools in the Sun Belt Conference."
Outside of the ticker, GATA Productions is offering students like James an incredible opportunity to earn hands-on experience in a production staff. Every production is majority-student run, with some even completely student-run.
"Just being able to be in a position like that during a game is an experience you wouldn't get anywhere else," James says. "When you leave here, you can say you produced a game, you worked replay, you directed, you produced graphics, you did these big things, and you can put that on your resume. The more you work, the more you learn."
GATA Productions has been able to both create high-quality broadcasts for all Georgia Southern home events, while also providing students with genuine work experience, something that Byron not only pushes hard within the group, but something that makes his job worth it.
"It's the most rewarding part of the job," Abt concluded. "When you're able to have a production run by students and sit back and watch, it's awesome. It's one of the reasons I love working in college."
If you are a Georgia Southern student who is interested in getting involved with GATA Productions, you can email Byron Abt at [email protected] to learn about ways to get involved.
