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On Location shifts focus, creates digital experiences

When it became apparent that the University of Pittsburgh would play its football season in front of very few fans, the Panthers began exploring ways to bring game day to them.

The Panthers teamed up with On Location, an Endeavor company, to create a TV-quality pregame show that heightened the fan engagement even though the fans couldn’t be there. Pitt and other schools began calling it the second-screen experience that enhanced game day with an array of exclusive video, news and features.

The focus on delivering unique content on a livestream hit home with On Location Live, a new digital platform created last spring as part of On Location Experiences. With events going dark last spring and football facing an uncertain future, On Location, an experiential hospitality and event business Endeavor acquired last year, began thinking more about what it does best — experiences.

“What can we do? What kind of virtual remote experiences can we contribute?” said John Anthony, whose company, Anthony Travel, is part of OLE. “We’re in the experiences business, and Endeavor has streaming technology. So, we took that platform to our college partners that were facing the same challenges.”

On Location Live began by delivering remote, virtual events like the spring tour at Iowa State and exclusive donor events at Oklahoma. When the football season began to take shape, Pitt wanted to create a full-blown pregame show from Heinz Field with exclusive access and camera shots. 

“What we wanted to take advantage of was all the content that’s normally live on the video board just for the fans inside the venue,” said Christian Spears, Pitt’s deputy athletic director. “The team, coming out of the tunnel, pregame inside the locker room, we wanted to push all of that out through the second-screen experience.”

Pitt’s in-house production team captures the content. On Location Live provides the livestream that Pitt can distribute to its social channels and its official athletic website, as well as providing a producer and an engineer.

In all, 10 schools incuding Clemson and Notre Dame and a handful of professional organizations have utilized On Location Live’s platform.

Editor’s note: This story is updated from the print edition.

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