The league’s production arm is providing support for all coverage on NBC, Peacock, MLB Network, and MLB.com

For six years running, MLB Network’s onsite editions of the MLB Draft have been a resounding success. The festivities will take place at Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia this weekend, and with the blessing of both Major League Baseball and production partner NBC, this showcase of the league’s next wave of up-and-coming prospects will place the company’s production and operations teams into the spotlight as the lead onsite presence for live televised coverage.

“The league spares no expense with this event,” says Marc Caiafa, SVP, production, MLB Network. “Each host city brings something new and exciting to the table, but we’ve continued to make our coverage bigger and better every year.”

Marc Caiafa, Tom Guidice, and VP of Production & Creative Design Mike Martin at the MLB Draft set in Philadelphia.

Convention Center Compound: NEP Mobile Units Lead the Ops Backbone in Center City

In recent years, the MLB Draft has been produced from a wide variety of locations. From entertainment-based environments like L.A. Live in 2022 and The Battery Atlanta in 2025 and broadcast-ready venues like Lumen Field in 2023 to challenging buildings like Cowtown Coliseum in 2024, the full gamut has been run on this event. This year, the endeavor returns to a convention center for the first time since 2021, which was MLB Network’s first-ever MLB Draft held outside of their headquarters in Secaucus, NJ and produced from within the Colorado Convention Center in Denver. These type of locales are more controlled settings, but like many cavernous and expansive edifices of this ilk, they aren’t as conducive to major broadcasts like the MLB Draft.

“Unlike a ballpark where you have pre-existing infrastructure, we needed to run a lot of fiber inside this convention center,” says Tom Guidice, SVP, remote events, MLB Network. “We teamed up with the building’s internal staff to secure that connectivity, and they were wonderful to work with.”

NEP’s Supershooter 9 and ST 9 are parked outside of the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Along with standard fiber, a combination of transmission via Lumen and LiveU will also be in use. Outside of the building, MLB Network has decided to isolate their operations backbone for this event within the broadcast compound. A pair of mobile units from NEP Group, Supershooter 9 and ST 9, are housing the production and tech team in the City of Brotherly Love. Parked nearby, CES Power is providing both primary and backup generators that are powering the entire operation. Supporting this portion of the job will be MLB Network Senior Production Manager Ryan Delaney; Remote Operations Specialist Ryan Stephens; and Tech Manager DJ Driscoll.

A closer look inside NEP’s Supershooter 9 mobile unit.

A Pair of Studio Sets: Low & High Positions Establish Sense of Place

With a ton of real estate to work with, MLB Network opted for two distinct commentary positions. The main studio set located on the ground floor of the space will be reserved for the broadcaster’s coverage of the First Round on Saturday, July 11 at 2:30 p.m. ET on MLB Network and Peacock. The secondary set perched on the upper level will be slightly featured during Round 1, but it will truly be fired up for Rounds 2-4 on July 11 at 4:30 p.m. ET on MLB Network and Rounds 5-20 on Sunday, July 12 at 11:30 a.m. ET on MLB.com. Both sets, as well as the venue itself that will be run by hosts Robert Flores and Siera Santos, will include a plethora of recognizable faces. The main set will be filled by host Greg Amsinger and analysts Mark DeRosa, Cole Hamels, Dan O’Dowd, and Harold Reynolds while the secondary set will be filled by host Melanie Newman and analysts Lance Brozdowski, Jim Callis, and Carlos Collazo. Host Jacob Wilkins, analyst Jonathan Mayo, and Callis will drive all of Day 2. One notable name for the Philly faithful is Hamels: a four-time MLB All-Star, 2008 World Series Champion, an inductee into the Philadelphia Phillies Wall of Fame in 2025, and more recently, a contributor to broadcasts on NBC Sports Philadelphia. With a chance to be behind the mic, Hamels can tap into the local love of baseball but also his experience with being drafted in high school during this high-school MLB Draft in 2026.

“This year’s Draft is a lot deeper in young, high school talent than we’ve had in the last few years,” says Chris Roenbeck, coordinating producer, MLB Network. “He’s going to get the crowd around our set amped up by being out there, but he also wants to learn how to be a better analyst, so we thought this would be a great exercise to become more comfortable on television.”

Located on the ground floor, the main set will drive coverage of Saturday’s Round 1.

On the production side, Round 1 will be produced onsite by director Tom Healy; associate director Margaret Murphy; technical director Jeff Hendrick; producer Ian Theodoridis; Roenbeck; EVS replay operators Steve Blevins, Steve Napolitani, and Steve Smyrl; tape producers Emma Houghton and Matt Rzodkiewicz; A1 Glenn Stilwell; V1 Brent Boyens; and V2 John Cimino. A handful of remote resources from Secaucus will pitch in, including graphics operators Ian Harmand and Michael Nobile and researchers Matt Baker, Seth Warner, and Kyle O’Sullivan. After the conclusion of the first round, Round 2 will be produced remotely in New Jersey by coordinating producer Micah Karg, producer Rob Wass, director Andrew Adams, associate director Ryan Upperman, Harmand and Nobile on graphics, and O’Sullivan on research. Day 2 will be completed by numerous NJ-based staffers including the production duo of Karg and Wass, early rounds with the directing duo of Adams and Murphy and late rounds with Joy Huber and Upperman, research from Matthew Orso and O’Sullivan, and graphics from Harmand and Nobile, and Theodoridis in Philadelphia.

On the tech front, 14 total cameras will be operated from within the Pennsylvania Convention Center. This includes four Sony HDC-3500 RF handhelds, two Sony HDC-3500s with 22x lenses on the main set, two Sony HDC-3500s with 22x lenses on the secondary set, two Sony HDC-3500s with 111x lenses focused on the podium, two Sony HDC-3500 jib cameras with wide angle lenses on and next to the Draft stage, a Sony HDC-P50 SteadiCam, and a Sony HDC-3500 with a 111x lens at the slash position. Eleven of these sources will be controlled by MLB Network and the other three will be video feeds received from in-venue production partner Lost Tribe Studio. Perfected during the virtual MLB Draft in 2020, BitFire will once again present video feeds of remote players from their respective homes and Draft rooms of all 30 MLB clubs.

On a higher perch, the secondary set will anchor coverage of Rounds 2-20.

The NBC Connection: MLB Network Works With Broadcast Partner to Air First 10 Picks on Over-the-Air Television

In a special twist to the proceedings, MLB Network will be responsible for airing the first 10 picks of the First Round on NBC on July 11 at 1 p.m. ET, the first time ever conducted on over-the-air television in the MLB Draft’s 20-year televised history. The league-operated network is privileged to be responsible for producing the entirety of this event from start to finish, but this specific moment in the first hour on Day 1 is a credit to their top-tier production elements and storytelling, a high-level of operational experience, and a strong fleet of reliable technologies and workflows.

The two-day show will leverage a total of 14 cameras.

In addition, leveraging this collaboration with The Peacock Network, MLB Network will be cross promotional activations throughout the event. These will highlight Saturday’s coverage of the 2026 American Century Championship Celebrity Golf Tournament on NBC and Peacock, the WNBA fixture between the Phoenix Mercury and Las Vegas Aces at 6 p.m. ET exclusively on Peacock, and the next Sunday Night Baseball matchup featuring the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees on Sunday, July 19.

“NBC has been a really great partner,” says Roenbeck. “They’ve put a ton of trust in us to provide the traditional production nuts and bolts that we normally have.”