Overview

The Sports Fishing Championship (SFC) was established to showcase the sport of saltwater fishing while supporting the local economies of host towns.  The 13-week competitive saltwater fishing series culminates in October when the top two clubs of each division face off in the Zane Grey Championship Playoffs in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. 

Throughout the season, SFC produces highlight reels, live broadcasts, and social media to deliver a world-class experience for the anglers, corporate partners, fans, families, volunteers, and staff. Tournaments are streamed live on SFC+ and ESPN+ bringing the excitement to fans worldwide.

Challenge

Producing live fishing tournaments presents a unique set of challenges. Crews can spend days offshore capturing terabytes of footage under unpredictable weather, often forcing workflows to fall back on record-and-ingest methods. SFC’s editors and producers juggled hard drives, cloud services, and multiple MAM systems that created duplicate files, inconsistent access, and frankly, wasted time. 

“[Before creative.space] no one was looking at the same content. We had duplicate media everywhere."

Meghan Linn
Editor and Media Manager at Sports Fishing Championship (SFC)

SFC’s post-production workflow was reliant on several disconnected storage locations, leading to version confusion, duplicate media, and time-consuming file transfers. With media coming in from Haivision live feeds, drones, GoPros, and mobile devices, editors often had to pull from multiple drives or servers, and remote team members struggled to access footage consistently. These challenges slowed collaboration and made it difficult to keep up with the pace of live production and same-day highlights. SFC needed a more efficient way to organize, access, and collaborate on their growing library of footage.

Solution

SFC turned to creative.space, the managed storage platform from DigitalGlue. creative.space offers an alternative to traditional storage systems with a hybrid workflow approach designed to accommodate any budget. The platform is designed to streamline collaboration workflows and enhance productivity for video teams while also setting a new standard for media storage with its white-glove service and flexible payment models.

SFC implemented DigitalGlue’s creative.space to unify their workflow under one shared storage platform giving teams one reliable source to work from. All footage from Haivision feeds, drones, field cameras, and mobile devices now flows directly into a single, organized environment accessible to both in-studio and remote editors.

A key improvement came from Linn’s use of the platform’s Libraries feature plus a structured file naming convention that contains each clip’s club abbreviation, fish species, angler name, catch time, and date, creating a living database that mirrors the production’s season. This approach transformed SFC’s storage into a living, searchable database that allowed Linn to bulk-tag large batches of media quickly and maintain consistent metadata across the entire library.

“If someone asks for a highlight on a specific angler, I can instantly pull up not just their catches and B-roll, but also all of their interviews in seconds. The entire team is finding it intuitive. I don’t have to spend time training people. They see the libraries, and they just get it."

Meghan Linn
Editor and Media Manager at Sports Fishing Championship (SFC)

Results

The impact was immediate and has proven invaluable. During live broadcasts editors can now cut growing files on the fly to deliver social clips, highlight reels, and sponsor packages in near real time. 

Director and producer Ryan Tyler, commented, “The pressure is constant in live sports, and fishing is no exception. With creative.space, everything stays in one place, whether media is streaming in from Starlink and Haivision or uploaded once crews return to shore.

“Searching is by far the best feature. The ability to search, log, and cut growing files in real time has been a game-changer for hitting deadlines. Instead of chasing down assets, I can quickly find sponsor reels, commercials, or highlights myself and keep the production moving."

Ryan Tyler
Director and Producer at Sports Fishing Championship (SFC)

By centralizing storage and introducing structured tagging, SFC’s editors and producers can now locate footage instantly, eliminate duplicate media, and collaborate more efficiently across the entire production cycle. Remote editors can log in, browse, and download content even with limited bandwidth, while in-house teams maintain a single source of truth for all media.

According to DigitalGlue President Sean Busby, “Instead of struggling with files scattered across multiple systems, SFC now has a single, reliable home for their media. Their team can focus on storytelling and delivering top-quality broadcasts, not troubleshooting storage.”

Even with slow hotel or marina internet connections across the Gulf and Atlantic divisions, collaboration has improved dramatically. Editors can log into creative.space, browse, download what they need, and work locally. 

Thanks to creative.space, the Sports Fishing Championship is now better equipped than ever to capture - and share - the excitement of competitive offshore fishing.

The SFC Workflow: Before & After

Before

Before implementing creative.space, the Sports Fishing Championship’s (SFC) workflow relied on multiple disconnected systems spread across field and post-production teams. Angling club boats transmitted live footage to Dreamcatcher servers at PLEX Studios in Fort Worth using Haivision video transmission, which was then shared via Lucid Link for SFC distribution.

Boats also captured footage on non-studio cameras such as iPhones, GoPros, and drones. That media was saved to personal hard drives and manually uploaded by remote editors to Google Drive. An internal editor accessed Haivision transmissions through a separate MAM system connected to the Dreamcatcher servers and also pulled files from the on-site PLEX storage server.

Meanwhile, Tools On Air was used to edit live capture feeds at PLEX Studios, storing content on the PLEX storage server. Xpression Graphics Operators also edited and shared content via Lucid Link for SFC distribution. The result was a fragmented workflow with multiple storage locations, redundant uploads, and limited visibility across teams.

After

After deploying creative.space, SFC centralized all footage and post-production tasks within a single, managed storage platform. Haivision video transmissions from angling club boats now feed directly into the Dreamcatcher servers at PLEX Studios for SFC distribution and are simultaneously uploaded to creative.space.

Tools On Air live edits and Xpression Graphics outputs are stored on creative.space as well, ensuring all production assets are captured in one environment. Internal editors access creative.space through dedicated Mac edit workstations, while remote editors securely connect over ZeroTier VPN to upload, browse, and edit footage captured on iPhones, GoPros, and drones.

This unified system gives SFC immediate access to all recorded and uploaded content, enabling faster collaboration between studio and remote teams, eliminating redundant transfers, and ensuring every editor works from the same organized media library.

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