Pro Sports Teams Are Becoming Production Companies. Here Is How to Build One Right.

The Team Studio Series  |  Part 1 of 4  |  Frangioni Media

By David Frangioni | Frangioni Media  |  Header image: concept rendering for illustration.

Teams already own what every studio wants: talent, story and an audience. The ones moving fastest are building production companies and the facilities to run them. Frangioni Media delivers both, turnkey.

The Short Answer

Professional teams already own the hardest things to create in entertainment: recognizable talent, a built-in audience, decades of story and a fan base that shows up every week. The teams moving fastest are turning those assets into their own production companies, supported by facilities that can produce at broadcast and cinema quality all year.

Frangioni Media designs and delivers both pieces, turnkey. The production company structure and workflow, and the physical facility it runs in: stages, control rooms, edit suites, Dolby Atmos mix rooms, podcast and talent studios, storage and archive. One plan, one accountable lead, one phone call.

What Teams Are Doing Right Now

The shift is no longer theoretical. As Front Office Sports reported this month, teams and leagues are pouring money into new media formats, from social microdramas and documentaries to Hollywood feature films.

• Kansas City Chiefs. The team launched Foolish Club Studios to develop original scripted and unscripted content, building on Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story, the No. 1 cable movie of 2024. The studio operates alongside the club’s existing in-house production arm, 65 Toss Power Trap Production, and was recently signed by United Talent Agency to expand across film, TV and media rights.
• Houston Texans. The club launched Hustle Town Studio, a content production house grown from its existing content division under CMO Doug Vosik, with studios planned as part of the team’s Toro District headquarters development, Sports Business Journal reports.
• Chicago Cubs. The team’s in-house production group, working with a Chicago production company, shot “Nine Innings to Love,” a 17-part scripted TikTok series filmed partly during live games. Front Office Sports reports it passed one million collective views within weeks.
• Manchester City, the Yankees and MLB. Manchester City produces high-end documentaries for its own streaming service, the Yankees are developing an animated kids series through YES Network, and MLB Studios is collaborating with Hollywood on narrative projects, according to Front Office Sports.
• The investment market. Box to Box Films, the company behind Drive to Survive, just took a significant minority investment to expand into new content areas.

Chiefs CMO Lara Krug summed up the moment for Front Office Sports, and her words describe exactly the work Frangioni Media does:

There wasn’t a blueprint. I think we’re now building the blueprint.

Lara Krug, Chiefs EVP and CMO, to Front Office Sports

Two Builds, One Plan

Most organizations treat this as two separate projects. The content side hires producers and an agency. Facilities hires an architect, an integrator and an acoustician. Six months later, the creative team discovers the edit bays cannot share media fast enough, the podcast room sounds like a conference room, and nobody planned for immersive audio deliverables.

I approach it as one system:

• The company: content strategy, formats, staffing model, production workflow, partner and vendor structure, delivery specs for broadcast, streaming and social.
• The facility: room design and acoustics, stages and sets, camera and broadcast systems, control rooms, edit and color, Dolby Atmos mixing, networked storage, archive and media asset management.
• The connection between them: every room is specified around the content it must produce, and every workflow is designed around the rooms it runs through.

Why Frangioni Media

For decades, Frangioni Media has delivered world-class projects for artists including Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Shakira, Sting, Journey, KISS, Elton John and Ringo Starr. That work spans music technology, studio design, installations, immersive audio production and post-production. Those are the same disciplines a team studio depends on, held to the standard of artists who hear every flaw.

We also operate a media business. Through Modern Drummer, I run a publishing, video, archive and commerce platform, so I build facilities from the perspective of someone who has to produce content in them on a schedule.

What Turnkey Means Here

Turnkey means your team receives a working production company in a working facility, ready to produce on day one:

1. Discovery. Your goals, audience, formats, current staff, existing spaces and budget.
2. Blueprint. A combined business and facility plan with phasing, costs and staffing.
3. Design. Rooms, acoustics, systems, signal flow, storage and workflow.
4. Build and integration. One coordinated team, one schedule, one point of accountability.
5. Launch. Commissioning, calibration, training and first productions, with support after handoff.

Each part of this series goes deeper. Part 2 covers the facility (publishes October 20), Part 3 covers the content engine (publishes October 27) and Part 4 covers turnkey delivery and cost control (publishes November 3). For the thinking behind the approach, read why sports teams are building studios.

Start With One Call

If your organization is planning a production company, a new content facility, or an upgrade to an in-house group that has outgrown its space, the first step is a conversation. Contact Frangioni Media and we will map what you have, what you need and the most cost-effective path to the highest-quality result.

Frequently Asked Questions

David Frangioni

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