ADVERTISEMENT Home at Highmark Stadium: Buffalo Bills’ New Venue Drives Fan Experience With Exterior Tech Center, Internal IP-Powered Infrastructure By: Kristian Hernández, Senior Editor • Posted on: September 17, 2026 • 11 minute read ADVERTISEMENT Separate building allowed core equipment to be installed without many construction delays The first game in the NFL’s Week 2 schedule as well as the season debut of Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football will be a special night for the city of Buffalo, NY. After playing 53 years in the previous Highmark Stadium, the Buffalo Bills will host their first regular-season game in the new Highmark Stadium. The league’s newest venue comes with industry-wide innovations like IP- and HDR-capable workflows in the control room, but also logistical decisions like an external tech center that kept this opening stay on schedule despite the harsh winters of Western New York. “The backbone of our tech is centralized in the tech building that’s outside of this stadium,” says Brian Haberkorn, director, game presentation, Buffalo Bills . “We were able to get into [that building] and start implementing systems for the entire stadium well ahead of the expected completion date, which put us at a massive advantage.” A Tech Touchdown: External Building Serves as Building’s Production Hub The true beating heart of this facility is the adjacent tech center outside of Highmark Stadium. With crews — including systems integrator BeckTV — obtaining occupancy to enter the tech center in October 2025, the nucleus of in-venue productions, the venue’s cellular network, and other pertinent behind-the-scenes gear that drive the gameday experience sidestepped the typical delays of any construction project. “We felt very confident on the technology side because we didn’t have to wait until construction was cleared, which normally creates a very tight timeline,” says Haberkorn. “BeckTV did an amazing job of getting all of our racks and gear installed and tested before the actual control room was built inside of the stadium.” BeckTV enjoyed the luxuries of a fully furnished tech center as well. Ranging from adequate shelter that protected technology during the colder months and workable air conditioning that cooled everything during the warmer months to not needing to wear personal protective equipment like hard hats since the physical structure was complete, the team went to work on focusing on their expertise. “[The tech center] had everything you needed to hit the ground running,” says Brock Raum, senior engineer, BeckTV . “We were able to get the [SMPTE ST] 2110 equipment up very quickly and efficiently, and we were passing video quicker than any other project I had been on. It also gave time to finish the physical control room, where we focused on the second phase of our job.” A feature that’s not seen during many projects, the tech center was complete by April 2026 — only two months after the conclusion of last year’s season. This external space is massively important to what makes productions at Highmark Stadium tick, but with work on setting up the control room inside of the venue, the long distance comes into play. This means that an engineer running from the control room to the tech center on gameday at a moment’s notice results in a long trek and the issue isn’t fixed in a timely manner. Luckily, the Bills have implemented a system that connects both rooms together for a faster turnaround time to solve these unforeseen problems. “The control room’s entirely KVM [keyboard, video, mouse], so for the systems that are up in the control room, we can KVM to the tech center or communicate with a staffer that’s down there on gamedays that’s helping us monitor or reset anything,” adds Haberkorn. “We haven’t had to go down there during a game, but if there was an instance [of us needing to look at something more closely], we’d have the chance to do it during an off day.” A view from a front-row seat in the control room. Pulling Double Duty: Crew Simultaneously Closes Previous Stadium, Preps New One As aspects of the project like the tech center were being assembled, the Bills still had regular-season games to play in 2025-26. The preseason and Weeks 1 through 4 were played prior to the beginning of the project, but after their Week 5 matchup against the New England Patriots through their final home game against the New York Jets in Week 18, the parallel work of entertaining fans at home in the old stadium and getting the new stadium ready commenced. From Haberkorn’s point of view — as well as the point of view of Buffalo Bills’ IT Infrastructure Project Director Shaun Handley , who led the tech lift — bringing Highmark Stadium to life while executing a run of show for some of the most passionate fanbases in the league in an entirely separate building are tough tasks to balance. “We were able to give full focus [to new Highmark Stadium] once the season ended, but we always had an eye towards the new stadium throughout the season,” continues Haberkorn. “There were constant meetings about videoboards, the control room, and the tech center, and any type of issues that were being identified before install were being discussed. It wasn’t until about mid-February where we were consistently visiting the tech center or going to the new stadium to look at progress.” With additional help from Buffalo Bills’ Senior Director, Broadcast Operations, Steve Asposto, and Broadcast Engineer Dave Rich , the control room portion of the project was completed around late May to early June 2026: a full month before the start of training camp. An already busy time for anyone working with a NFL franchise due to the shooting of Media Days and planning out a year’s worth of content, the prospect of working within the league’s new crown jewel helped get the project over the line. “From where we used to be to where we are now as well as the leap that we took, that excitement kept us energized throughout the whole process,” says Haberkorn. “BeckTV was able to foresee some of the questions that we were going to have, which helped us incredibly in resolving any issues as they came.” Construction of the tech center outside of the venue began in Oct. 2025 and was complete in April 2026. The Best for the Bills: Control Room Incorporates IP-Driven, HDR-Capable Workflows As a venue opening up in 2026, the latest workflows, solutions, and trends in in-venue production are fully on display at Highmark Stadium. Sparing no expense on treating their fans to the best experience that game presentation has to offer, the control room is running on Cisco’s ST 2110 Fabric with a 400g spine at -7 redundancy, EVS Cerebrum for control, and EVS Neurons for gateway and processing. The Bills’ end-to-end UHD infrastructure comes with HDR capabilities, which will be further explored in future seasons, and is anchored by Mitsubishi videoboards in the lower bowl, which are powered by Ross Video’s XPression Tessera and graphics developed by Rocket Surgery. Inside of the control room, the team is working with 32 channels of EVS replay record with 12 channels of playback and 12 channels of EVS clip playback — one of the largest deployments of EVS in a NFL stadium — two Ross Video FR12 Ultrix Acuity production switchers, one Ross Video FR5 Ultrix Carbonite, Ross Video XPression graphics, Telestream Prism for shading and quality control, Telestream SPG for sync and clock, Ross Video Piero for virtual 1st and 10, Adder KVM, and TSL Audio Monitoring Units. Outside of the control room, shows on gameday are leveraging 35 total cameras including 23 Panasonic AW-UR100 and AW- UE160 PTZs, six Sony HDC-3500s, three wireless Sony PXW-Z750s, two Sony HDC-5000s with high frame rate, and a cinematic Sony FX6 on a Gimbal. All cameras are outfitted with Canon CJ25, CJ15, and CJ122 lenses, wireless cameras are equipped with RF connectivity from Wave Central, and comms are done over Riedel Communications’ Bolero wireless intercom. Many of these workflows, which were devised from the Bills’ initial plan for the project, were further solidified after discussions and visits to other NFL venues. Haberkorn inquired about the multi-tiered revamp of the San Francisco 49ers’ Levi’s Stadium in 2025 prior to hosting Super Bowl LX in February and the 2026 FIFA World Cup during the summer as well as SoFi Stadium’s extensive work in Inglewood, CA prior to their hosting of Super Bowl LXI in February 2027 and the 2028 Summer Olympics. Moving forward, Haberkorn wants to be a sounding board for his peers in the NFL. “We’re hopefully going to be a resource for these other teams that are building stadiums by letting them know what worked best for us,” he says. “We’re all pretty open about any strengths and weaknesses that we’re having with technology, so it’s a great community to bounce ideas off of.” Fiber connectivity for the in-venue shows are also housed in the exterior tech center. Working Through Transition: Expanded Production Requires Offseason Training, Continued Support The uptick in quantity, as well as the update in quality, of their tech arsenal has forced the team to adapt their way of producing games. For instance, their six multiviewers in the old Highmark Stadium turned into 44 in the new Highmark Stadium. To soften this transition, Haberkorn is relying on both previous work experience and support from BeckTV and his fellow coworkers. In the former, Haberkorn was involved in the Detroit Lions’ renovations of Ford Field in 2017 as a Game Presentation and Production Manager and also worked at Mercedes-Benz Stadium — a stadium that is always finding new ways to innovate — as a XPression Designer and Programmer during the Atlanta Falcons’ 2021-22 season. Training to lessen the learning curve was a must, and the Bills made it a priority to undergo this process despite the frenetic pace of putting this stadium together. “We knew that our summer was going to be very busy, so we had a full training schedule laid out,” he continues. “We made great timing where the completion of the project lined up with when we wanted our operators to come in, and the crew has been amazing with picking up on the new technologies.” In the latter, Buffalo Bills’ Senior Director, Game Presentation & Entertainment, Chadwick Richardson, worked for the Los Angeles Rams during the inaugural season of SoFi Stadium in 2020 and Buffalo Bills’ Manager, Game Entertainment, Meghan Hess , brings more than 12 years of familiarity with the club. In addition, Raum’s six years at BeckTV has seen him be involved in other high-profile projects like the Los Angeles Clippers’ Intuit Dome in 2024 , the new three 4K HDR control rooms of the University of Nebraska’s HuskerVision in 2025, and more. “The transition from a baseband system to a ST 2110 system is a big jump to make,” says Raum. “This step up and change in technology from what was previously available to them is such a large difference.” Highmark Stadium’s new control room runs on an IP infrastructure with HDR-capable workflows. Hitting a High Mark: New Home Matches Energy of Bills Mafia On Aug. 15, the Bills welcomed the Carolina Panthers in a preseason matchup for the first official event in Highmark Stadium. Over the past month, the show has continued to be refined, and as the regular season gets underway, this process will continue with onsite assistance from BeckTV. “The Bills have been my one client over the past year,” adds Raum. “While we made sure that they had a successful launch, we’re also staying on top of them having a successful season after that.” For Haberkorn and his production team, this new venue feels fitting for the energy that Bills Mafia brings to every single home game. Rain, shine, snow, or sleet, those fans pack the place and always show up, and with a longtime contender on the field performing in the open air of Buffalo, Highmark Stadium and the technologies at its core can make a significant impact in 2026 and beyond. “These fans are the best in the NFL, and we feel like we now have the tools to be able to meet that passion,” he says. “We’re constantly trying to think of new ways to improve the show and to meet the excitement of those coming to the stadium, so we’re looking forward to showing this place off to its fullest extent.” After Thursday night’s game against the Detroit Lions, the Bills will host seven more regular-season games at Highmark Stadium: Sept. 27 vs. the Los Angeles Chargers at 1 p.m. ET, Oct. 4 vs. the New England Patriots at 1 p.m. ET, Nov. 1 vs. the Baltimore Ravens at 1 p.m. ET, Nov. 22 vs. the Miami Dolphins at 1 p.m. ET, Nov. 26 vs. the Kansas City Chiefs at 8:20 p.m. ET, Dec. 19 vs. the Chicago Bears at 8:20 p.m. ET, and a to-be-determined date and time vs. the New York Jets in Week 18. 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