CHALLENGE: Wave Sports & Entertainment (WSE) struggled with inefficient file sharing, particularly with uploading, downloading, and transferring project files between editors on platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive. WSE’s challenges collaborating between dispersed team members significantly slowed its ability to work on video and podcast content for star athletes like Jason & Travis Kelce, Paul George, and Bomani Jones.

WHY SUITE? Suite provides WSE with a centralized cloud-based workflow, eliminating the need for manual project transfers via external platforms. Suite’s functionality remains the biggest game-changer, allowing editors to instantly access media and seamlessly use those files within Adobe creative applications like Premiere Pro, After Effects, and Photoshop. Using with Suite Connect, WSE also easily ingests & shares assets with external collaborators, streamlining the team’s entire process while improving their ability to produce engaging content for Gen-Z fans.

CORE INSIGHTS:

• 15+ users on Suite
• 2+ hours saved per project on uploads/downloads
• Instant project access between dispersed editors
• Simplified media sharing via Suite Connect
• Integration with all Adobe Creative Cloud applications

“It's a huge benefit to have a cloud-based solution that enables easy project sharing. It saves a lot of time and headaches.”

— Matt Garrett, Director of Post Production, Wave Sports & Entertainment

To connect with fans in today’s media-driven world, athletes are challenged to do more than simply sign autographs. With podcasts, social media channels, and more, the world’s top athletes & voices in sports have the ability to reach millions of people instantly. Wave Sports + Entertainment (Wave) helps these athletes capitalize on the media blitz.

Offering a portfolio of original programming, as well as social channels that curate, edit, and re-share user-generated & partnership content crafted in tandem with brands & sports properties, the company touts multi-million views across its channels. Catering to a digital population of younger viewers, Wave’s programming & its many sub-brands, each focused on a unique sport, have become some of the most well-recognized entities in sports media.

Bringing athletes into the mainstream, however, takes significant creative work behind the scenes. For Matt Garrett, director of post production, and his team of 15+ remote editors at Wave, keeping up with the fast-paced environment takes focus, on-the-spot creativity—and well-organized workflows that ensure everything launches on-schedule.

Before Suite: Fumbles & Penalties

Wave produces, edits, and publishes some of the most popular sports podcasts in the industry, not only recording audio, but capturing in-studio video footage that enables the team to maximize the content’s reach. Currently, the brand’s biggest sensation is New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce, an audio/video podcast program featuring the two well-known footballers (and brothers) in conversation about a range of topics with the likes of NFL stars Patrick Mahomes, Julian Edelman, Jalen Hurts, and more. The show boasts nearly 2.5 million followers on YouTube, and the show’s most popular episodes have viewership counts that’ll make your jaw hit the floor.

The success of a podcast, video interview, or social content, however, isn’t always about the on-screen talent. Garrett and the team at Wave are masters of their craft, producing colorful final cuts and scroll-stopping short edits that attract new eyeballs & keep viewers coming back for more. Yet, prior to adopting Suite’s cloud storage, the way Wave’s post production team collaborated between its various players was vulnerable to fumbles & time penalties.

“Our biggest pain points were upload & download times, and not being able to share projects easily,” explains Garrett. “We would Zip an entire project—the Premiere Pro file plus all the associated media—then send that via Dropbox, Google Drive, or Ikonic. We had to deal with all the media management of shipping that over to another editor.”

Balancing time in Wave's Santa Monica, California, office and at home, Garrett manages a team spread throughout the Golden State, and elsewhere in Oregon & Washington. While he wants to rely on the best talent, and confidently offer a way for editors to balance remote work, it was often a struggle to complete tasks efficiently. At first, editing remotely didn’t mean working faster or with more savvy—it meant waiting, waiting, waiting for files to transfer…

All-Star Workflows on Suite

Now working directly off of Suite’s cloud storage, Wave’s editing team is finally making highlight plays in the Edit Bay. The biggest win? Centralizing media for instant access, no matter where Garrett’s collaborators are located.

“It’s the availability, the project-sharing functionality,” says Garrett. Placing working files in Suite allows Garrett’s team to upload once & access media from anywhere—ensuring the next episode of New Heights and others, like Paul George’s Podcast P, 7PM in Brooklyn (featuring Carmelo Anthony & Kid Mero), and The Right Time with Bomani Jones, stay on schedule by easily passing the project between key editors, avoiding time-wasted on multiple file uploads.

Suite also establishes an always-up-to-date media hub for Wave’s extended team of editors to access, pull from, and use to create repurposed media on the fly, which is a game-changer for a media company that aims to capitalize on social trends & provide fresh content multiple times daily. “We have the ability to throw together an archive of assets,” says Garret. “Anybody connected to Suite can jump right into a project or access media.”

Lastly, Suite Connect provides Wave the ability to instantly receive media from external players. “We have external production companies that occasionally shoot events and other happenings. Rather than setting those teams up with a full Suite account, we just throw them a Suite Connect link [to ingest the media]. It’s worked really smoothly.”

Final Thoughts

Prior to using Suite, the team at Wave Sports + Entertainment wasted numerous hours every week simply uploading & downloading media: Before editors could complete their creative work, each person would need to bring media local, make changes, then re-upload/re-share the new versions back to the rest of the team.

Now, Garrett and the rest of the creative team at Wave know that the files they see on the Suite Drive are the most up-to-date versions, every time. The ability to project share has revolutionized the post process for Wave, and the ability to capitalize on media in real-time proves its worth as Wave’s daily social media posts rack up views in the thousands. “If you are working on a remote workflow with team members scattered throughout various parts of the country—or anywhere—it's a huge benefit to have a cloud-based solution that enables easy project sharing. It saves a lot of time and headaches.”

‍

‍

Revolutionize your creative workflow >>

Click here to learn more & start your Free Trial