MLS Kickoff 2025: MLS’s Ignacio Garcia Talks New Production Facility, Sunday Night Soccer Enhancements

MLS Productions will christen its new studio facility at WWE Headquarters in Stamford, CT

Major League Soccer and Apple will kick off their third season as partners this weekend from a new home. MLS Productions, the league’s media- and broadcast-production arm, has moved its operations to WWE Headquarters in Stamford, CT, as part of an expanded multiyear deal with IMG. It marks a new era for the MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, which will now feature studio shows produced from the state-of-the-art “The Studios at WWE.”

MLS’s Ignacio Garcia: “We’re going to see an exponential step forward. We have a multiyear deal here at WWE Studios, so we are able to look at our future long-term rather than on a year-to-year basis.” (Photo: Mark Smith/USA TODAY Sports)

MLS will once again work with IMG to produce live match and studio productions and programming for more than 600 games annually on MLS Season Pass on Apple TV, and NEP Group will continue to supply production facilities and technology. MLS has also brought on AE Live as its exclusive graphics partner and will adopt a centralized graphics-integration model for all game broadcasts.

MLS Season Pass is launching a Sunday Night Soccer featured-game-of-the-week broadcast with enhanced production and dedicated studio programming. Sunday Night Soccer, which debuts this weekend with the San Diego FC–LA Galaxy matchup, will be available to stream for Apple TV+ subscribers and will be preceded by new preview shows, MLS Countdown and MLS La Previa. MLS Wrap Up and MLS El Resumen will move to Sunday evenings following the Sunday match to highlight and recap the full week of matches.

Also new this year, IMG Director, Content, Stephen Cook has been brought in to oversee all media production along with veteran match director Tony Mills. A legend at the front bench, Mills was a director at Sky Sports from 1991 to 2017; he famously directed the first-ever English Premier League match televised, in 1992, and the first-ever Premier League match in HD, in 2006. Additionally, IMG and MLS have elevated Greg Burud to oversee all studio production for MLS Season Pass on Apple TV; he served as coordinating producer for MLS Season Pass studio programming last season and had served a producer at ESPN for a more than a decade.

SVG sat down with MLS SVP/Executive Producer Ignacio Garcia, who joined the league prior to last season after more than 20 years at ESPN Deportes, to get an inside look at its revamped production operation in Stamford. In addition, he offers a peek at what to expect from Sunday Night Soccer productions, the launch of centralized graphics and some REMI productions this year, how the new hires will impact the on-air product, and what else viewers can expect from the latest iteration of MLS Season Pass on Apple TV.

From an operations standpoint, why did it make sense for MLS Productions to move to WWE Studios in Stamford?
It makes sense for several reasons. This is a state-of-the-art, fully connected facility where all control rooms and studios are tied together. We have access to the facility 24/7, which will allow us to expand our commitment in producing content. It also will serve as a bigger hub for us as we bring several different groups and partners together under one roof.

For example, previously, we had the MLS features team working from the league office and the IMG features team working in our studio or remotely. Now all those teams will be together under one roof, allowing them to collaborate and communicate better. That’s just one of many examples, and we’re excited to have everyone working from one space.

The Studios at WWE is a 30,000-sq.-ft., state-of-the-art production facility housing five studios featuring the latest technologies, wide-ranging production amenities, a cutting-edge virtual-production stage, and the latest-generation technology from Sony and Disguise.

Walk us through the footprint of the studio space in Stamford and how MLS will utilize it.
We have access to over 10,000 sq. ft. of space, including those two studios that mirror one another. The control rooms also mimic one with the other so that, with everything we are doing, we will be able to bring the same quality across the two different languages.

We also have another space for production offices, which will be home to over 70 people from MLS, IMG, AE Live, and other partners that we work with.

What are some specific examples of how your production team will benefit from the new Stamford facility?
First, moving here allows us to have a consistent look between our English-language and Spanish-language shows. In previous years, although the talent and production resources were equal for the two shows, there was clearly a significant difference in terms of the size of the studios, with the Spanish studio being much smaller. Now we have two studios that mirror one another.

By having access to virtual-production technology, we can customize the look of our studio depending on the competition or the situation. That is very hard to do when you have a purely physical set. Having said that, we’re going with the approach of mimicking the look we have on the larger, physical set on the English-language side. That could also open new possibilities in the future to customize different looks or evolve or bring new technology.

MLS will be centralizing its graphics workflow in the Stamford facility. That’s a change from previous seasons, when graphics were generated from the production truck for distribution.

MLS is centralizing its graphics workflow in the Stamford facility this year. Why the change from previous seasons, when graphics were generated from the production truck?
When we were doing matches in 2023 and 2024, we were tapping into a large pool of graphics producers and operators from all around the country, who would be in the back of the truck for a single match day. There wasn’t a lot of consistency there because operators were often arriving a few hours before the game and having to familiarize themselves with our productions and workflows and, in some markets, even the sport itself.

Now, under one roof, we have centralized graphics integration for all of the matches. That allows us to have a full-time core crew of graphics producers and operators that live and breathe MLS and soccer day in and day out. They are going to be super-familiar not only with our product but also with our system and workflow. We’ll be able to prep for games ahead of time, so that, on match day, we’ll be more prepared to react to any breaking news and things like that. That is a significant change from what we had in years past and is going to allow us to achieve a lot more consistency.

AE Live is our new graphics provider this year for all of matches and studio shows, as well as the virtual technology that we use in the studio. We’re very excited about the partnership and think it’s going to help take [our coverage] to the next level.

MLS Productions has access to more than 10,000 sq. ft. of space, including twin studios for English- and Spanish-language studio shows.

You have also made a few key hires on the production side. What will these additions bring to MLS Season Pass broadcasts?
IMG has done a terrific job bringing some world-class production talent to the U.S. from the UK. We want to reach a level of excellence in covering soccer in America that is equal to how the sport is covered in Europe and other parts of the world, and we think people like [Cook and Mills] are going to get us there.

Last year, there was a team from IMG in the U.S., but they were reporting back to a few key positions in the UK. That was challenging due to the time-zone difference and the proximity to the U.S. market on a day-to-day basis. This year, we have leadership on the ground here in the U.S. who will see the team face to face every day. We have a very robust MLS Productions unit on this side of the pond while still having the backup from the larger IMG infrastructure [in the UK].

How has MLS Season Pass game production evolved over the past couple of years, and what do you expect to be different this season?
We all agreed that there was a need for more consistency. Instead of every match feeling different, we are trying to provide a framework to all our producers and directors. It’s important for us to deliver a product that is consistent whether you’re watching match A or match D. [For example], in a World Cup, a Brazil–Argentina match might be a bigger [production] compared with other games, but you get the same look and feel. You get the same vibe from the broadcast perspective.

I think, by the end of last season, we were very pleased with where we were in terms of consistency. Everybody was using the same cameras and the same playbook. In fact, many nights, we were looking at every game on multiple TVs, and every [broadcast] was going to the lineups at exactly the same time because they were all following a consistent rundown. Now that we have proved that we can produce a consistent look for the MLS, it’s time to elevate those productions to the next step. We have a good strong foundation, and now we need to evolve.

Sunday Night Soccer is the perfect platform to differentiate that and gives us an opportunity to raise the bar and create a new standard. Sunday Night Soccer will set the tone, and that will help elevate [our coverage] across the board.

New for 2025, MLS Season Pass will broadcast a featured game of the week on Sunday evenings under the banner Sunday Night Soccer, with enhanced production and dedicated studio programming.

Speaking of Sunday Night Soccer, what production enhancements have you planned for that game of the week?
Sunday Night Soccer is going to be the pinnacle of what we are doing during the season, so we are super-excited about it. We are going to increase the number of cameras for Sunday Night Soccer, so we’ll consistently have 15-plus cameras.

We are also bullish about bringing in someone on the level of Tony Mills, who has directed Champions League and Premier League Finals. He will be sitting in the chair directing Sunday Night Soccer, in addition to overseeing all the directors. You can have as many cameras as you want, but it’s all about what you do with those cameras. You need to be able to make sure that those camera operators are giving you the shots to make the event feel even larger.

And what about on-air talent for this year?
We are super-excited about the talent roster that we have this year. Overall, 90% of the talent are people that we had in year one and year two, but we are also bringing in some new faces. Most important, we are creating more consistency in who calls our games. Instead of four teams doing 15 games each, we are looking to have two teams do 30 games each. That’s not a cost-cutting measure; it’s just about creating consistency so the talent gets more familiar with the teams. And then the fans start developing a stronger relationship with those announcers and [identifying] familiar voices.

For our game of the week on Sundays and a few Saturday games as well, we have top talent like Jake Zivin, Taylor Twellman, and Andrew Wiebe for English broadcasts and Sammy Sadovnik and Diego Valeri in Spanish.

On Feb. 22, Major League Soccer returns to MLS Season Pass on Apple TV for its historic 30th season.

MLS will add some remote (REMI) match productions to the lineup this year. How will those be done?
One thing I want to make clear is that the REMI model has been tested and proven time and time again at this point. We’re not just experimenting with this; we are extremely confident that it will be successful. I come from a background with ESPN, where we were doing a lot of REMIs, and I know how great these [productions] can be. Many of the [major international] games that are broadcast in the U.S. today are being called off-monitor, so it’s nothing new.

We expect to [produce] two to four games per week from NEP’s South Florida facility [previously known as Vista Worldwide]. They will be REMI productions, but they will have the same number of cameras and the same graphics package and workflow that all our other [game broadcasts] will have. We will schedule those REMI games with the same level of producers and directors that we use for any of the other games.

Many of those producers and directors could be doing a game in the truck one week and then working from NEP South Florida the next week. We will have the same pool of producers and directors and associate producers working those games. We are going to be giving them the same feedback, the same guidelines, and the same overall vision. The viewer should not notice any difference when experiencing these REMI matches.

With the opener coming up this weekend, how excited are you for this season and to officially christen your new studios in Stamford?
I could not be more excited for this season or more thrilled with our team. I think, from year one to year two, we were able to take very good steps to grow and make the business sustainable and put it in a place for growth. From year two to year three, we’re going to see an exponential step forward. We have a multiyear deal here at WWE Studios, so we are able to look at our future long-term rather than on a year-to-year basis. This isn’t temporary; we can look into the future a few years and focus on long-term plans that will make us better. We won’t be contracting new partners or scouting new facilities; our one and only focus will be how to make what we do better. I’m very thankful for where we are today, and I’m confident this season will be our best year yet.

This interview has been edited for length an clarity.