NFL DIGITAL ATHLETE
NFL Player Health & Safety | 2025 | Broadcast Commercial
Client: NFL
Services: Editorial | Design & Animation | VFX/CG | Color Grading | Finishing
Deliverables: :30 broadcast hero, :20, :15, :10 cuts, social edits
Timeline: 2 months from brief to delivery
The NFL needed to showcase Digital Athlete—an AI and machine learning platform that uses data from all 32 teams to predict injuries, optimize recovery, and keep players healthy. The challenge: this groundbreaking technology exists entirely as backend data. There's nothing to film, nothing physical to show.
As part of Workprint's ongoing partnership with the NFL's Player Health & Safety division, we were tasked with creating a broadcast spot that would air during halftime of all NFL games—a massive platform requiring the piece to work for everyone from casual fans to medical professionals to team executives.
The brief was clear: make complex sports science feel visceral, immediate, and built for the field. Show the invisible. Make data feel alive.
Visualizing invisible technology: Making AI-powered player safety feel urgent and game-ready
The Workprint Advantage: One Team, Working in Parallel
Here's what made this project special: no vendor handoffs, no locked cuts, no forcing graphics onto an edit that wasn't built for them. Editorial and VFX worked side-by-side from day one.
Week 1-2: Foundation
Script and VO from NFL. Music provided. Raw game footage. We built the initial edit and identified hero moments for major VFX treatments. Design exploration began immediately—what should invisible AI technology look like?
Week 3-6: The Creative Loop
This is where the integrated team approach paid off. Edit cuts a sequence. VFX tests graphics in the timeline that day. Too fast? Edit adjusts. Graphics need more time? We find it. New VFX idea emerges? Edit restructures to showcase it. This happened daily—not in weeks-long review cycles, but in real-time collaboration.
Week 7-8: Integration
Color unified 8 different stadiums into one cohesive visual world. Sound design layered in stadium atmosphere, breath, data "whooshes." Final polish made you forget where footage ended and VFX began. Delivered across multiple formats for broadcast and digital.
The Result: A spot where 8-10 people—editors, VFX artists, designers, colorists—worked as one cohesive unit. No silos. No handoffs. Just pure creative collaboration.
The Creative Approach: Data as Drama
Since Digital Athlete exists only as backend analytics, we had total creative freedom to visualize the technology. Our approach: treat the player's body as a canvas where data comes to life—not as cold statistics, but as living, breathing information that moves with the athlete.
Key Creative Decisions:
The "Digital Twin" Effect
The signature visual: the real player surrounded by CG versions of themselves, each showing a different decision they could make in that split-second moment. Cut left? Go right? Spin? Each digital twin represents an alternate choice, and Digital Athlete runs simulations on all of them—predicting which leads to injury and which leads to success. We made the invisible process of AI decision-analysis visible and dramatic.
Seamless Integration
Motion graphics, biometric overlays, and data visualization weren't placed on top of the footage—they were designed to feel embedded within the game. Impact speeds, collision angles, player tracking—all of it flows naturally with the action, making complex sports science feel immediate and built for the field.
The Color Story
We unified footage from multiple games and stadiums with a color grade, then integrated our CG elements so they felt photographic, not digital. The result: you can't tell where real footage ends and VFX begins.
Editorial Rhythm: Authority Meets Energy
The pacing needed to walk a tightrope: fast enough to match the intensity of NFL gameplay, slow enough to let complex information land. We built in "breathing room"—hero VFX moments where shots could hang for 3-4 seconds, letting viewers absorb the visual before moving on. The edit adapts its tone to match visual intensity, using stadium sounds, athlete breath work, and high-impact sound design to pull viewers into the tech-driven atmosphere.
Broadcast Impact:
Aired during halftime of all NFL games throughout the season
Reached millions of viewers on NFL's highest-visibility platform
Updated annually as Digital Athlete technology evolves—now in its third iteration
Real-World Application: Digital Athlete isn't just theory—it's actively being used by all 32 NFL clubs for individualized player training and injury prevention. The technology has also informed major rules changes, including the Dynamic Kickoff, where the NFL simulated 10,000 seasons worth of games to reduce injury rates while increasing excitement.
Client Response: The spot resonated across the entire NFL organization:
Marketing Team: Loved the energy and visual innovation
Player Health & Safety Division: Thrilled to see years of research and data brought to life in a way that's accessible and exciting
Teams/Coaches: Finally had a tool to understand what Digital Athlete does in seconds, not lengthy presentations
The Bigger Picture: Digital Athlete is now used across all 32 NFL clubs, fundamentally changing how the league approaches player safety. This spot helped make that complex technology understandable and exciting to a mass audience.
What This Project Represents: "This really is a great project where about 8-10 people came together, all the best at what they do, and crushed it. The finished product is awesome but the process is always a huge flex—one team, working together, all in tandem. There's no back and forth between vendors, no locking the cut too early and then needing to force graphics on it. It all went side by side in parallel and it shows." — Workprint Team
Client: NFL Brand Marketing
Script: NFL Brand Marketing
Music: Provided by NFL
Workprint Team:
Creative Director: David Nitzsche
Editor: David Nitzsche
Designer: Martin Aggerholm, Tim Devlin
VFX Artists: Tim Devlin, Martin Aggerholm, Justin Malek, Patrick Kipper
Colorist: Myles Mantzaris
Audio: All Sound
Deliverables:
:30 broadcast spot (primary)
:20, :15, :10 broadcast cuts
Social media edits
Ongoing seasonal updates as technology evolves
Technical Details:
VFX: Digital twin CG character integration, motion graphics overlays, biometric data visualization
Color: Balanced footage and VFX elements for cohesive integration
Integration: Seamless blend of live-action NFL footage with CG and motion graphics
Digital Athlete represents one chapter in Workprint's ongoing collaboration with the NFL's Player Health & Safety division. Over the past several years, we've created annual campaigns covering:
Digital Athlete evolution - Multiple iterations as the AI technology advances
Helmet safety innovations - Visualizing protective equipment breakthroughs
Rule changes - Communicating how new regulations reduce injury risk
Medical research - Making sports science accessible and exciting
Each project follows the same integrated approach: editorial, VFX, design, and color working in parallel. The result: complex information delivered on time, on brand, and broadcast-ready. Year after year.
See our past spots below: