More than 40 University of Washington students will work in broadcast production through UW Athletics' operations program during the 2026-27 academic year.

Two students held those roles when the department launched three years ago.

UW Athletics unveiled Sundodger Studios on Thursday, Sept. 10, a $25 million broadcast and production complex built inside Alaska Airlines Arena on the Seattle campus.

The facility includes four broadcast control rooms, a 1,000-square-foot video and photography studio and a 2,300-square-foot event space, The Seattle Times first reported.

For students, the bigger news may be what happens in those control rooms beyond game day. Sam Wojtalewicz, UW's associate athletic director of broadcast operations, will teach a new for-credit course called Live Sports Television Production (CMS 297B) through UW's Cinema and Media Studies department starting autumn quarter 2026.

The course requires instructor permission and includes extra Friday sessions during athletic events, according to the UW course listing.

The class fills a gap.

UW's Cinema and Media Studies program states on its website that the major "does not provide formal training in film production (beyond screenwriting)."

The communications department does not offer broadcast journalism or television production classes, according to The Seattle Times.

"When the right doors are opened for these students at Washington, they're hungry and they're smart … They're able to succeed," Wojtalewicz told The Seattle Times.

The course is an extension of the Big Ten Network's StudentU Productions program, which uses students to produce a large share of games broadcast on B1G+, the conference's streaming service. Wojtalewicz is a Purdue University alumnus whose career began when he joined StudentU Productions in 2011.

The studio itself was driven by UW's move from the Pac-12 to the Big Ten in August 2023. Under the old conference model, the Pac-12 Network sent production trucks to games. Big Ten member universities produce games in their own on-campus control rooms before broadcast on Big Ten Network or B1G+. Each campus handles roughly 100 games per year.

Before the studios opened, Wojtalewicz's staff produced videoboard content in a cramped room on Alaska Airlines Arena's fourth floor. The Big Ten Network helped UW set up a temporary control room in the arena's basement, a space Wojtalewicz compared to a janitor's closet.

The UW Board of Regents approved construction in June 2024 as part of the athletic department's fiscal year 2025 budget, which included a one-time $30 million expense tied to the Big Ten transition. The final cost came in around $25 million, a UW athletics spokesperson told The Seattle Times.

Sundodger Studios occupies the space where Alaska Airlines Arena's east practice court stood before a new basketball training facility made those courts available.

Beyond athletics, the control rooms will broadcast guest lectures, presidential addresses, town halls and events such as convocation and graduation. The UW Athletics press release also described plans for external productions, industry partnerships and corporate events.

Wojtalewicz's broadcast operations staff includes 11 full-time employees, several of whom came from UW Video, an internal unit the athletic department finished absorbing in 2025. Students in the new program will learn on the same equipment used to produce Big Ten Network events, working alongside that professional staff inside Sundodger Studios' four control rooms.