NFL Gets Permission to Use Drones… Sort of

At the beginning of the summer, the FAA said it would be investigating NFL teams (specifically the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants) for allegedly using drones during practice sessions.

While there still might not be drones showing up a practices this year, the NFL’s film division received an exemption from the FAA on September 17 to use drones with a few caveats.

These caveats are pretty standard; the drone must be under 55 pounds, not fly any higher than 400 feet, and travel no faster than 100 miles per hour.

Oh, and the drones can only operate over empty stadiums so there will be no filming during practice or games.

This little tidbit might make the whole announcement feel a little underwhelming, until you realize the film division produces films, documentaries and short news segments and doesn’t produce any live broadcasts.

So this exemption was never going to let drones fly during Monday Night Football in the first place.

However, this doesn’t mean we will never see a drone-cam during a football broadcast and it doesn’t mean teams will never get to use drones to film practices.

For starters, using drones during practices is becoming increasingly popular at the college level. UCLA and Clemson have been very honest about their use of drones and the advantages the technology provides.

Additionally, FOX and NBC, both of which broadcast a number of NFL games throughout the season, have used drones in other sports broadcasts (the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay and the Sochi Olympics, respectively).

And the results from these productions have been extremely positive because, 1) The footage fits seamlessly in the broadcast and you probably didn’t realize you were seeing a drone shot when watching these productions and 2) There hasn’t been any crashes at these drone captured events because if there had been, the media would have been all over it like white on rice. (The exception, of course, is the unauthorized drone that landed in the stands at the U.S. Open -tennis, not golf this time- but that drones was flown by an independent hobbyist for fun rather than by a trained professional employed by a network.)