AKRON, Ohio – If you tune in to a major-league sporting event, there’s a chance that before anyone takes the ice, field, or court, you’re going to see something produced by Pritt Entertainment Group.
Based in the heart of downtown Akron, the small company creates high-tech videos for teams and companies all over the world from its home base – the Carlton Building, a 121-year-old structure that PEG – as it’s branded – bought and renovated starting in 2018. It’s a symbiotic mesh of very old and new, with the building’s rich history being preserved by the modern company. The firm maintains about 20 sports and corporate clients, from the Vegas Golden Knights to University of Akron football.
At its core are a pair of brothers raised in Portage County who have kept their base in Northeast Ohio. Their unassuming start in the business dates to when Ryan was in middle school. Along the way he hired his tech-savvy and creative brother Jeffrey, and a client roster has snowballed.
They work in a building that served as one of several anchors along S. Main Street in Akron, whose past is rooted in bygone days. The Pritts have breathed life into a once dilapidated building, making it home to their very high-end digital world. On May 19, the renovations were completed.
A career blossoms, a company forms
Ryan Pritt, 34, started the company in the guest bedroom in his house in 2008. He branched out, bouncing around offices in Akron until landing at the Carlton across from the Akron Civic Theatre.
When he was a student at Field Junior High School in Portage County, Ryan served as public-address announcer for junior high and high school sporting events. Early on, he came upon self-awareness that has directed him to this day.
Pritt Entertainment Group is in the Carlton Building, which was built in 1900.
“I knew at a young age I was never going to be good enough to play in college or professionally, but I always wanted to work in sports,” he said. “How do you continue to be involved in sports if you know you’re not going to play it forever?”
For Ryan, that meant learning about game ops – the operational brain trust hidden away in every arena and stadium. They make videos flash when they should, sponsor names appear, and graphics light up with information.
He stumbled into the world early on while working a baseball league for professional prospects at Kent State.
“I was announcing, I was 15, and the Indians had a scout at the game,” Ryan said. “He came up and sat in the press box. He said ‘Hey, I think you do a nice job. I know there is a PA job opening at Mahoning Valley (the Indians’ then Class A short-season minor league team in Niles). You should reach out and apply. Tell them I sent you.’ “
He didn’t get the job, but he gained experience at the audition – which his mom drove him to.
Other jobs followed: WTAM intern, talk-show hosting, announcing at Cleveland Barons hockey games. People in game ops often bounce between teams since the skills translate fairly easily, and soon a graphics job opened with the Indians. One day a production manager told him someone had called off.
“I don’t know how to do that,” Pritt said he told the guy.
Jeffrey, left, and Ryan Pritt.
” ‘It’s fine,’ ” came the reply. ” ‘If you could follow directions, I just need someone to get us through the game.’ “
Ryan jumped in. He was responsible for putting up mugshots on the scoreboard. That led to duties dealing with music and PA work, and soon the Youngstown SteelHounds came calling.
“Ryan was calling the show. It was kind of how we got our start,” Jeffrey said. “He was in charge of running the production crew and he needed a fascia-board operator. So you see Pepsi on the main board, click, and then Pepsi goes on all the side ones. He said ‘I can’t find anyone to work it.’ “
Jeffrey took it all in and said: “I can probably do that. What do you have to do?”
“It’s pretty simple,” Ryan said. “You see Pepsi, you click Pepsi.”
Jeffrey mastered it quickly. He taught himself animation. Soon, corporate sponsors were reaching out to the brothers for projects.
“We started to pivot based on that,” Jeffrey said.
Pritt Entertainment Group’s main area includes a pool table, video game and couches.
Here’s the funny thing: Jeffrey was a freshman in high school and couldn’t even drive.
The SteelHounds were short-lived. Pritt Entertainment Group goes on.
Almost all of Jeffrey’s video-production experience came out of high school, literally.
A marketing teacher was instrumental in supporting and teaching him. At the time, her husband was dealing with video for his public-relations firm.
“Can you help cut this stuff down?” she asked him.
“I would come into class with the completed file and say, ‘Here you go, give this to your husband.’ “
The projects became more advanced, and Jeffrey delivered. It got to the point where he was asked: ‘We need to do a shoot during the school day – can you do it? But don’t tell me wife.’ “
This Lego setup was used in the third-floor studio at Pritt Entertainment Group for a series of videos that helped explain inflation.
She found out.
“She was super understanding,” Jeffrey said.
Through working together Ryan realized how advanced his brother was at animation. They maintain a good working relationship. Ryan kept bringing in Jeffrey for video-production projects; opportunities kept popping up. The idea to form a company grew naturally.
“It wasn’t by any means a long-term plan or goal,” Ryan said. “My dad owned a business; he recently retired from it. I watched him do that growing up, and I remember how stressful it could be – the long hours, the stresses that came along with it. When I was younger I was like ‘This is a lot of work and a lot of stress.’ “
Their reputation as being dependable grew. The brothers – Ryan is five years older – found time to earn communications degrees from the University of Akron. Sponsors of teams kept reaching out. Work piled up. Finally Ryan said: “Let’s give this a shot.”
“It was never a grand plan, a life goal of launching the business this way or setting it up this way,” Ryan said. “The name of the company, having the name ‘Entertainment’ in it, was because when we started, game entertainment was our focus.”
The stairwells have preserved stories, signs and photos about the building, which housed Carlton Clothes for 63 years.
Balanced mix of sports, corporate clients
The company does live events, graphic design and photography, but “video production-animation is our bread and butter,” Ryan said. Ongoing projects can have the Pritts and their nine-member team bouncing between sports, television commercials, corporate pieces and trade shows.
“It’s a really diverse mix,” he said.
Their studio space includes green and white production screens. A giant table holds a detailed Lego town used for a stop-motion production to explain how inflation works for the Federal Reserve Bank. They couldn’t go to places to shoot because of Covid, so they created a world in their studio. The resulting series of educational videos provide real-world examples that clearly explain inflation to all ages.
How much leeway they have in their productions varies.
“It depends on the client,” Ryan said. “(Some) are much more ‘Hey, you guys are the creative folks’ from scripting to creative concept. Other clients come to us with a relatively specific vision.”
PEG pitches ideas, and clients tend to gravitate toward one, he said. Just like in Hollywood, PEG writes scripts, creates storyboards and shows mockups to the client.
Beneath the steps of their work lay hours and hours of editing. The simplest of jobs takes eight hours per minute, but many projects for sports clients can require 150- to 200-hour edits for a minute of finished video.
An editing station in Pritt Entertainment Group.
“Sometimes we spend 10 hours of the day working on 12 seconds of time,” said Jeffrey, who also works occasionally on WWE productions.
They worked on early videos for the Vegas Golden Knights, who are known for elaborate intros flashed in T-Mobile Arena. Several years ago, the Pritts prepared a video for the Cleveland Cavaliers, who were getting ready to unveil uniforms with a sponsorship patch. They used motion-track technology to show potential logos on jerseys. That meant they had to show a virtual patch moving or twisting as a player raced down the court, his jersey folding and moving constantly.
“There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that go into those videos that no one would ever know,” Ryan said.
They maintain about a 50-50 mix between sports and corporate clients. Teams in all major sports – including six or seven NHL teams – use PEG. Locally, they do video production for University of Akron football and the Akron Marathon. The brothers have to remain nimble, bouncing between editing videos of a Cavs opening to helping a bullet point come to life on an executive’s speech.
“The nice thing about sports and where those lessons come into play … I am really glad we got started doing that for this reason: Everything is about the reaction of the audience. You know the second that video runs whether people were engaged with it. Did they stand up and cheer at the end of it, did they tune it out and talk to their friends?” Ryan said.
“It is all about how to get a reaction out of people,” he added.
“We kind of look at every project through the mindset of ‘What reaction is this trying to elicit, and how do we get people to be engaged with it?” Ryan said.
Pritt Entertainment Group’s space is designed with comfort in mind in the 121-year-old building.
Also, there is no give and take with deadlines in sports. Corporate clients can push things, but if you are working on a video pegged to a Saturday game, you can’t finish it on Sunday.
“We would never be where we are if it weren’t for the actual creative folks who bring all the divisions together,” Ryan said.
And as pandemic reopenings occur, the Pritts’ creative colleagues are slowly making their way to the old building with a refreshed look on S. Main Street.
Past, present mesh well: ‘We wanted to stay downtown’
That old building that became their home needed a lot of work.
Details on the building’s architect are lost to time. In its longest iteration it was home to Carlton Clothes for 63 years – “a darn good run,” Ryan said. Downtown development – which seems a constant in Akron – almost forced the business to move in 1980. For the past 20 years, it has sat empty, nestled next to its neighbor, The Peanut Shoppe, a tiny first-floor institution.
When they dug into its bones, they found a building “as raw as raw can be – no HVAC, no electrical, no plumbing, no anything,” Ryan said. They saw “1930” stamped on pipes.
The view from Pritt Entertainment Group overlooks S. Main Street.
It was gutted, atrophy chipping away, leaving remnants of water seepage and other issues. Early on, some designers told the Pritts, “You sure you want to renovate this and not tear it down?” Ryan said. “We were looking for a permanent place to call home. We wanted to stay downtown.”
And, he said, “We fell in love with the view.”
The expanse of the Akron Civic Theatre lays out before what amounts to their living room, with a centered pool table and couches along the walls. An old video game stands nearby. Framed photos in the office are tasteful, moody black and white shots from former projects.
Each floor has tall ceilings. The first level is available for lease; the top two are PEG’s. The goal was never to just have an office space. It was always about creating a “more living-room style than cubicle style,” Ryan said.
Classic drywall is OK for an accounting or insurance office, but this had to be special. Repurposed, salvaged wood planks from a tobacco barn line a wall, white marks from where the wide leaves laid, draped to dry. Jeffrey and his dad worked on that wall, using 50,000 nails to attach the wooden slats. (It was easy to count when two bins each holding 25,000 nails were used.)
“We wanted to keep it as authentic and urban industrial as we could,” Ryan said.
The building’s refurbishment came at a time when the surrounding area also was getting a facelift. The downtown construction project freshened up Main Street. Lock 3 renovations are under way. Canal Park is expanding to full capacity, and the theater is opening up.
This Lego setup was used in the third-floor studio at Pritt Entertainment Group for a series of videos that helped explain inflation.
Modern touches continue: The third floor has a studio. All the televisions in the office are wired for sound and video from the studio so clients can relax in a comfortable area while they watch the closed-circuit work being done in real time while the shoot is being executed. Acoustic design helps absorb sound in editing rooms.
But still, the past has a place at 201 S. Main Street.
Stairwells hold clean displays of black-framed photos and advertisements that the Pritts have preserved. One shows a café at the site circa 1908. It was a jewelry store at another time. Carlton Clothes came along in 1918. In the late 1930s, it had a façade put on, making it appear bigger than it is.
The Pritts even found a cache of old letters under a staircase. Handwritten, they were from the Carlton owner to a supplier, apologizing for not delivering a shipment of clothes because more than half of the staff had gotten called to service because of Pearl Harbor.
Two decades ago it was an adult video and magazine store. A nearby businessman who was religious bought the building, kicked out the store, and rebuilt the façade – but just left the building, Ryan said.
But in 2018, 100 years after Carlton went in, the Pritts entered the picture. The unlikely pairing of an ancient building and forward-thinking company fits well. A building lives. Business is good.
“We’ve always said we never want to get to a point of doing quantity over quality and we’re not proud of what’s going out the door,” Ryan said. “As long as it stays fun and creative, that’s really what we’re going for.”
I am on cleveland.com’s life and culture team and cover food, beer, wine and sports-related topics. If you want to see my stories, here’s a directory on cleveland.com. Bill Wills of WTAM-1100 and I talk food and drink usually at 8:20 a.m. Thursday morning. And tune in at 7:05 a.m. Wednesdays for “Beer with Bona and Much, Much More” with Munch Bishop on 1350-AM The Gambler. Twitter: @mbona30.
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