While watching a grueling badminton match between China and Japan, NBCUniversal's Andrew Siciliano had an urgent question for his research team, without having to use the microphone.

“Is the winner of a game the first to 15 or the first to 21?” he asked. Papers were shuffled, device screens were swiped. As one of two hosts of Gold Zone, the popular Peacock curated show that spotlights dramatic matchups and moments from the Summer Olympics, it’s Siciliano’s job, like that of his 2,000 colleagues at NBCU’s production center in Stamford, CT, to quickly get up to speed on an event taking place some 3,600 miles away and then present it to viewers in an authoritative, engaging way. (Badminton matches — they’re not “sets” like tennis or squash — go to 21 points, the researchers confirmed.)

Asked in an interview about his approach to Gold Zone, which is a close cousin to his former studio gig hosting NFL Sunday Ticket Red Zone on DirecTV, Siciliano described it as "all-encompassing — it has to be. I think I speak for everyone in the building when I say it takes over your entire life."

A recent visit to NBCU’s Stamford production center offered a glimpse of the staff’s complete immersion, and left no doubt as to where NBCU’s newfound center of gravity lies for live sports. Wherever events are happening, all roads lead here, to an airplane-hangar-sized outpost on I-95 about 40 miles north of 30 Rock.