A docuseries about the Chicago Union’s 2025 season, essentially produced for free, is airing on local TV.
April 30, 2026 by Alex Rubin in Opinion, Profile
For a project encompassing thousands of hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars, it started pretty quickly.
“In 2024,” Tyler Hoff tells, “I saw an ad for the Chicago Union game that was happening that night in Evanston. I live in Evanston, so I was like, ‘Oh, I’ll just ride my bike over.’ And then I was looking at their social media and their photography, and I was like, ‘I think I could probably contribute to this.’”
Hoff is a casual ultimate player, participating in local pick-up games and the occasional league. After seeing that ad, he reached out to the team on Instagram, asking if he could shoot photos on the sideline. After ensuring that Hoff expected no payment, the team agreed to let him access the sideline during their upcoming game. With just a camera in his backpack, he biked over, shot the game, and uploaded a few photos that night.
“And then Monday morning,” Hoff said, “[Union owner] CJ [O’Brien] calls me on my personal cell phone to say, ‘Hey, thanks for shooting the game. Who are you?’” O’Brien invited him to get a beer and the two connected over their love for the sport and shared vision for its growth. Hoff spent the rest of the season essentially auditing the team’s and the league’s media, looking for a place to contribute.
“I was just poring over every piece of media that anybody has made for any team, for the league, and I felt like there was a critical piece missing, which was the human storytelling side of things,” Hoff said. He reported back to O’Brien that the missing piece in the ultimate media ecosystem was close and personal, quality game footage, and a way for fans to get to know the people they’re rooting for on the field. From this conversation a few days after watching his first UFA game, “Union | The Ultimate Series” was born.
Initial Ideation
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