OUTSIDE BROADCAST
LIVE
SUNSET + VINE WON THE HOST BROADCAST CONTRACT FOR THIS SUMMER’S COMMONWEALTH GAMES IN BIRMINGHAM BACK IN EARLY 2020. A LOT HAS CHANGED IN THE WORLD AND IN SPORTS BROADCASTING SINCE THEN
venues aren’t permanent venues.” The NEC for example is not a dedicated sports arena. And there’s a balance between
sports that will take place in established sporting venues, and those that will have to be set up from scratch. “At one extreme, we’ve got
cricket at Edgbaston,” says Tippett. “And we know how to do cricket at Edgbaston. It’s still a massive OB and every cricket we do there for the ICC is a major challenge” but it’s an easier plan compared to “other venues that don’t even exist. Lawn bowls at Victoria Park is a very small and intimate venue. It’s not used to hosting an event the size of the games.” And then there’s the outside races that “are always challenging” including the marathon and road cycling: “They’re complex OBs in their own right. There’s no course to begin with and so we went into those events with a kind of a conceptual plan, and then once you
find out what the course is, you have to adapt and turn your theoretical plan into reality.” And even though the core team
stays small for the initial stages, early on, Sunset and Vine “put together our list of sports directors. They’re all freelancers, and they’re all experts in covering their sports” and although they are not full time on the project until later “we knew we wanted to make them part of the process early on to look at the plans, adapt the plans, make sure that they work.”
THE RIGHT STUFF Making sure the talent and the kit is available is always a crucial step, and this year even more so, says Tippett. “That’s one of the impacts COVID has had, it’s changed the pre-COVID schedule.” The World Athletics in Oregon was shifted to just before the Commonwealth Games due to Covid delays so “we’ve got a whole load of people that
come back and go straight to work on the Commonwealth Games.” The Women’s Euros (see next page) is also happening in the UK this summer “and that’s obviously a lot of resource.” And there are other challenges not related to COVID. The demise of major OB provider Arena Television put a big spanner in the works. “We’ve had to replace them quite late on in the planning,” says Tippett. Covid has, to some extent, taught
producers of big live events that not everything can be accounted for years in advance. “You’re always having regular discussions about the what ifs. But I think what we did discover with COVID relatively early is that things do change so quickly that you have to be prepared, and you have to be flexible, and you have to be able to adapt.”
NEAR AND FAR A major change wrought by Covid on the initial Commonwealth plans
“was the acceleration of remote production. The Tokyo Olympics was a really good example of how rights holders very quickly had changed their production models. I think it was always coming but COVID forced it to happen.” The IBC in Birmingham, built
with partners Timeline will be in Hall 2 at the NEC, and it’s now based on being able to service more remote rights holders rather than expecting a lot of them to come on site. “Some of that original plan’s still relevant but a lot of it, and the IBC that we deliver this summer, will look very different from the one that we envisaged originally.” Almost everything will be
covered live. Overall, there will be 22 outside broadcasts, on 370 cameras, with over 1500 staff and crew. In terms of numbers of hours of live sports coverage, there’s over 1500 hours and then another 1800 hours of other IBC produced coverage.
Summer 2022
televisual.com 59
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122
