With a new remote production centre, two new four-camera vans that have recently hit the road and a remote truck due to launch in January, the team at Vivid Broadcast is celebrating its 20th anniversary in style.

Much has changed over the past two decades as the company has moved into new sectors and invested in emerging technologies. This has led to significant growth, particularly in the past five years, with sport playing a key role in that growth.

“We work across a lot of sectors, but definitely within sport we’re seeing a lot of growth,” says Rory Springthorpe, managing director, Vivid Broadcast. “We’re seeing a lot more lower league sport being covered, and then, as a result, the next division up is scaling up. So WSL 2, for example, is now two cameras, so then the WSL that we’re doing is bumped up to four cameras. There’s massive growth across women’s sport and what’s exciting is that audiences are reflecting that and we’re starting to see really good traction with viewing numbers as well.”

Vivid is now handling about 80% of WSL matches, alongside Aurora Media.

“The Women’s Super League has been a big growth area – we’re at the start of a three-year contract,” he adds.

The WSL is handled from the company’s new remote production centre in Woking, a facility that has contributed to Vivid recording its largest single investment in kit in 2025.

“We spent £2 million this year on new equipment, and that’s across EVS, Calrec, RTS, Sony, Vinten, all the main brands,” he continues.” With a lot of things we do, it’s about making sure we spend in the right way, so where we need to invest in industry standard, reliable infrastructure we are, and we’re spending the money where it needs to be spent.”

This includes investing in Calrec True Control 2.0. “It enables remote production to operate in smarter ways that reduce the number of people needed on site, while enabling the remote control centre to give better control,” explains Springthorpe. “That’s rolling out in the new truck, so that everything around the pitch can be fully controlled from wherever you are remotely.”

EVS XtraMotion is also being utilised. “It’s about working out which sports can benefit from that. It doesn’t work for everything but used in the right way it’s a powerful way of getting slow mo introduced into productions in a way that doesn’t require expensive channels on site.”

Relying on industry-standard gear doesn’t mean a lack of innovation, however, and the company has embraced AI, including operator-free Sony FR7 PTZ cameras, and scalable technology to ensure the remote production centre can adapt to changing needs. The design and build process took around 18 months, with the five-gallery space opening in time for the start of the WSL season in September.

The current set up is three, four-camera galleries plus a main gallery that has seating for 18 people and can support tier one sports. While this is more traditional in terms of infrastructure, the smaller galleries are based around a control system called Buttons.

“It’s really quite exciting,” enthuses Springthorpe. “It’s a control system that enables us to control sound, desk, vision mixer, desk, graphics, everything as a single package. And so rather than have an all-in-one system where everything is done in one software, instead, we’re using the same traditional hardware – so we’re using a Sony vision mixer, a Calrec Type R audio console, but then it’s all being controlled by this central system. It’s very scalable so we can adapt galleries very quickly to different requirements.

“There’s massive growth across women’s sport and what’s exciting is that audiences are reflecting that”

“In terms of connectivity, we’ve got two 10-gig redundant lines coming in, and we’re using a range of encoders and decoders, including lots of Intinor. Alongside that, we’ve built two small, four-camera vans that have the cameras pre-built and sitting in drawers instead of using cases that add weight. The idea is that these little vans arrive on site and you literally pull out the drawer, lift out your camera, and you’re ready to go. It means the build time is incredibly quick and the vans integrate with the remote production centre and send all the feeds back.”

In addition to these new lightweight vans, a 20-camera, 18-ton truck is also in development and is due to be on the road in January. Despite the size of the vehicle, sustainability has been front of mind during its development, and kit choices reflect this.

‘We’re basically utilising kit that has lower power draw and lower heat production, which means that then you need less air con and less power to run the truck,” Springthorpe continues. “We use a 63A three-phase power supply and we have a battery system inside the truck that can run for up to six hours so we don’t need a separate vehicle, and we can just run off shore power while still being fully redundant and backed up to Sky’s standards of production.”

It’s not just in its new vehicles that Vivid has focused on sustainability, however, it’s an ethos that runs throughout the company.

“We’re trying to avoid the box ticking and we’re constantly trying to find ways of reducing our footprint,” he continues. “We do a lot of productions around the world, and we try to work with local partners so we’re only taking what we absolutely have to take to enable the production to go ahead. We’re also in the process of opening up a regional office in northern England so that we’re not transporting kit or people more than we have to up and down the motorway.”

The company is also playing an active role in supporting the next generation of professionals and working to encourage diversity within the industry. In addition to supplying kit for the recent On Air student broadcast, Vivid also works closely with the University of Surrey.

“I love working with Surrey and it’s great being a partner with them but we’re also looking at how we can engage more widely. That’s part of the northern office, part of trying to invest in local communities. There’s a big push from organisations like Sky and the National Theatre to bring a trainee along. National Theatre are brilliant, they fully finance you bringing additional crew who are there purely to gain experience. It’s that kind of mentality that’s a good learn from that industry. Let’s see how we can bring that into sports.”

Looking to the future, continuing to invest in new technology, alongside new talent, is a firm focus for Springthorpe.

He expands: “With AI, for example, it’s about how can we use it to tell stories in a way that doesn’t replace jobs, but in a way that actually makes things better. So with certain sports we’re looking at AI being able to cut team arrivals and create quick turnaround highlights, and then people can focus on creating actual human interest stories, and doing other things that elevate coverage. Automation is increasing all the time. We’re also doing a lot of cinematic multi-camera production, using large sensor cameras to create depth of field and to be able to capture stories in different ways, I think that’s a continued area of growth.”

Around this, of course, is the fact that budgets continue to be squeezed and the demand to do more with less continues. “I think the industry is going to have to continue to evolve and to change. There’s going to be no choice. I think there’s going to be a lot more need for smaller innovative solutions, but then the challenge is that people are going to have to adapt what they think production looks like. I think there’s huge opportunities, but not if we just keep the same old, same old.”