The challenges faced by the organising company of the Glasgow Commonwealth Games have been well documented. From a late change of host country to a reduction in the number of sports represented and budget constraints impacting many decisions, it’s perhaps not been the easiest build up to this year’s event.
These challenges, however, have led to a willingness to embrace new ideas and to innovate in order to achieve a broadcast product that not only matches the output of the previous event in Birmingham, but that in many ways offers more to both rightsholders and viewers.
As host broadcaster, Actua Sport has been central to rethinking how a multi-sport event can be captured and distributed in order to reach the widest possible audience, while also meeting key goals around legacy, sustainability and value set by the organisers.
One of the most striking aspects of the setup this year is the decision not to have an IBC but instead to create a Broadcast Operations Centre in the BBC Scotland building, just metres from some of the games venues along the River Clyde. Actua has built a temporary network to connect these venues, something that may become permanent in the future.
“The fact that we have our broadcast centre in a permanent broadcast facility where we know the technical infrastructure is one of the key elements of success for us,” says Franck Choquard, director at Actua Sport. “We were able to test upfront some of the venue connectivity, we did that in June, and we even left some of our equipment here. As we are in a permanent facility we know we can rely on something rock solid, and by not having to build a temporary IBC there’s no uncertainty about whether the structure will be there, the power will be ready, air con, all of the usual dependencies.
“The organising company was hesitating between a fully remote IBC or a local IBC in a temporary facility, and so we recommended this alternative. We’d done it before, we knew BBC Scotland was ready to host us, and we know the added value of being here. It’s also a more sustainable option.”
Using an existing venue – mirroring what has been done for all the venues hosting sports – has also helped to keep costs down for a budget-conscious games.
“For Glasgow, it was critical that these games should not cost anything to the taxpayer,” adds Choquard. “There shouldn’t be the need to build any new venues, and even venue-wise, it needed to be effective to the community, which meant not overspending on renting facilities. So none of the facilities have been built for this – a lot of them are legacy from the previous games [in Glasgow in 2014].”
Actua mirrored this focus on cost effectiveness in its approach to the games.
“We presented a model where we tried to be cost effective and we have a very transparent approach to how we spend the money with strong visibility for stakeholders, which builds trust,” he explains.
Being budget conscious isn’t necessarily a negative, he’s quick to point out, and it can even lead to more of a willingness to try new things.
“For example, we looked at how we could re-adapt some of the production plan to diminish certain traditional heavy cost cameras to bring some more innovations, which would not really change the perception, but could make a big difference,” he says. “And that’s the way we succeeded in increasing the overall scope, the overall responsibility, without the need to increase the budget, which was really the ambition of the OC. The feedback has been extremely good from all of the broadcast community and, at the end of the day, everything we do is for them.”
Broadcasters including Seven from Australia, Sky New Zealand and Warner Bros. Discovery all have space in the BBC facility and are also reaping the benefits of operating from a permanent broadcast facility, particularly when it comes to ease of setup. “Seven arrived in mid July, Discovery arrived a week before for technical setup, which again keeps their costs down. They all agreed it’s a fantastic office and they feel comfortable and well managed. Of course, there are always challenges in terms of security, logistics, everything that can happen on events of this scale. But all in all, so far they are very positive because the production looks good, the venues look good and I think we have achieved unity in terms of production philosophy, which an event such as this one needs to have.”
Actua also focused on bringing in a diverse and knowledgeable team to cover all of the ten sports making up this year’s games.
“We presented this more diverse community where we have a good balance of nationalities – we have directors from Sweden, Finland, France, Belgium, and across the Commonwealth – from the UK, New Zealand, and so on,” Choquard says. “We also tried to build a diverse production philosophy, including trying to have more female directors. We actually have more women than men directing and we have them leading in netball, bowls, boxing and gymnastics. It’s also important to us to have younger talent and directors coming in. So, for example, working in athletics, we have two very senior directors, but then we also work with two younger local women on the field events. We pushed to have more local involvement.”
Despite the international mix of the team, the unique element of the Commonwealth Games is that everyone speaks the same language, something that Actua saw as an opportunity. This led to the development of the Game Channel, a 24/7 channel where rightsholders can access English-language content that gives a true flavour of the games.
“With the Game Channel, we don’t only focus on going from one sport to the next, but we try to bring a bit of colour with commentators, we do more mixed zone interviews of athletes, we try to bring something better with the resources we have,” he explains. “Viewers want to see the athletes performing, they want to see their emotion, but then afterwards they want to hear them, and that’s what we have added. It’s been quite successfully taken by many rightsholders who are not here on site.”
Those not on site are also benefitting from international end-to-end IP connectivity.
“We have 15 broadcasters fully connected to us over IP, so they are able to grab all of the content. Most of it is Game Channel, where they take it mostly 16 hours a day. A lot of them are taking the ISO feeds of the sports to be able to follow their athletes, but it was interesting to see how, for a traditional host broadcaster not having a distribution company involved, we were able to build an agile model that was fitting to the reality of partners distributing across the Commonwealth. And so we offered quite quickly those double possibilities between LiveU and SRT.”
This flexibility has also led to different regions and territories showing more content from the games than they have in the past.
“In the Caribbean, for example, I’m not sure if it had been a traditional approach to distribution and so on that they would have taken so much content. Now they not only take the Game Channel, but they take all of the sports stations where they know Caribbean athletes will have a strong presence. What is also quite an interesting shift is realising that broadcasters publish this on their main channels. So we have BeIN in the US and Canada, so it’s pay TV, but they still use those cost-effective IP solutions even to publish on those premium channels. They are not afraid anymore to go that route and they’re saying, ‘Look, it has to be cost effective, otherwise we will take less and we will showcase less of the event’. So we need to find those ways, and that was quite an interesting journey.”
