Anyone watching the current FIFA World Cup can’t fail to have noticed the striking graphics that blend tournament branding with real-time data and analytics to deliver essential information to fans old and new. What they may not know is that initial plans for the design were quite different.

Speaking ahead of the first semi-final, Angelo Mandes, senior on-screen graphic manager for FIFA, explains: “My first idea was to have three different brand setups [to represent the three host countries]. So the Mexican one would be predominantly green, Canadian red and the US would be blue. While this works if you are on site, for fans watching on TV, it needs to be more integrated otherwise it starts to look like three different tournaments. So in the end, we decided to go with an integrated brand that includes all the colours and that is the same across the whole tournament.”

Throughout the tournament Mandes and his team have been working closely with HBS and AE Live, who handle the on-air graphics operation from the IBC in Dallas. Following a successful outing at last year’s FIFA Club World Cup, Moov was once again tasked with designing the broadcast graphics. 

“It was a great cooperation and collaboration together with HBS as well, they did a very good job,” adds Mandes of working with Moov. 

After Moov submitted initial design proposals, the parties worked together on creating the colourful animations that integrate the 26 brands.

“Using a lot of colours in TV graphics is a challenge, but when the animation is done, it’s mainly black graphics, so it’s really readable,” he explains. “It’s the same when the animation closes, you can see again all the colours and the 26 shapes going back, and so it becomes a signature for the tournament.” 

As FIFA is working to make this World Cup the most inclusive yet, this was also a consideration when designing the graphics, with some adapted to meet the needs of colour blind viewers. One example is the penalty graphics.

“When a penalty is taken, you usually have the green and red markers with the number of the penalty taken, but this doesn’t give a sense of which is scored and which is not,” says Mandes. “So we added an icon, a circle or an X for scored or not scored.”

Another element of this year’s offering that Mandes is particularly proud of is the player lineups.

“We now have the lineup with funky poses, which I would say is an improvement compared to the last tournament. It’s not just the shape of the player walking in, but instead they were free to do whatever they wanted, within in certain limits. The players are professionals, so they know what to do; it’s a nice touch and it’s something different. It’s against an LED background, which is filmed by HBS rather than being post-produced. They are our provider and partners, so the technology part has been held by them.

“We always try to bring something new, some improvement, to each tournament. We listen to all the departments when they tell us what they want to add and try to accommodate as much as possible. So, for instance, the referee department asked to have something that enhanced the concept of injury time. So with our permanent clocking score, we added ‘min’, which doesn’t stand for minute, instead it’s a minimum of additional time. So when the added time is announced, the emphasis is on the fact that it’s going to be a minimum of, say six minutes, and not just six.”

Part of the thinking behind this is that the World Cup attracts both casual fans and long-term followers of the sport. “We need to take care of everyone – the football fanatics and the casual ones. We need to be as open as possible to everyone and try to let them enjoy and understand football as much as possible.”

Another example is the graphics around substitutions.

“Substitution chips, as we call them, used to be in the permanent clocking score. But the permanent clocking score isn’t taken by all our clients, so we cannot rely on that. So to pass this information to all viewers, when we have a sub, when we animate the player coming in, you also get the info for subs remaining. This way everyone knows how many subs a team has left. We tried to do it last year but I don’t think we had the best solution, so we did something different for this one.”

The expanded scope of this World Cup has also created challenges for the graphics team, with not only more teams competing than ever before, but also more officials playing a role in matches. This meant Moov was tasked with creating an extensive portfolio of flag graphics.

“Moov produced all the flags that we’re using now, and they’re not only for the 48 teams involved in the tournament. We also have flags for all the referees and VAR referees, who come from all around the world. We have 211 confederations so that means we potentially could need 211 flags, so even before all the referees were announced, we asked Moov to produce all the flags.”

The challenges continued on site, when it was discovered that a new workflow was needed to ensure the referee camera was correctly flagged. “The technology was a bit challenging because we had a sponsor there, but every time we use the referee view camera, this needs to be branded with our graphics, so this one follows a different workflow, with the graphics directly implemented in the mixer,” he explains. ” So every time we use it, the graphic is going to be there, including in the clean feed, and then when it’s needed, the sponsor can come in and come out. It was a challenge on site, but in the end we managed it, and everyone is happy.”

While consistency across all the matches has been a key aspect of the overall look of the tournament, there will be some changes for the semi-finals and final, particularly around the connected ball technology.

“During the replay of a goal or a nice shot, we have all the data updating live, so we have the spin, the speed, and the distance. For the semi-final and final we’re updating the ball that’s going to be used and it’s going to match with our graphics, but other than that all the graphics are the same for all 104 matches,” he says.

Given the number of matches and the incredible scale of this tournament, it’s no surprise that finessing the graphics has been a long process, but one well worth it, according to Mandes.

“Personally, I’ve had some very nice comments and I would say that it has been positively received by the audience. We wanted to have something that in the future when you rewatch any of the matches you’ll see the graphics and know immediately that this is the FIFA World Cup 26. It’s been a long journey, but it’s a nice project and I really enjoyed the entire journey.”