Just over a week after the successful completion of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Actua Sport was back on the athletics track serving as the EBU’s production partner for the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham (10-16 August).
“It’s been interesting,” says Franck Choquard, director at Actua Sport, of the quick turnaround. “There weren’t too many of us who were involved in both. We had two teams, so we started the setup here while we were still in Glasgow – we pre-cabled everything, we planned everything. The OB vans arrived on Tuesday and by Friday morning we were ready.”
The setup at the Alexander Stadium is extensive, with multiple European broadcasters, including the BBC, ARD/ZDF and France TV on site in the compound, while others have a studio presence but are operating remotely. This includes Poland’s TVP and YLE from Finland.
“When we have an event like this, all the main broadcasters are here, doing their own unilateral and investing quite a lot of resources to be able to come here, grab all of the feeds, add their cameras and create their own programme,” he adds.
“That’s why we have all of those OBs, cabins and visiting broadcasters on site, mostly because of the specificity of the multi-feed for athletics, where they still have a lot of possibility to get personalised content adapted to their national audience. The ones who have changed how they operate over the years are the Nordic broadcasters. For them, it’s still massive airtime, and massive ratings – 50%-plus market share every evening – but they have completely changed their way of operating. It’s mostly remote. They are not coming with big OB van facilities and so on, they grab all of the feeds, send it back home, and do remote production.”
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Actua is once again working with AMP Visual to deliver the events, with a dedicated integrated feed truck taking care of receiving the feeds, liaising with sport presentation and directors in each of the galleries, and making sure there is a continuity between all of the feeds, of which there are seven in total.
“All of the broadcasters who are not on site take just this integrated feed, while the broadcasters here take the integrated and isolated feeds that we produce and add their unilateral cameras,” he says.
“We also have a lot of additional cameras for emotions (slow-motion) or new angles more immersive (drone and monowheel) that we distribute, that has been added over the years. That’s why we now have on top of the linear local distribution a Content Hub File flow system based on EVS, associated with a dedicate team pushing a lot of the live streams to feed rights holders DAM and near-live solutions.”
Timeline TV is also on site, handling the track events. “In terms of number of cameras, that’s the biggest one – we have around 28 cameras just for track,” says Choquard. “Working with Timeline is part of our philosophy of trying to onboard locals and transfer learning to improve the quality of athletics coverage in whichever country we may be. We’ve also onboarded FilmNova, so we have three directors we’ve worked with for many years and three directors from FilmNova. Does it make it more complex, yes, but is there a benefit, certainly, particularly in countries with less experience of major athletics championships. It also means all of the knowledge isn’t concentrated in one place. It’s about diversity, inclusion and development and we think it’s worth investing time and money in that.”
While some of the broadcasters have moved to remote production models, Choquard believes the benefits of being on site remain strong for his team.
“I would say from a technical standpoint and sustainability-wise, it could make sense to do the integration remote, but then we would lose a key factor: the proximity. Our production teams spend a lot of time with event presentation, with the sports delegates, with all of the stakeholders from the event to agree on how to do certain things. And when you need to have a quick decision, if you are remote, you lose efficiency. So, technically speaking, for TV and even for live production, doing the integration remote would not be a problem. What we would lose in terms of agility and quick decision making whenever something happened could be a problem though.”
He does however concede that switching production models would be more sustainable, something that is also a focus for Actua.
“Of course it’s something that we are very much aware of, and we push ourselves to fulfil all of the new regulations. We’ve been working with Albert, so we are Albert pre-certified as host broadcaster for this event – the final certification comes after – so we can use the Albert logo and confirm that we are aware and we are taking concrete actions to be more sustainable.”
This includes transporting people to and from the venue in less polluting ways, minimising carbon generation and utilising local talent to cut down on travel from overseas.
“We are working on all of those factors while also being aware of our footprint overall,” he adds.
Digital content has also been a priority this year, with Actua creating material for use on social and digital platforms.
“We are feeding a lot of content-based platforms for near-live exploitation, for social exploitation, for digital, including for European Athletics,” he says. “It’s no longer the good old story of sending one signal to all. It’s much more about how we make content accessible irrespective of the technology we use. On top of doing the traditional broadcast, we develop a lot of digital solutions with European Athletics, which basically offer a cost-effective way for non-professional broadcast people to access content, to engage with the event, and to grow their reach and engagement as per their rights agreements.”
Eurovision Services is also on site to handle international distribution via fibre, satellite and IP as well as offering dedicated services via fibre to several broadcasters, including France TV.
Interestingly, while France TV was in Birmingham for the athletics, it was also covering the European Aquatics Championships in Paris and the European Gymnastics Championships in Zagreb, both of which were taking place at the same time.
“France Television is doing its programme continuity for the Paris event from Birmingham, which is a strange situation,” explains Choquard. “They’re basically doing the full programme of those three events here utilising Eurovision Services. Because athletics is still one sport which deserves real editorial production to do their own integration, they only had two options to cover all of these events. Either they did the continuity from their studio in Paris and then took all of the event remote and handled aggregation in their headquarters, or they could spend a bit of additional budget, aggregate everything here and have their main studio in Birmingham for continuity, bringing back the feeds via Eurovision Services from Paris and Zagreb. Having a big event in Paris remotely produced out of Birmingham for a French broadcaster is quite original.”
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