“We’re not chasing after innovation for the sake of innovation,” begins World Athletics head of broadcast operations Fred Sanchez. “You might think that a fancy camera shot and so on can do something to interest TV audiences, but in actuality, it’s more eye candy than anything else.”
For Sanchez the ultimate aim when it came to covering the recent World Athletics Indoor Championships in Toruń, Poland, was showcasing the performances of the athletes and telling the stories that unfolded. “The shot we need is one that adds to the story of the competition. Normally, the cutting pattern of the classic camera does that job for you, but you already have to pay a lot of attention to that. Adding all the stuff on if it adds to the story is fine. If not, there’s no point,” he continues.
This is particularly true given the compact confines of an indoor athletics stadium. “With an indoor venue you don’t have the same depth of field that you have in outdoor championships. You’re much closer to the athletes, much closer to the officials and so on, so it’s really an up-close story that you’re telling for each event, and the TV product should reflect that.”
This year’s championship was keenly awaited by athletics fans across the world, not least because big names including high jump world record holder Yaroslava Mahuchikh, pole vaulter extraordinaire Mondo Duplantis and Team GB’s Keely Hodgkinson were among the big names potentially targeting indoor records. For host broadcast partners Tata Communications, HBS, production partner NCP, and World Athletics, this presents the balance of wanting to recognise efforts and achievements while also ensuing coverage doesn’t appear biased towards one athlete or nation. This is one of the reasons that World Athletics has reviewed its graphics output.
“Good sports, I think, consists of three elements. It’s really good video, really good audio, and really good graphics,” says Joris Wauman, executive producer, HBS. “One of the innovations we have brought in since we came on board, is we have completely reviewed the graphics. It still looks and feels like the previous offering, but we went back to the drawing board and worked very closely with our colleagues from Deltatre and also from [data provider] Seiko. The graphics are there to support the story. What you see on screen should provide the answer to the question you’re about to ask yourself. They are intuitive, they tell you exactly what you need, they’re dynamic and they give you editorial information.”
All of this was demonstrated when Mahuchikh jumped for a new championship record on Saturday, with a graphic clearly highlighting the importance of the jump. They also proved useful when Swiss multi-eventer Simon Ehammer recorded the fastest time ever in a heptathlon 60m hurdles. “He broke the men’s world indoor 60m heptathlon record. Now that’s a very interesting acronym, but with the new graphics we also spell it out, so it’s easy to understand. Whenever there’s a season’s best or personal best, as well as SB or PB we also flash over it to highlight it to people. Someone who gets a national record may come sixth or seventh, but for that athlete, having a national record is huge and we want to really highlight achievements,” Wauman adds.
Read more How World Athletics and HBS are telling the story of the World Athletics Indoor Championships
When it comes to key event moments such as a world record, these aren’t as spontaneous as it might seem to viewers at home.
“With a Mondo world record it’s not just television reacting to whatever happens there. It’s months of planning and it’s factored in when we start to do the timetable. This is something that you can’t just leave as a surprise,” he adds.
That’s partly because coverage needs to fit within the transmission times of rights holders. “In vertical jumps field events, world records come at the end of the competition, almost as an extra bonus, and so you need to plan for that and factor in that your climactic moments are really at a time that is suitable for TV audiences to be there and rights holders to be there, and so on,” explains Sanchez. “One of our philosophies is that we don’t want to leave anything as a surprise to the rights holders. They’re on board on the journey with us, so as much as we can communicate things for them to be able to prep, when they can go in the studio or in the mixed zone and so on, as much as we can help them with that, it’s really important for us.”
Data is also helping to provide a better service to rights holders, but not in a way that you might expect.
Wauman expands: “With our competition, we’ve now agreed that the best four seeded athletes in the final, mostly for the non-vertical field events, but actually also for the vertical fields, they’re presented first and they will perform first. This is because we have actual data that shows that the chances of medalling are extremely high in the first round and in the last round. That’s based on 25 years of field event data. So we said, ‘Well, if this is the drama curve, this is where things happen, then we need to be live there’. That sets the reference on the story and you see the best action live. When we come to the last round, we’ve carved that time in the timetable to go live to the last five, six attempts, and to catch up on what we may have missed. And when we go live, we take our time so we don’t miss anything and we can tell the story of the decisive moments.”
