Double first: 2024 Para Swimming European Open Championships and ISB go for a full remote production for the first time
The 2024 Para Swimming European Open Championships held on Madeira Island, Portugal was host broadcaster ISB’s first full remote production
The 2024 Para Swimming European Open Championships, held on Madeira Island, Portugal, was produced remotely for the first time by host broadcaster International Sports Broadcasting (ISB) for World Para Swimming (WPS). The event was also the first ISB has carried out as a completely remote production, making it a double-first.
Once again, the European Championships offered athletes and teams an important test ahead of the Paralympic Games in Paris later this year. Madeira 2024 was open to athletes from non-European countries and took place from 21 to 27 April 2024 at the Olympic Pools Complex in Funchal.
The major difference from a production point of view was that ISB took the entire operation remote from its remote centre in Madrid. Ursula Romero, managing director at ISB, says: “We did some remote production before, but within the same city, and never like this and using our own studio.”
“”It’s our first fully remote production. The European Championships are happening in Madeira, and we are receiving all the cameras here in Madrid via SRT. We are using several backup methods just to be 100% sure because it’s on an island in the middle of nowhere”
As to why ISB decided this was the time to do a full remote production, Romero states: “It was for a couple of reasons. First of all, Madeira is literally in the middle of the ocean, so it’s quite difficult and it’s a little bit risky to ship equipment there. There’s no equipment on the island; you can find ENG cameras and stuff, but nothing broadcast.
“And then we’ve been wanting to take the step; the budget in Madeira is very low, so we finally said, “okay, let’s just go with it” because we felt confident enough. The internet capabilities on the island weren’t really great last time, which is why we came up with all these backups. But we got our own and we got the organisers’ internet line.
“We just decided to go for it because at some point you have to do it. We have our own remote studio here in Madrid, and then it’s a simple enough event. It doesn’t take a huge production with nine cameras, and we have some specialty gear, but not very much.”
The European Championships offered athletes and teams an important test ahead of the Paralympic Games in Paris later this year
Location, location, location
This is the third time that ISB has produced the European Open Swimming Championships, in both Dublin and Madeira. Previously, the entire production would be based on location. David Taunton, head of production at ISB, explains: “We used to ship all of our flight pack effectively with all the control over there. So we’re talking four to five big pallets, and now we can ship everything in two, skipping on three of those. The amount of manpower that we’re taking over there is half.
“As we always do, we rely also on local personnel, which we’ve had the fortune to find in some excellent camera operators on the island,” Taunton continues. “It is a mix of local and our guys, but we definitely reduced the footprint of amount of people going over there, plus the amount of hotels and flights.”
Romero adds: “It’s our first fully remote production. The European Championships are happening in Madeira, and we are receiving all the cameras here in Madrid via SRT. We are using several backup methods just to be 100% sure because it’s on an island in the middle of nowhere. So we have two internet lines, fibre, we have two Starlinks, and we also have a cell phone backpack from Dejero over 4G as a backup as well. So we have three different ways of transmitting.”
Taunton states that through ISB’s extensive work with other swimming federations and the interlinks between those and WPS, the remote production was able to work smoothly: “The good thing I would say is that we’ve had the chance to work with the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and WPS on these kind of events before, several times. It’s the same sports presentation company and the sports managers know us. So we already know we’re in sync with what they want, and we are very comfortable working together. Everybody knows why we do things. We know how they operate. I can only imagine starting fresh with a different federation; it would’ve been much more scarier and a little bit more hectic for sure.”
Romero adds that the strong relationship ISB has with WPS has been a plus during this remote production process: “That’s the reason why we took the chance on doing this as a remote production, because we spoke to them and we said, “look, we can do it for the reduced budget, but we’ll have to do it remote”. They were quite excited also to do it because it’s also an innovation in that sense.”
ISB’s studio and gallery set up in Madrid, Spain is now two years old
Madrid operation
The ISB studio and gallery set up in Madrid is now two years old. Explains Romero: “It’s basically a full remote centre. We can take up to 16 inputs. It’s full HD, full capabilities, and we can also distribute from here.”
Adds Romero on the Madrid operation: “All the operators that we are using here in Madrid are local except for one, because he’s a very good EVS operator and he’s done it with us many times, so he’s actually come from Madeira.
“But looking back, or maybe next time, we could even have kept him there and done it remotely from there. But we wanted to go the safe way this time.”
Romero comments: “We have all the cameras in Madeira and the camera control unit (CCU). So we have CCU operators in Madeira, and they’re sending us back the pictures ready to go, and then we’re mixing it together in Madrid. We’re doing all the highlights and packaging and everything here, then we’re sending it out through our little master control here in Madrid to the takers. Also, we’re also doing remote commentary. The commentators are actually in the UK.”
Notes Taunton: “We have mixing replays, audio and distribution done from Madrid, and then on site, it’s just cameras and all the required intercoms between all the positions.”
For the 2024 Para Swimming European Open Championships ISB used a mixture of technologies. Threse included Haivision’s MCR technology based in ISB’s Madrid operation, which was used for distribution, and was controlled by Taunton. TVU was used for the remote commentary. On backup, Dejero was used for 4G bonding of signals, and the broadcast version of Starlink was used as an alternative internet route.