For events as complex as major global athletics tournaments, teamwork really is the key to success. And for World Athletics, which is in the second year of a multi-year host broadcast partnership with Tata Communications and HBS, this is certainly the case.

Speaking at the World Athletics Indoor Championships, which took place in Toruń, Poland from 20-22 March, Fred Sanchez, head of broadcast operations at World Athletics, said: “It helps us when you’re working with a team like this. It also encourages us, as an athletics federation, to do better. You can’t expect your athletes to always break a world record, but we must also aim for world records for ourselves by delivering the best championships.”

On site for HBS was project director Birgit Schiller, who played an essential role in co-ordinating all the key elements needed to ensure a successful championship, something she has done at multiple events since Tata Communications and HBS came on board as host broadcast partners in 2025. The team works across both the venue operational side and the broadcast operation, collaborating closely with key stakeholders including the venue, the local organising committee (LOC) and suppliers, as well as World Athletics.

“For the broadcast operational planning, there’s a lot of work around the inclusion of the different stakeholders. It’s not only our suppliers, it’s third-party suppliers to World Athletics like [data provider] Seiko and [graphics provider] Deltatre, that we integrate into our broadcast planning,” she says.

“Communication is the key and it can be super challenging, but honestly here, I would say we had valuable LOC preparation and we have built a very good relationship with the other workplace functional areas over this last year. We understand everybody’s needs much better now and we have counterparts in every single area, which works well.”

Read more How World Athletics and HBS are telling the story of the World Athletics Indoor Championships

This is the second World Indoors that Tata Communications and HBS have worked on, the first being in Nanjing, China, in 2025. It also comes relatively early in a year packed with World Athletics events.

“If you look across all World Athletics series events, plus the Ultimate Championship, that’s definitely challenging the team in the prep phase, because we are just a small team, but on the other hand, there’s consistency,” she adds.

Andy Howard, account director for World Athletics at Tata Communications, adds: “We’re in such a fortunate position now in that all the World Athletics people probably know everyone from top to bottom. We’re on regular calls and there’s a consistency of people, even though we’re doing slightly different events, whether that’s road walking or relays or indoors. We’ve learned a lot over the last year, and I feel there’s a big sense of trust and partnership between us and HBS and that’s a positive thing because, ultimately, we’re here to deliver for World Athletics.”

For this event Tata Communications is doing more on the distribution side than  the previous Indoor Championships. “In Tokyo last year [for the World Athletics Championships], we provided connectivity and distribution of the produced feeds to certain Rights Holders globally,” Howard explains. “We’re doing more distribution for this event and fibre than the last indoors. We’ve got a lot of broadcasters who are connected to our network, so we’re delivering the feeds via our network as SRT or JPEG 2000.”

“If you look across all World Athletics series events, plus the Ultimate Championship, that’s definitely challenging the team in the prep phase, because we are just a small team, but on the other hand, there’s consistency”

SRT distribution is more prominent this year, offering an efficient and cost-effective option for rights holders. “We’re trying to get athletics out to as many eyeballs as possible so we’re supporting those rights holders who need distribution,” he adds.

Tata Communications’ MIMiC Edge platform is being utilised to handle encoding and delivery, and this is helping to offer an incredibly simple and flexible service. “It’s all configured from the UK, so it’s just a case of turning up, plugging it in and that’s it. Plus, if we want to add additional services or do additional distribution, or if someone takes a late booking, for example, we can take bookings even during the event. So if a rights holder has an athlete who goes further than expected in a competition we can deliver an additional feed, and it takes minutes to configure.” 

Schiller adds: “From my perspective, on the one hand, you want to have rights holders on site, but we know that every company has to consider budgets and sustainability. The technologies nowadays also allow you to do everything from home. So you get all these feeds, and you can mix your own programme as you used to do. It is going to be interesting in the industry over the next couple of years seeing how this evolves.”

Howard continues: “Using technology that’s available to you, and it’s reliable as well, just makes it easier and more cost effective to do an event. Everyone’s a winner – we’re a winner because we’re using our technology, World Athletics is a winner because they get the product out to a bigger audience, and the broadcaster and viewer benefit too.”

While the indoor championship ran incredibly smoothly, the team is also keen to make sure it takes learnings from each event it delivers, especially as athletics is a new sport for the Tata Communications and HBS portfolio.

“We’ve done the Berlin Marathon before and we were involved in the Asian Games, but it was more of an isolated track and field event, so the learning in the first place was to understand how things work, how people work. Now, because this is the fifth World Athletics event, the second indoors, we’ve got used to each other, and we know what people expect, so now we can build on what we have already.”

Working with the right production partner in NCP has also ensured that all bases are covered with confidence.

Howard adds: “We feel we’ve got the best project management team and technical partners and you’ve got Tata Communications, with the infrastructure that we’ve got, so it’s a benefit, really.” 

“For World Athletics it was a bit of an unknown,” concludes Schiller “and it can be hard to change partners, but you get new input, new visions and that was really strongly represented by NCP as well, with its vision of editorial innovations.”