Euro 2024: SRG producing tailored unilateral coverage in multiple languages for Swiss TV viewers

Swiss rights holder SRG is, unsurprisingly, focussing its production efforts on the country’s national team during Euro 2024, and is doing so in four different languages, providing a tailored approach for each.

SRG’s head office is in Bern but it is well-established in the regions through its federalist structure which is made up of five segments: RSI, RTR, RTS, SRF and SWI.

This allows the public service broadcaster to cater for the four national languages, German, French, Italian, and Romansh.

All of the broadcasters have been producing daily coverage from Germany with live matches, highlights, programming and online content in their own language, as well as dedicated output covering the Swiss team.

All 51 matches are being broadcast live in the four language regions too, with dedicated commentators for German, Italian and French output.

It’s proving successful, with a peak of 1.68m viewers watching Switzerland vs Germany live on SRF zwei in the third group game. This corresponds to a market share of 78.6% of viewers watching TV at that time.

“We are very satisfied with the way the tournament has gone so far. We are noticing huge attention throughout Switzerland.”

To make this possible, a team of around 80 SRG employees are in Germany, including a national technical crew, commentators and experts from the regional SRG broadcasters, journalists conducting interviews, and a small SRG delegation management team.

The main TV studios of SRF, RTS and RSI are located in Switzerland but presentation for Switzerland matches is being done from the stadiums (see, picture) with SRF, RTS and RSI using a total of five unilateral cameras for presenting and conducting interviews.

SRF also has a TV studio for the evening magazine programme for reporting from the Swiss national team’s “Team Base Camp”. In addition, all SRG channels have interview opportunities with the Swiss players in the “Team Base Camp”.

A spokesperson for SRG said: “After the Swiss national team’s elimination, around half of the SRG employees working on-site travel back to Switzerland. Because fewer matches are played as the tournament progresses, the need for staff on site decreases steadily and SRG employees gradually return to Switzerland.”

SRG head of major events Sven Sarbach added: “We are very satisfied with the way the tournament has gone so far. We are noticing huge attention throughout Switzerland and have already attracted record numbers of viewers.”

SRG’s multi-language coverage of Euro 2024 continues until the final on 14 July.