From the UK, ITV Sport is broadcasting the FIFA World Cup 2026 with live games and highlights on its linear channels, and comprehensive coverage and content across ITV Football’s social platforms, including X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.

On the ITV Sport YouTube channel, football fans can access all the latest content via a 24/7 stream, with up-to-date highlights, interviews and features playing throughout the tournament.

ITV’s streaming platform, ITVX, is also providing full video on demand coverage of all ITV matches, highlights of all tournament matches, and a rail of constantly updating short-form content including camp reports, big moments and interviews.

ITV Sport is broadcasting the monolith that is the FIFA World Cup 2026 using a semi-remote production. The majority of the crew required to get the content on screens is at home in the ITV UK Hub at Gravity Westworks in London, with a lean team in the US, in New York at the studio location in Brooklyn and at the IBC in Dallas, as well as various ENG crews roving around, following the live action from pitchside at it happens across the US, Canada and Mexico.

Split remote production

Comments Tony Cahalane, technical director at ITV Sport, on that split remote production: “We moved a few tournaments ago to a way of being able to achieve [a production] as greenly as possible. Now we only travel about 40% of the people that we used to send to events, with 60%-plus staying back home in a UK hub where most of our kit is.”

Speaking to SVG Europe from Brooklyn, Cahalane, who has been on the ground in Brooklyn since the start of the build, overseeing as well as operating as a technical producer,continues: “We started that in Qatar and we did it in Germany as well, whereas other broadcasters working alongside us have taken their whole teams across. We can be exceptionally lean in the way that we use technology nowadays.”

ITV Sport has a remote gallery in Brooklyn allowing for a light touch in the US while everything else is based back in the UK. Cahalane adds: “We are connected by dual 10 gigabit fibres, so while there’s a vision mixer panel here, the main frame for the vision mixer is in the UK, with EVS, graphic, sound and editing all back in the UK as well. We’ve got an absolute skeleton tech team here.”

Planning the production

The planning that went into the production once the studio location was chosen was lengthy, in part due to the way the studio was going to work. The studio was designed to combine both real and virtual sets into one and cope with the day to night timescales that the matches were being played in throughout the tournament.

Cahalane says: “We started the tech planning process nice and early because it’s a very complicated gig, to be honest with you. We’re working in three different vision mixer time planes because of the mix of the real and the unreal plus virtual screens, so there’s quite a lot going on.

“Martin Ashford, our technical consultant, and myself formed the core tech planning team. We’ve a good relationship, in terms of spit-balling ideas between us and working out things, and that’s invaluable because even six weeks out, we were still discussing little bits and pieces to make sure that we hit the ground running when we got over here.”

He adds: “It wasn’t fingers crossed – we knew we’d done it all – but until you see it, the proof’s in the pudding and I think we’re all pretty happy.”

London setup

Gravity Westworks is the UK hub for the entire operation, as it was for ITV Sport’s production of the UEFA Euro 2024 in Berlin. Everything from EVS to editing and sound to vision mixing is based at Westworks, including graphics from AE Live.

Cahalane comments on what is sitting at Westworks: “Back into the hub, we’ve also got all edits based there. We’ve got seven suites, which include edit suites to cut highlights for ITVX. We’ve got an MCR setup there because we’ve got over 108 circuits between the various places – IBC, London, New York and the venues, where we have some small venue injects which move around to the high profile matches – and sound is also based back in Westworks.

“We have media management hub in the UK as well; we set up an entire media management area because obviously it’s incredibly busy 24 hours a day, servicing the roving reporters material that comes in and all of the highlights and feature edits. They’re simultaneously starting to archive stuff to our main storage for the future. So the majority of the setup is back there from a technical point of view, and obviously very big chunks of production teams as well.”

ITV Sport has a small setup at the IBC on the other side of the country, where it is also working with BBC Sport for redundancy purposes. Explains Cahalane: “At the IBC, we’ve have Timeline TV providing facilities for a small MCR. It is set alongside the BBC’s IBC setup as well, so we do a little bit of sharing between us to help each other out for resilience purposes. Overall, we’ve got over 200-odd feeds in that MCR, which we precis down to a vastly smaller amount coming back to the UK; there’s a constant switching scenario going on. Although you can start to look at doing some of this remote, like the BBC, we would have both decided this tournament is too valuable to be going down that remote route yet. That will change in future tournaments because that’s the way that life is going, but at the moment it’s nicer to be completely in control.”

Brooklyn setup

There is a skeleton crew on site in Brooklyn, making sure everything runs smoothly. Cahalane comments on Brooklyn: “We have what I would call a dumb gallery, a gallery fed with all of the monitor feeds over our connectivity from London. We do that over a couple of 10 gig fibres.

“We also have an SRT backup web-based system added as a DR solution, we’ve got five gigs of symmetrical internet as well, so we can fail-over to that if we were to lose our two resilient fibres which go across the Atlantic, north and south.

“For the group stage, we’ve got a small team, which includes a team of about eight sound, vision, and connectivity engineers on site from Gravity and Globecast. This reduces for the knockouts. Then we obviously have the amount of camera ops we require for the operated cameras. Two of the cameras [in the studio] are remote pan and tilts, and another one is remote panel tilt, but operated by a camera person.”

As well as the AE Live graphics setup in London, there is also an AE Live virtual reality (VR) setup in Brooklyn, working on the complex merging of the real and unreal on screen.

On the latter, Cahalane says: “We have taken the VR setup into the States and the reason for that is it’s a very, very collaborative process. They need to be close to us. They need to be on the same time zone physically. Given that we were trying to achieve something that was really tough, there was no other way about it. That’s introduced all sorts of challenges in terms of video and audio delays, but it’s all working very nicely.”

He adds: “Obviously it’s a studio so we’ve got a team of electricians, but most of that labour is local. The installation and construction of the sets, the build of the structure we sit them on and the lighting, is all serviced by local labour which saves us travelling loads of people [to the US].” And the set materials were locally sourced also.

ENG crews on the ground

ITV Sport has several teams on roving the three countries involved in the World Cup, collecting stories, content and more for the production. There are two reporting teams reporting from various matches, using LiveU’s to send feeds back live into an EVS media management setup at the London base. There is also a four camera fly pack which the team refer to as a ‘venue inject’ which is being sent to chosen matches throughout the tournament.

Cahalane says on what the venue inject comprises of: “It’s basically a four camera small flyaway OB. It’s based in porta-cabins and it gives us two cameras pitchside, an interview camera, and a big lens at main camera height, which gives us the ability to tell the story for ITV viewers.”

Adds Paul McNamara, executive director and producer at ITV Sport Production, ITV Sport, from the directors point of view on the big lens: “If the host cuts to [Croatia’s] Luka Modric because it’s his last game, but Harry Kane scored a hattrick, then I know that the hosts have got to show both sides all the time, but I can show the story that I want to tell at that particular point. So anytime in the coverage, the buildup or post match, I can cut that camera in and direct the operator and paint our coverage for the ITV viewer.”

Continues Cahalane on the fly packs team: “These venue injects are taken as individual remote cameras as a remote operation, but we do have the ability to cut out of that unit as well as a kind of DR disaster recovery solution if we were to lose connectivity and that’s actually via LiveU. The main connectivity being a one gig fibre via the IBC.”

There is also a roving crew in New York, which can contribute either directly via radio camera into the studio setup if they’re close enough, or via LiveU and the same workflow as the other two ENG crews.

Daniyal Khan is ITV Sport’s social reporter, out and about on the streets of New York, offering a flavour of the tournament on the ground. From the stands to the sidewalk, he is exploring everything from the underground fan culture of the five boroughs, to the fashion, music and latest match news.

Adam Richman of Man v Food fame, who is on the social end of the studio presentation team, is sometimes out and about with the New York based team, doing things such as pre-recording links from Brooklyn Bridge or talking to fans in local bars pre and post matches, to give viewers an authentic perspective of New York and other US venue cities and the excitement around the World Cup.

McNamara says: “We’re constantly reminding everyone that we are in New York, it’s real, and we’re here.”

ITV Sport also has a commentary team on site for the majority of its matches, Cahalane says. “Logistically a couple are done off tube in New York, which is just a way to cut down on the cost of having three commentary roving team kits. But virtually all of the commentary is being done on site.”

ITV Sport’s commentary team is led by Sam Matterface, Jon Champion, Seb Hutchinson and Joe Speight. Co-commentary is provided by Lee Dixon, Ally McCoist, Andros Townsend and Lucy Ward.

On how it is all going, McNamara says it is, “just a really happy ship”. He goes on: “It’s a great team effort. Everyone’s involved and really enjoying it. It’s the greatest show on earth and we’re happy to be right at the heart of it. It’s an enormous event and huge team effort and we’re all really proud to be here and proud to be doing what we’re doing.”

Watch the FIFA World Cup 2026 with ITV Sport across ITV1, ITV4, ITVX, STV and STV Player. For comprehensive coverage and content click on ITV Football’s social platforms, including X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.