Finding the edge: How Badger & Combes produces live-streamed coverage of county cricket for LancsTV

English county cricket might not scream ‘broadcast innovation’ at first glance. But as Will Strauss discovers, at Lancashire County Cricket Club, a quiet revolution is underway.

Although an official County Championship was not established until 1890, county cricket has been played in England and Wales since the early 18th century. 1709 in fact.

A ‘first-class’ professional competition run by the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board), it is contested by 18 clubs, representing 17 of the historic counties of England and one from Wales. They play each other in four-day-long league matches in the County Championship, and in both 50-overs-per-side ‘One-Day’, and 20-overs-per-side ‘T20’, knockout cups.

While steeped in tradition, live county cricket coverage was, until recently, rudimentary at best. For non-broadcast matches, fans had to make do with single-camera streams and basic stats overlays.

But things are changing.

Lancashire County Cricket Club is among the clubs at the forefront of a transformation. Its official YouTube channel, LancsTV, delivers enhanced multi-camera live output, complete with replays, data, graphics, commentary, expert analysis, and fan engagement.

“With digital technology, you don’t necessarily need all the skills like you used to have back in the day. Now you can ask ChatGPT and YouTube and get the answer pretty much straight away!”

At the heart of the operation is Badger & Combes, a Manchester-based digital media company responsible for producing live match coverage, highlights, archive content, and more.

“Our primary objective is to help Lancashire Cricket navigate the digital growth of their brand, and expose them to an audience that is adaptable and changing,” explains Badger & Combes founder and managing director Colin McKevitt (pictured below, left), who also serves as CIO of LancsTV.

“Five years ago, Lancashire Cricket didn’t have a live stream on YouTube for county cricket. So this is new. They would never previously have had to think about broadcast rights and how to manage their brand in a digital space, and a digital growth strategy. They do now.”

At the time of writing, LancsTV had 171,000 subscribers on YouTube, with content also delivered to Facebook, to JioHotstar in India, and to Brightcove for the ECB’s analysts to pore over.

To facilitate match coverage, Badger & Combes deploys a six or seven-camera set-up for County Championship games, and up to 13 cameras for T20s, operates a studio and gallery inside Lancashire’s Old Trafford ground, and employs a full-time production crew.

Badger & Combes MD Colin McKevitt with SVG Europe editor Will Strauss inside the LancsTV studio

“Having a studio space that you can just jump into at short notice to create content is crucial,” says McKevitt. “Being nimble is so important with a sport like cricket that stops for rain. If we know the weather’s going to be bad, we will prep the studio ready to go. We have three or four cameras in there plus confidence monitors. We patch through to our gallery next door.

“We’ll move over to the corners as much as possible to get the cross shots, because it’s quite narrow. And then we’ll have our wide in the middle, or a secondary camera, if it’s two people on screen. The trick is to try and use as little tech as possible and get the maximum out of it.”

The last sentence of that quote sums up very nicely how McKevitt and his company operate. They are a digital production company operating at a broadcast level. To do that, they have to be agile, efficient and multi-skilled.

“We do that throughout,” continues McKevitt. “Today, for example, one of our operators was out in the middle with an RF camera filming the coin toss [which decides who bats first]. Once that was done, he moved to a camera position at midwicket [which provides a side-on view of the action] for the first session of play. There’s no value in having different camera operators for both of those activities because they don’t happen at the same time.”

“It has to be like this because we can’t have additional camera operators costing £1000 per day and survive as a business in this modern world.

“If you look at camera operators that are worth their salt, and there are some fantastic ones out there who are very good at what they do, they’re not only good at composing shots and being artistic, but they also know how to fix something when the camera goes wrong. You have to pay for that knowledge. You have to pay for that skill.

“At the same time, with digital technology, you don’t necessarily need to have all those skills like you used to have back in the day. Now you can ask ChatGPT and YouTube and get the answer pretty much straight away! I believe you have to exploit that knowledge to your benefit.”

The gallery, which is adjacent to the studio, is equipped with a Blackmagic Design ATEM vision mixer and two channels of EVS for replays. For graphics and data, the set-up includes a combination of Open Broadcaster Software (OBS), vMix, NV Play, and Play Cricket Scorer (PCS) Pro.

“It’s a pretty standard gallery,” says McKevitt. “But where you could have different people doing graphics, audio, replay etc, we do it all from the one place with fewer people.”

On the day that SVG Europe visited LancsTV, there was a director, a replay operator and a technician running the show.

“This is the beauty of it,” he adds. “The director can sit here and make her own decisions. Why does somebody else need to press the [vision mixer] buttons? She’s vision mixing, directing, she’s doing the graphics, she’s checking the scores, she’s calling in the replays.”

The same model is used for the company’s rugby league output, he adds.

The EVS op is also responsible for an end-of-play highlights package and clips that are shared with TV, radio and social. The umpires sometimes ask to see clips, too.

“We understand how technology can help us look and act like a team of 1000. We know how to leverage that technology, and how we can leverage ourselves, in order to deliver to a high standard.”

“Young people in this modern world will find the shortest route to the answer,” evangelises McKevitt. “The world around us is too busy and frantic to spend too much time trying to understand the nuances of something.

“Where it bites you on the backside, in the digital world, is that people think that digital is cheap. But you still have to pay for the technology. You still have to pay for training and knowledge. The fundamental thing about Badger & Combes is that we deliver a high-quality product. It’s broadcast industry standard. We behave like we are in the broadcast industry. Just because we’re streaming this on YouTube doesn’t mean it’s not TV. It’s also a 500 million subscriber channel in India on JioHotstar! That’s a lot of exposure, so we have to make sure that the product is good.”

Making sure that the product is good, and ensuring high production values requires planning, technical redundancy and access, reveals McKevitt.

“We follow the pre-production process. We follow the technology. We understand how the technology can help us look and act like a team of 1000. We know how to leverage the technology and how we can leverage ourselves, so we are confident that we can deliver it to a high standard. So we’ve planned, we’ve organised, we’ve tested, showing a guarantee that the cameras will connect back. We’ve got huge confidence in our skill set. We know if something goes wrong, we have backups one, two, three and four.

“We get close to the action, too,” he continues. “The coverage doesn’t get sanitised. If the Lancashire captain loses the toss, people want to see his reaction. When they lose a game, they want to see that he’s p*ssed off about it. They want to see that the players aren’t happy about their performance. It’s authentic. We know that we need to compete against Pay TV quality, but we also have to serve its growth as well.”

While Badger & Combes is keen to put value on screen, McKevitt is all too aware that digital still has a certain place in the technological pecking order. And this defines his tech purchasing decisions.

“We recognise that in the streaming world, especially the digital world, we’re never going to broadcast 4K or 8K to the home, right? Because the infrastructure in the UK isn’t there to do it. So, when we started out, I knew that we wouldn’t need 4K cameras.”

Instead, he looked around for high-quality second-hand 1080 HD equipment, and adopted a more flexible approach.

“I bought a load of Sony HCX-100s with lenses. There are still legs in that kit. Then five or six Sony PXW-X500s, and a couple of PMW-400s. We’re not on SMPTE fibre at the moment, but I’d love to be able to do that. I’m looking at more Blackmagic Design technology too. Glass is glass. Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. If you look after it, it will last for years.

“We have Triax to camera positions and SDI running in certain places. There’s fibre over the other side of the ground. But we also use IP technology in certain places. We’re basically taking the physical and putting it into an IP architecture and vice versa.”

He sums up the situation thus: “You don’t need a Vinten system with a box lens, with a SMPTE fibre running to it, and a comms channel, up a scaffold, with a camera operator standing on it, just to get a wide shot! You could do it with a PTZ camera and a GoPro. Technology has advanced so much. You have to be adaptable.”

This flexibility extends to innovation, including mic’ing up players live. But rather than talking to commentators, players talk to fans.

“Using [VoIP], we connected a supporter at home with a player during play. That had never been done before in domestic cricket. After games, players engage with fans around the boundary edge or on the touchline. Why not replicate that online? It brings fans closer. It’s a digital version of pirate radio or fanzines. Live sport enables shared, lived experiences.”

“The risk is pretty low,” he says, thinking carefully about what happens when you put a viewer on air. “You can over-produce the fan and make sure that they’re not going to say something stupid. You develop a relationship with the fan and the player.”

Trust is crucial for this, of course. “We know the players. We’ve travelled with them, eaten with them. They know we’re not here to catch them out. We tell their stories.”

Operational excellence, however, depends on talented people. Badger & Combes runs a successful Talent Pathway, sourcing digital-native students who understand media’s future.

Read more about the Talent Pathway here: https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/developing-a-talent-pathway-at-digital-production-company-badger-combes/

Each applicant must deliver a presentation on the future of media consumption. “This helps us spot creativity and digital awareness. We find candidates who grasp object-based media and see where education meets industry.”

Successful applicants begin with work experience and are then offered full-time roles. “We give them ownership from day one. They’re not runners. They’re coordinators, editors, camera ops, producers, and directors. It changes the mindset of these students straight away.

“Directing or operating cameras is just part of it. Our team buys into the culture of Lancashire Cricket. They care about the club and are embedded within it. If you rely solely on freelancers, you don’t get that long-term investment. That is why the Pathway is so important.”

Colin McKevitt is appearing at SVG Europe’s Digital Sports Summit on 25 June in London, taking part in a session called ‘Watching the watchalongs: Creating new and different viewing experiences for fans’. For more details and to register, go to: https://www.svgeurope.org/digital-sports-summit-2025/