After more than three decades working as the host broadcaster for the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), in 2022, Sky Sports announced a four-year contract extension on its previous five-year-long deal. Running from the start of 2025 until the end of 2028, this first year of that extension is seeing a huge number of significant changes to the technology behind the scenes as Sky Sports further evolves its production.

A major step-change for Sky Sports has been the revamp of its remote production, including the development of a new series of OB trucks – Nova 61 and 62 – developed for the remote production of the ECB cricket by technical services provider, EMG / Gravity Media.

Refresh and renew

Speaking to SVG Europe, Bridget Bremner, Sky Sports’ head of production for cricket, says that Sky saw the contract extension as an opportunity to refresh and renew the production. She explains: “As part of the previous contract, one of the things we changed was we went to remote production, and also The Hundred was introduced, and so the nature of how we produce cricket has evolved over those years. This [new contract] was an opportunity for us to really look at cricket and look at our remote production and go, “what is it that we really need to excel and take our cricket and Sky’s cricket host production forward?

“So it was quite a unique opportunity to do that rather than evolving year on year into different ways of working. I think [the new contract] gave us that real opportunity to make things a lot more bespoke for remote production, and for cricket remote production importantly, to work in a way that we can deliver the things that our content teams and our editorial teams want to see on screen ultimately, to offer Sky customers.”

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Around one year ago the Sky Sports cricket team began looking into the question of what it wanted to have within its production delivery operation and its consumer offering, and then into how it should go about doing that.

Continues Bremner on that process: “It was really about working with the content team particularly – the editorial team – to focus on working with our technology and engineering teams to say, “what is it that we really want to do, and how can we better do this at Sky using the Sky remote productions that we use on a number of our sports?”. We do a number of sports in remote production; we’ve been doing cricket since 2021 when we went to remote production. So how can we make it more bespoke for cricket than just remote production? So [this has been] quite a unique opportunity.”

Sustainable OB

Increasing sustainability has been a significant focus of what Sky Sports wanted to achieve in its new bespoke cricket production. Says Bremner: “One of the things we were doing was we were still using a collection of slightly larger and smaller trucks that were designed for [cricket] with one of our suppliers, EMG. So we had a combination of different trucks we used for delivery, but we found from the people we needed to house on site that it wasn’t quite a fit, but we made it work with a few bolt-ons.”

An example of that would be when a slightly smaller truck was used – from the EMG / Gravity Media Nova 50 series – there was no space for the production manager to sit. However, when a larger truck was used – the Nova 111 – there was space in an unused gallery for the production managers, but says Bremner, “we were working with such a big truck, we were not utilising a lot of it, so from a sustainability angle it just didn’t make sense”.

She adds: “Having suppliers look at that design to more effectively utilise the space, design it more cleverly, make it sustainable, and have it do what it says on the tin, is one of the benefits we’ve seen. EMG / Gravity Media, who were successful with the contract, really put a lot of thought into their design.”

The new trucks designed by EMG / Gravity Media for Sky Sports’ remote production of the cricket are Nova 61 and Nova 62. Bremner comments: “When [EMG / Gravity Media] were successful in the contract, one of the things they came and did was really talk to us and our teams about what is it we want, and that’s where making it a bit more bespoke for cricket comes in. They looked at the design, which essentially runs on batteries with inverters, and takes a generator power supply, so it’s a back-up power as well to us on site.”

Liz Thorne, Sky Sports’ senior production manager in the cricket team, notes that the two new trucks are being used extensively throughout this summer: “We have two of those trucks on the road at the moment. Nova 61 is kind of designated as the test match and international truck, and the other one services a lot of the domestic and the women’s international games.

“There is an awful lot of cricket that goes on over the summer; the majority of days over the summer we have two matches running at any one time, so we will do a test match day and then go into a blast game, or we’ll do a test match day and go into a women’s international game. Or when we’re running the Hundreds, we have the women’s game followed by the men’s game in one location and then we do eight double double days, so we have a women’s game and a men’s game at one location and a women’s game and a men’s game at a second location. So we have two trucks that go out on the road for us.”

After more than three decades working as the host broadcaster for the ECB, in 2022 Sky Sports announced a four-year contract extension on its previous five-year deal. The four-year extension runs from the start of 2025 until the end of 2028, and includes:

• 90 extra hours of live cricket guaranteed on TV each year
• More women’s cricket than ever before
• Coverage of The Hundred extended to 2028
• Increased prominence for the Vitality Blast, including more live games
• Continued investment in grassroots cricket including through the Dynamos Cricket programme
• Sky’s investment also funds initiatives for children of all backgrounds to pick up a bat and ball, growing women and girls’ cricket and reducing barriers to participation, as well as supporting a thriving domestic game and successful England teams

Goldilocks moment

More than just being the perfect size, the two new OB trucks are enabling the Sky Sports team to work more closely – and efficiently – together. Previously, the production managers would be either sitting in a tender when the smaller 50 Series trucks were in use, or on their own in a spare gallery when the larger 111 truck was used.

Thorne says of using the new trucks: “I’ve really enjoyed sitting in the engineering side of things. In the previous trucks that we used on the test matches, we [production managers] were sat in the gallery, and [the engineers] were sat behind a racking desk. We didn’t really see them unless we walk around there.”

“Now, we are not on top of each other, but we are in the same working space and it’s brought the production managers so much closer to the production again, which I really like,” she continues. “You’re hearing the cameras call in, you’re hearing sound call in, you’re hearing the technical supervisors in the gallery – the technical supervisors back at Sky call into the guarantees in the truck – and you are just on top of all the information. We’re finding out so much earlier if there’s something that we need to deal with, if there’s something that’s going particularly well. It’s a different experience but it’s much better than it was in the past.”

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She adds: “In this new contract we found the ideal middle ground between those two things, so [the new trucks are] larger than the 50 series, but it’s not as big as 111, and we’re really enjoying it. Because it’s been bespoke designed for cricket and for remote, it’s just working really well; we’ve hit the Goldilocks moment with it!”

Bremner agrees: “It does feel like we’re in a Goldilocks moment! I think the other thing is that the rigging time on site actually has improved as a result of it. On a test match we would normally, in the traditional way, have two full days for rigging, onsite at nine, finishing at six or seven. Now we’ve got that down. The rig time is in a lot more streamlined, just because of the way [crew are] able to work.”

Network transparency

Connectivity is another area that has been revised and improved this cricket season, which has also improved the remote production for Sky Sports. Bremner says: “One of the things also that has changed is our connectivity partner, [for cricket this year]. Now BT Media & Broadcast are working with us this season.

“Working with them in a remote production and in Sky’s remote production has been quite different, for their team, and a lot of learning for both the Sky and EMG / Gravity Media teams. It has now settled down into what I would call business as usual means that once the truck starts plugging up and once BT start building their network, it all becomes transparent for the engineers on site, which is new.”

The network transparency comes through the X Platform from Appear, which sits on the network. The X Platform is a high capacity, ultra-dense, low latency modular media processing and gateway hardware platform, designed for live contribution, production, and distribution.

Adds Bremner: “[The engineers] can see the network and the system as the packages come up live, if there’s a problem, and that visibility and network transparency, is something very new. It’s quite reassuring to know that the engineers on site as well as our connectivity engineers who may be remote [at BT Media & Broadcast and Sky MCR], can see the same thing at the same time.”

As the home of cricket in the UK & Ireland, Sky Sports will provide fans with unmissable action in 2025 including England Home International Cricket, The Hundred, Vitality Blast and County Championship cricket