Live from the Crucible: Moov provides GFX for World Snooker Championship 2024

World Snooker Championship 2024: David Gilbert lines up a pot, with information about his previous results displayed on screen (credit BBC)

The World Snooker Championship is the pinnacle of the sport, and graphics provider Moov is responsible for shaping the visual narrative of this prestigious event, which culminates in the final on Sunday and Monday (4th and 5th May).

For project manager David Cain, the journey to the World Championship begins long before the first break. He says: “I generally begin to look at each year’s World Championship in January of that year. We cover four events per season currently and I am always looking to engage with the productions teams after each event to look at how we can push our offering forward into the next event.”

“All these developments have allowed the punditry team to reference a wider range of data, and this has led to further talking points in analysis and commentary”

One of the standout features of the World Championship is the length of the event – nearly double the length of any other event on the WST (World Snooker Tour) calendar, and one of the few events which has multi-session matches from round one, explains Cain.

Technical changes and advances this year are best described as incremental rather than radical, due to the fact this World Championship is the final event of the current contract cycle. However, one area of focus for Moov has been to try and make the epic nature of the tournament more manageable for those working on it.

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“As the project manager for our snooker events, I always take feedback on board both externally but also internally. Going into this event we made several quality of life improvements to help the operational team on site perform their duties as reliably and efficiently as possible,” says Cain.

Arguably the biggest advancement in terms of graphics was implemented a couple of years ago, when GFX were made available on every camera shot – not just the main camera 1 position – which enabled the use of stats at any time in the match.

“The decision to make the main scoring graphic available on every camera shot has enabled us to push out more tournament, session and match stats throughout each match,” explains Cain.

“After our first year – and once viewers had grown accustomed to this – we have continually looked to use this area and present data in different ways; we have created several new graphics from a tournament high break ladder, player profile, player specific comparison stats and a deciding frame win percentage bar. All these developments have allowed the punditry team to reference a wider range of data, and this has led to further talking points in analysis and commentary.”

Moov has developed two bespoke tools for its snooker coverage, including its Snooker Orion scoring software.

“This bespoke software first allows us to create a database of players, events and matches before then being used through an event by both scoring and presentation teams,” explains Cain.

“Our scorers are able to use the live match function in our software to score and log stats throughout a match, these stats along with the historical data input when setting up the database then allow both the presentation and scoring teams to offer a wide range of data driven graphics for productions.”

World Snooker Championship 2024: One of two commentary positions in the Crucible, with monitors and information screens

The second piece of bespoke software is a commentary information screen. “Working with members of the punditry team such as Steve Davis and Ken Doherty, we have been able to optimise this system so it displays the most relevant and up to date statistical data for the commentary team to easily access and refer to.

“For the World Championship we also offer a touch screen analysis system, and for this we use Chyron’s Paint product. This product allows the pundits to telestrate over live footage and premade clips which are supplied via a network with EVS.

“This product is used both in the studio and the commentary box. One improvement we have implemented throughout our time working across the snooker has been to provide dual touch screens in the commentary box along with a variation in tool colours this now allows commentary teams to present alternative telestration when discussing routes out of a snooker, for example.”