ITV Sport has been bringing spectacular images of the UEFA Women’s Euro 2025 to football fans in the UK throughout the tournament, most recently with the England versus Italy nail-biting semi final [22 July], which delivered ITV’s biggest audience of the year with a peak of 10.2 million viewers tuning in across all devices.

In the early stages of the tournament through to the Quarter Finals, ITV Sport’s team was working out of its technical services provider’s facilities in Ealing, at Timeline TV. Now, a 70-strong crew is on the ground in Switzerland with a full OB for the Semi Finals and Final that will hit huge viewing figures in Great Britain across ITV1, ITVX, STV and STV Player as the Lionesses ready themselves for a final battle on the pitch.

SVG Europe caught up with Tony Cahalane, technical director at ITV Sport, on how the workflow for the broadcaster’s coverage of the Women’s Euros 2025 has operated.

Sights and sounds

As one of the competing team’s rights holders on site for the Semi Final between England and Italy on 22 July, ITV Sport used one of the open air presentation platforms at the Geneva Stadium to bring the sights and sounds of the event to viewers at home.

Speaking prior to that game, Cahalane says: “We also have a pitchside reporter position, cameras that can move around to get us some in-match play, a big lens on the main camera position, and that’s all really to try to tell the story from the ITV Sport fans’ perspective and more dedicated to the audience that we might have at home.”

The broadcaster is using a SuperNova super slo-mo camera for its games in Switzerland. FilmNova and Timeline TV jointly developed the SuperNova in 2023. It can capture high quality shots at 500fps, making it a strong tool for ITV Sport at the Women’s Euros as it can be used in montages and replays, enhancing the quality and production values across broadcast output. It is being used in a gantry position in the stadium to get the broadcaster additional material that should look spectacular for viewers at home.

Adds Cahalane on SuperNova: “It takes care of the replay on board, and we remotely control it as one single feed into an EVS. It’s quite useful on the basis that during the match, the camera is just gathering colour for us so it helps us convey the drama of the story to ITV’s audience.”

Early stage plan

Cahalane comments on the overall workflow for ITV Sport at the Women’s Euros: “The way we’ve achieved this is with a green footprint in mind, and a little bit of budgetary requirement as well. We are a remote production until we reached the Semi Final pick that ITV had and the Final, where we move on site with a full OB truck; it’s only Switzerland so not all that far away.”

Cahalane comments on what’s been on the ground in Ealing: “The remote production is from our virtual reality (VR) hub, based in Timeline TV at Ealing. It’s the usual bits and pieces that we’re using and feature in our regular strands and tournaments like the RWC23; Star Tracker, Unreal Engine etc. Our main presentation team is based in Ealing and we are also on site during the Group Stages and the Quarter Final with three reporting teams. We save on travel by doing it this way and reduce our emissions in parallel,” he says.

ITV Sport has honed its studio-based production in Ealing for the Women’s Euros with a tried and tested plan from RWC23. When they have two consecutive matches with different talent teams, by adding a simple extra gallery and sharing VR engines, they make the best use of the overall VR facility and pre-recording the opening of the second game with the incoming talent.

Cahalane explains: “Normally we pre-record the opening [of the second game’s pres] because it can be relatively complex depending on what the Director wants to do. So, what we’ve established is this subcut gallery with another setup of radio mics and IFB’s for presenters, and two green rooms where we can move the talent teams in and out of the studio while we’re live on air, but keep in touch with them as we move the incoming talent team in and pre-record the opening to the next show, so we’re making maximum use of that facility for every programme,” he continues.

“If something were to go wrong while we were recording [for the second game], we can still hear the current on-air talent team, we can still talk to them, and they can link to out of vision shots whilst we move them back into the studio. It’s resilient, it’s quick to change over, but it also gives us the maximum value out of the resource that we’ve got there.”

Each of the three reporting teams in Switzerland in the knockout stages of the tournament – which have covered the England and Wales teams plus various European teams – were equipped with LiveU kit so they could send material back to our Ealing based media management quickly, with the European reporting team being a self shooting production crew.

Adds Cahalane on the European ENG crew being entirely self shooting: “We’ve grown our self shooting, self editing ability within the department in the last year. I’ve seen it as a logical progression, and it’s worked out really well.”

On its operation for the group stages and the first quarter final, ITV Sport set up a media management system for the Women’s Euro, and the LiveU content from the reporting teams are fed directly into EVS’ 24 hours a day, so they can feed material across and then it can be turned around for the programmes the following day.

Now that ITV Sport is on the ground, the Welsh ENG crew has gone home while the England-following and European-following teams are still out in Switzerland, capturing more reports, action and atmosphere for the broadcast.

Stepping up the game

ITV Sport has stepped up its game for the latter stages of the competition, getting the vast majority of its team on the ground in Switzerland with a full OB.

Comments Cahalane: “We jumped a team across to Switzerland for the Semi Final and will do so again for the Final, which is a full scale Pres OB, and we have access to more feeds then because we are on site. So, that’s part of the driver to get to Switzerland.

“Another part of the driver is to get that whole presence on site look and sound. It brings a lot of enthusiasm behind the presentation, compared to being in a studio at the big moments.”

Timeline TV’s UHD4 truck has travelled from the UK to Switzerland. UHD4 is a triple-expanding IP OB truck with a three-row production area. It delivers large scale complex outside broadcasts simultaneously in UHD and HD. In addition, there is full HDR monitoring throughout the truck including a specialist shading position. It can work with up to 32 UHD cameras, and multiple RF cameras. Tech inside includes a Grass Valley Kayenne K-Frame, Lawo VSM control system, Cisco Nexus IP Core VT, 12 EVS machines, a 64 Fader Calrec Apollo audio desk, Riedel Artist talkback matrix, and Dolby Atmos monitoring.

On the workflow with the team in Switzerland, Cahalane says: “We’ve got four edits running back in the UK and we will be using a Lucidlink workflow, which allows the Editor back in the UK to get access to some more of the EVS angles that we will have on site and turn them around into any closers or any halftime pieces that they might construct in the remote UK edit facility.”

Getting There

ITV Sport is receiving the host multi-feed package, which consists of eight feeds from each venue per match. On what ITV Sport would like to see in its package, Cahalane says: “We would love to see an increase again in the availability in ISO feeds.”

Cahalane would also like there to be a small IBC for the Women’s Euro. He says: “There’s no IBC involved in this tournament, whereas there obviously is in some others. It is a changing landscape; everybody’s looking at how we achieve what we want without more people travelling.

“The content hub multi-feed package is effectively like a remote IBC where the EBU takes feeds in and then we’re able to point the streams into decoders in the UK,” Cahalane notes.

“But the issue with that is that though it works, certainly I would be more reluctant if we were using it with lots more ISO feeds and including our uni-lateral feeds from venues. We were keen to try it and learn from it, the learning being that something hybrid between an IBC and a content hub may be the answer.

“Also, technical helplines are fine, but a little slow when you’re on air, whereas direct communication with an IBC still wins out. I get that it’s a kind of halfway house. We look forward to building on what has been a fantastic tournament for us here at ITV and continue to deliver the big audiences that we have achieved so far this year,” he concludes.