Paris 2024: Inside the BBC’s IBC setup

Central to the BBC’s broadcast of Paris 2024 was its streamlined operation at the IBC in Paris, ensuring every Team GB medal moment was shown live, with workflows designed to enhance efficiency and provide value for license fee payers. BBC Sport technical operations executive Andy Wdowicki took SVG Europe on a tour of the broadcaster’s IBC setup.

BBC Sport has reported some record-breaking figures for its coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, with the Games streamed 218 million times online, more than doubling the Tokyo Olympic Games total of 104m. As well as coverage via the BBC’s OTT service iPlayer, linear viewing – which switched between BBC1 and BBC2 – was healthy with a peak of over 6m on 14 separate days. Keely Hodgkinson’s win in the women’s 800 metres final was the broadcaster’s most watched event with 9.1m viewers watching on BBC1 and iPlayer, followed closely by Adam Peaty’s silver medal winning swim in the men’s 100m with 8.5m.

Read more Paris 2024: BBC Sport on its remote production workflow for the Summer Games

At the heart of ensuring that the BBC showed every Team GB medal moment live was the BBC’s broadcast operation centre (BOC) at the IBC in Paris, where all feeds from the host broadcaster Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), the BBC’s unilateral feeds from mixed zones and presentation positions plus commentary (BBC or host) are checked, lined up and then passed on to BBC Sport’s HQ in Salford, where the broadcaster’s two production galleries were based.

Speaking with SVG Europe at the IBC during the latter stages of the Games, BBC Sport Major Event technical operations Executive Andy Wdowicki explains: “We have in excess of probably about 100 sources that we filter down to 28 lines. For the for the swimming, we’ve got two announce platform cameras, a mixed zone and a host feed. So that’s four feeds that go to Salford.

“And when we run the athletics announce platform in parallel, we have three announce platform cameras, two ISO cameras, a mixed zone and a stadium wide shot. So, in total, we’ve got about 12 to 14 feeds out of our 20-odd lines just when we use those two platforms. There’s a lot of management of those remaining lines to get the right sports down the right feeds.” An EVS Cerebrum system was used for routing, while BT Media & Broadcast provided international connectivity, via Nevion chassis with J2K encoding.

BBC Sport’s Andy Wdowicki in Paris

On display on the multi-viewers in the BOC were images from the LiveU packs (the BBC has 12 field units deployed at mixed zones in the venues), along with unilateral feeds via VandA (video and audio – one video circuit along with audio channels) from the host broadcaster, typically for sports considered important for UK viewers, such as the urban park, track cycling and the gymnastics.

“They’re big sports for us,” says Wdowicki, “So we’ve paid for the video circuit from OBS. For some of the other sports, we’ve gone for IP connectivity so we send a LiveU pack there, but we connect into the OBS internet in the mixed zone so we’re relying on Ethernet rather than 5G connectivity or Wi-Fi.”

One of the BBC’s aims for each major event is to simplify its operational workflow, because coverage of the event itself can be so complicated and the quantity of feeds so vast. In Paris, feeds from the BBC’s studio at Trocadero in central Paris also passed via the IBC, before they are passed on to Salford. “In previous events where we’ve done that, we’ve played quite an active role in the middle where the studio would line up with us, and then we would on pass to Salford, and they would line up with us,” says Wdowicki.

“But we found that on previous events, you can end up becoming a bit of a blocker for the workflow being in the middle in the IBC so we’ve taken a step back on this one. We’re involved in the rig, and we do the initial lineups, but now we step back as an operational role. We’re there if either party needs support, but we let them get on with it. So that’s been quite a workflow change and it’s not really traditional. If you’re sending a signal from one place to another, and there’s a midpoint, you normally line up at each stage in the chain. But we’ve decided to let the studio in Salford get on with it, so the signals pass through as data but we don’t actively monitor them.”

Smaller scale

Wdowicki’s first Olympics with the BBC was the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics, where he worked in one of the network galleries and oversaw the technical install of the studio on Copacabana Beach. He says that in terms of scale, [Paris 2024] is a lot smaller, because of the broadcaster’s need to provide the best value for the license fee – resulting in efforts to shrink the footprint in Paris as much as possible.

“Because we split out it can be quite a challenging operation,” he says. “We have the studio in one place (Trocadero), and the galleries and main post production operation where everything is ingested and edited in Salford, and the production office for all production staff based outside of the IBC and a 10 minute walk from the studio, plus the broadcast operation centre here, so it’s quite fragmented. But because the cost of putting things in the IBC can be high, we try and shrink the IBC as much as we can.”

The BBC’s broadcast operation centre at the IBC in Paris

Included in the BBC’s IBC setup is a small post-production operation of four edit suites, remotely editing on edit clients in the UK to help save on the amount of hardware – and space required in the IBC. That content is pushed down the BBC’s lines when there is less live sport competing for the BBC’s connectivity, or via Signiant file transfer.

The IBC base also include four booths for off-tube commentary. “We still invest in commentary booths out in the venues, but where we haven’t purchased a commentary booth and we don’t want to spend on a Games-time bookable booth, we can bring commentators in here. We’ve typically done that for a few boxing bouts and for quite a lot of the tennis because it it’s spread across different courts. Sometimes, it’s just logistically easier to have the commentators in one place here, and feed them something to commentate on, rather than have them move around,” says Wdowicki.

There is also a “tiny” UHD gallery to manage the BBC’s UHD coverage of the opening and closing ceremonies, which included upconverted presentation bookending the start and end of the ceremonies.

“The programme is made in Salford, that comes to us here where we upconvert to UHD, and then cuts to the host’s UHD feed of the ceremonies. “The challenge with that is because you’re matching a UHD signal here of the ceremony that is quick, because it’s here [in Paris], and the programme that is coming back from the UK that’s comparatively slow because it’s been made in the UK, with AR cameras, and because it goes through the chain.

So you have a quick UHD picture that you’re matching with a slow programme, so you have to add delay to your UHD feed, but if your UHD feed doesn’t exist until five minutes before transmission, then you are putting that delay in moments before you go to air.”

Another tweak for Paris 2024 is the seating arrangement within the BBC’s IBC base. “Rather than have engineers hidden away in a room, we have them as part of the operation centre,” says Wdowicki.

“I think this is quite unique to have them this close, because as soon as a director says there’s an issue with a feed or someone technical reports an issue, whilst I’m digesting what that issue is and what we need to do, the engineers can overhear it so they’re already clicking buttons and looking at things before I have to communicate to them what the problem is. And we’ve found that really reduces reaction times. And usually what happens now is at the point a director calls out ‘there’s an issue’, or ‘why can’t I talk to that mixed zone’, or whatever it may be, we already have an answer for them.

Watch Live from Paris 2024: Video interview with BBC Sport’s Andy Wdowicki