Pushing production: Inside the evolution of World Archery’s fanbase and broadcast

Archery first featured at the Olympic Games at Paris 1900, and at Paris 2024 it is a highly contested event with the reigning champions, Korea, looking as good as ever.

Governing body of the sport of archery, World Archery, along with its technical services provider QTV, have been on a journey over the past six years to bring this relatively niche sport to global audiences. This year the federation, which is based in Lausanne, Switzerland, has gone even further, bringing its new streaming platform, Archery+ to viewers, and beginning a project to raise the level of its broadcast graphics.

World Archery began broadcasting its competitions in earnest in 2006 when the Archery World Cup was created. It developed its own production for the broadcast of the World Cup by flying a crew of 10 to 15 people and some equipment around the world to cover the event. This system stayed in place until 2017, when the federation felt it was time to step up its broadcasting game.

Chris Wells, head of communications at World Archery, explains further: “There was a model that was put in place for production at the start in 2006 that remained in a place until around 2017. Then we took a long look at where we were. We didn’t have a huge number of rights holders. The whole over the top (OTT) streaming thing was just beginning. I wasn’t really sure where it was going to go, so we decided to blow it all up and start again.”

The federation put out a tender, which was won by independent Scotland-based technical services provider, QTV.

Wells continues on how the change in production was set to improve World Archery’s offering for viewers: “If you work with local providers around the world and you start to build out editorial influence and editorial knowledge, you start contacting a lot more people. We did some tenders and we started changing everything; we took control of our distribution, putting it through QTV’s MCR, and started using a remote production model over the next couple of years.”

Enhanced broadcast

The result of engaging outside help was significant, Wells says: “The effect quickly became quite apparent. We went from having a limited number of rights holders and revenue not being particularly high, to having some revenue and a far greater reach. In 2019 the reports on reach [showed us it was] very obvious that it was growing; we had people taking the live, and we had people that were paying for the live.”

In terms of the aims of the enhanced broadcast and distribution, Wells explains: “The goal was basically to make it become self-sufficient. I think a lot of sports will spend money on production, and it comes from sponsorships. While we have sponsorship and we’re very lucky to have some support, the was idea to make the production and content production side of things self-sufficient, which we have pretty much done at this point, combining income from rights, from digital and from betting.”

After the pandemic, World Archery decided to invest more in remote production, so QTV then took over all of the MCR and distribution for the federation. “We just have a contribution from a local provider on site, which enables us to open up a lot more things because we keep some standard of quality, but can use multiple providers [out in the field],” says Wells. “We put the graphics on remotely, we do the distribution remotely, so for the takers, there’s no difference; once they buy into archery, they buy into a single provision. Then it’s our problem to sort out contribution to the other side.”

Customised workflow

Commenting on the federation’s old way of doing things compared to the new, Wells says: “There was a lot of pressure when you’re at an event in an OB van at the end of the day to unplug the cables and bugger off, but if people are in their comfortable in place and they’ve got access to all the content, then we can provide things in a custom manner, in a way that the producer on the other end isn’t going to have to do a lot of work to broadcast it.”

World Archery has been working with QTV since 2018, when it carried out its first tender for a production partner. He says: “I know that company has grown a lot since we’ve just started working with them, I get on very well with Jack [McGill, CEO] and I see flexibility and a good attitude from the guys at QTV. We’ve grown [our production] together, which has been really nice.

“But I think it’s important to be open and do tenders and make sure that it’s reassessed. It’s a real problem for small organisations and niche sports to keep doing the same thing. I think that’s what happened before. If nothing else, the tender process is a time for us to evaluate where are we failing, where are we doing well and what we can do in the future.”

Continued progression

Things have continued to progress, with the new streaming platform – Archery+, which is available to view at archery.tv – which has already undergone improvements.

Notes Wells: “We launched an OTT platform at the start of this year as a method to go forwards. The idea has always been to use World Archery as a content provider, not just a producer. I think with the OTT platform we finally realised that.”

However, he adds: “There’s a swivel that needs to happen to make us more professional in the way we provision content and the way we deliver it, and there are multiple strands for that.”

World Archery is on the ground at Paris 2024 producing content during for Archery+