Seat of its pants: Aurora boxes clever and looks ahead for the FIA as new host broadcaster on the World RX season opener
Aurora was pushed for time to get the production plan in place for the new World RX season once the series was taken inhouse by new promoter, the FIA
The excitement of rallycross is what the host broadcaster for the FIA World Rallycross Championship (World RX), Aurora, wants to get across to established fans and new viewers. Aurora was pushed for time to get the production plan in place for the new World RX season once the series was taken in-house by the new promoter, the FIA. That plan is now in operation, and the team running the championship is using this season to look at what World RX and its fans want and need to go further, says Matt Beal, director of broadcast at Aurora.
Beal says: “I always think if you asked an eight-year-old child to describe a car race, they’d describe a car race from the start to the end that was rallycross; cars bombing around the corner smashing into each other, everything absolutely bananas, skidding and crashes and overtakes! What they’re probably not describing is a 24 Hours of Spa GT race. So I think that’s why it’s quite charming. I think it is quite earnest and it’s very passionate and raw and lovely.”
“We’ve got a really strong, tried and tested model for this first season,” says Matt Beal, Aurora director of broadcast
Tried and tested
There is a solid plan in place for the production of this season. Aurora is working with NEP Finland as technical services provider, Cloudbass Graphics for graphics, and Eurovision in Geneva for distribution.
“We’ve got a really strong, tried and tested model for this first season,” says Beal. “The truck comes on site, we run four track cameras, six effects cameras, some of which are PTZs. We have four cars with onboards on four looks each, two PTZs in the studio, and a roving RF, and they all spin back to the truck.
“On the truck we have a couple of EVS’ in there, and we generate one international dirty feed and a clean feed on the back. From there we back it up on the truck in different ways, and then the SRT feed goes over to Geneva, then it goes to the FIA platform across the platforms of Facebook and YouTube and onto the suppliers, and also back to a Aurora HQ in London where we run the digital clipping as we also run co-run the digital proposition with the FIA. We’re creating content back in London for them and creating content to go back onto the shared server in London, the CMS, for digital guys and then the teams and partners to take away.
“Away from all that live, there are three predators – videographers – shooting. They’re going around making content for digital content for features inside the show.”
“What we’ve learned over the years, and I think World RX is a combination of that, is that digital doesn’t live in one silo here, and broadcast doesn’t live over here, and streaming doesn’t live over here; we’re a studio and everyone does a bit of everything.
“Because we have to suck the maximum value out of every Euro we spend, one of the videographers will be making content on day one, then day two they become the live RF operator, and then go and make the highlight show afterwards with me,” continues Beal. “Then the other two videographers are creating digital clips, then creating VTs to go back into the truck. The EVS guys in the truck are in the truck at the end of each session making a highlights package to be re-voiced to go back to London, to go back onto digital.”
In year one of the World RX contract, the season has got up and running by the seat of its pants in a very short timeframe of just a few weeks
Seat of its pants
In year one of the contract, the season has got up and running by the seat of its pants in a very short timeframe of just a few weeks. Beal says the team from FIA, Aurora and NEP Finland are going to use this season to make important decisions to take the championships forwards. He explains: “This year we’re taking the opportunity to look at the model to go forwards. So is that a remote in part? Is that using control services off site? Is that moving to an IP truck? Is that via a 5G network for onboard?”
Overall, Beal says the current setup is, “pretty simple and robust and traditional for this year because that got us up and running to a super reliable product,” but in the meantime, the team is observing and working out what is required to push the product forwards.
He notes: “It’s a new chapter in the sport and it’s about getting the culture of the sport correct for the fans, for the competitors, free to everybody who wants to get to it, to get every single race out. Then the tech needs to morph to that mandate. It’s not the most exciting technological piece in the world; we just want to get the culture correct.
“We’re going to sit back [this season] and go okay, what does this championship actually need to do to achieve all of this? What we think that is now, will be very different to when we get into the final race of the season, because we will know what the market wants in terms of forecasters, extra streams, etc. Success would look like, perhaps, doing more multiple language, from the next round onwards we’re going to do studio shows on Friday night and Saturday night from the paddock as a stream using the OB truck, so the product’s going to evolve as well.”
Beal says the technology required for the World RX production is nowhere as complex as that which Extreme E – now Extreme H – required when Aurora planned that production. He comments: “We aren’t in a space of a real innovative technological solution, like what Extreme E demanded because of its locations. The FIA’s mandate is to support the sport and the championships for the athletes and the promoters in the venues, to give them growth and support the fans. We wanted to get the product right really quickly, then when we know what that is and what the demands of that are, we can then use this year to work about getting the right tech in to hit that brief.”
On how the first weekend out went, despite the short run up for the production team Beal says, “this was as successful as I’ve ever seen for a sport [with a new host broadcaster] from a first time out,” he notes.
“The reason that is because there are a lot of people who have a history of working together in various established sports, with people who operationally run the sport, and have been doing it from day one and know what they’re doing. [This relaunch of World RX] is loaded in your favour compared to say E1, which was a completely revolutionary new sport with new tech, new boats, new venues, new dates; this is loads easier compared to that, but it’s still 40-plus races per weekend with a global audience and a huge fan base, and it’s all got to work out of the box first time. You felt the pressure [on the first weekend] but because of the breadth of knowledge of all the arsenal available – the suppliers of the product and the sport – you went into it with real confidence.”
The role for Aurora as the new host broadcaster at World RX is about breaking down barriers to entry for both the athletes, as well as existing and new fans. Pictured, Matt Beale, Aurora’s director of broadcast, leading the way at the season opener in Portugal
Boxing clever
Looking ahead, there are ideas already bubbling in Beal’s mind that may come to fruition. He expounds on one of those possible plans: “We’ve got 50 teams in the paddock. All those 50 teams are also content creators. If I want to do a Drive to Survive-style embedded show, you need hundreds of thousands of pounds and a massive resource, and that isn’t available.
“So how do we get the athlete stories? How do we get everywhere all at the same time with one RF camera? The smart thing to do is start using the entire paddock to help us generate content, filming inside their own garages and teams, their own stories. So now they can share it with the predators going off making digital content, so that’s a two-way street,” he notes. I’m getting behind the scenes content of someone going mad in the garage when they’ve lost or celebrating when they’ve won.
“If I can get that all in real time with smart tech and use the whole of the ecosystem essentially as content makers, then we’re unlocking something really interesting. If we can unlock that I think we would be a really, really interesting space. That goes back to the FIA’s mandate of looking after the athletes, seeing every race live, and looking after the fans. I think that’s probably what I’m going to focus on this year; how to unlock the content capture and storytelling of the whole entire community of very big paddock.
“That is what a modern proposition looks like; it’s not necessarily about spending huge volumes of money on very technical OBs, it’s about boxing really, really clever and knowing what you want to do,” Beal concludes.
The season opener – RX of Portugal – took place from 31 May to 1 June in Lousada, with World RX, Euro RX1 and Euro RX3 competing. Next up for World RX, Euro RX1 and Euro RX3 is RX of Sweden which takes place from 5 to 6 July in Höljes Motorstadion.