The FA Cup final on Saturday 16 May is set to be a clash of titans as Manchester City and Chelsea battle on the pitch to be crowned the champions. At Wembley Stadium, host broadcaster and pay TV provider TNT Sports and free to air rights holder BBC Sport are working on those last minute details that will mean viewers at home get to see every minute on the pitch.

BBC Sport is set to produce a one hour Football Focus on the Road from Wembley programme live from the stadium, before it goes on air for kick off from a platform in the stands.

With this being the first season that TNT Sports has taken over from BBC Sport in its new role as the host broadcaster for the FA Cup – both for the men’s game and the women’s competition – BBC Sport and Sarah Williams, the broadcaster’s lead director on FA Cup coverage and BBC Sport pres director for the final, have had to reestablish ways of working.

Comments Williams on where the production is, three days out from the match: “We’re just going through the running order at the moment and piecing together the schedule and checking all the camera plans.”

As the pres director for the FA Cup final, Williams is looking forwards to the day. “It’s all for the viewer at home who’s watching on BBC and iPlayer, to just capture a sense of the atmosphere and the Cup final day, as well as having a bit of fun as well.

“For me as the director, it’s making sure we have a clean programme and that we have a nice calm and controlled gallery when I’m directing alongside the programme editor. It’s just making sure that as a team, we’re all happy working together really.”

Special relationship

As this is the first year in the last decade that BBC Sport has not been the host broadcaster of the FA Cup, some adjustments have had to be made in operations as well as in establishing the new working relationship with TNT Sports over the course of this season.

“This year is slightly different because it’s our first year that we’ve had our new contract with TNT Sports and The FA; we’re no longer the host broadcaster so we don’t provide any of the match pictures,” Williams says. “It makes things a little bit more tricky for us because obviously we’re not in control of those world feed pictures, whereas before I would be liaising with our BBC match director and asking for certain shots. This time it’s a little bit out of our hands and we’re just relying on the TNT match director providing us with those pictures.”

At the time of the rights deal TNT Sports agreed to make some games free to air. Several months later, BBC Sport managed to strike an additional agreement with TNT Sports to secure those free to air live rights for 14 games per season, co-exclusively with TNT Sports. The BBC has since shown two live matches from each round through to the quarter finals, one semi final, and now the final. The deal also provides for the BBC to have highlights and digital clips across its platforms.

In this season’s previous rounds, the BBC gets second and fourth pick of the matches once the ties come out. At that point both broadcasters and their key production team members do site visits alongside the FA match manager to work out the details.

Fine details

Those details on site include where to put the trucks from both BBC Sport’s technical services provider, Timeline TV, and TNT Sports’ which is Gravity Media. Even though there is only one host broadcaster at any given match, both teams are always on site to produce their own feed.

Williams says. “It’s anything from working out where the trucks can go, to how much space there is in various compounds, which is quite tricky at the smaller grounds. At Wembley obviously there’s a lot more space so we know it a bit better, but there’s lots of things that we have to work through together as a team.”

BBC Sport will have two Timeline TV trucks on site at Wembley. One will cover the Football Focus production plus extra links prior to the game, and the other will focus on the live match coverage. In addition there will be a small graphics van from AE Live and a VT edit van on site.

Continues Williams on how BBC Sport and TNT Sports have worked together this season, and will continue to work together at the final: “There are also some cameras that we share with TNT as well, and then there’s lots of cameras that we get ISO feeds off, so in the truck we’ve got each of those cameras from TNT coming in; we can clip up various angles for analysis if they’re not on the main world feed if we were looking for something else. We also have an edit on site, so we use those camera angles and our own camera angles which we supplement [TNT’s] coverage with for a closer or team arrivals and things like that.”

Watch the FA Cup final on Saturday 16 May on BBC One and BBC iPlayer, plus and TNT Sports and HBO Max