Live biometric data translated into graphics is a growing part of what Warner Bros. Discovery Sports is adding to its live broadcast of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series. As the host broadcaster working with technical services provider Gravity Media, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports formed the series in 2023 in a deal between itself and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI).
Wearable tech company Whoop, the sponsor of the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, has been working from the beginning with the production team to provide biometric data that can then be interpreted into the live production.
Chris Ball, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports’ vice president of cycling events, explains how this has evolved: “Whoop is a consumer product, so that’s been a really interesting and really good challenge to bring a biometrics health wearable onto a live broadcast.
“In year one [2023], we brought in live heart rate, which was a development from a project that we’d run with the Giro d’Italia, bringing live heart rate from the peloton into our broadcast,” continues Ball.
“Because of the control we have [over the production of UCI Mountain Bike], we can bring much more to the production, and with the teams and the athletes. We brought live heart rate in, which was the initial step to really focus on how we get the data from the [wearable wrist] band onto the bike using Bluetooth, and then out wirelessly into the course and then into our broadcast graphics. Once we got that connection running and stable – we use a lot of proprietary equipment that’s not off the shelf – we’ve started to embellish that with more data that we can take from these bands.”
Taking the strain
In year two – 2024 – Warner Bros. Discovery Sports bought biometric data called ‘strain’ into the broadcast’s live graphics to further explain the competitive nature of the sport to viewers. Ball explains what strain data consists of: “Strain is a huge part of what the band [from Whoop] provides, which is basically how hard someone’s working. It’s a combination of different metrics: you’ve got heart rate variability (HRV), you’ve got heart rate, you’ve got respiratory rate, and it all comes into one thing called strain.
“We brought live strain into working with Whoop, and their APIs into the broadcast, and now we’ve got live heart rate zones, because heart rate was one thing, but if your max heart rate’s 170, mine’s 190, and both of our heart rates are currently 140, you’re working harder than I am proportionally.
“Just the number of heart rate, which is what we began with, didn’t necessarily give any context to the viewer, so we now show live heart rate in relation to zones, and we can go up to three riders at a time, head to head [with on-screen graphics] as of this year. So we could say, “you’re working in zone four at a heart rate of 140, I’m in zone three”, and then the commentators can react to that and say, “well, look at that, Heather’s in the red, Chris is in the green, we’re going into the last lap, so Chris has clearly got more in the tank to launch an attack”.”
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Ball adds on live strain graphics: “That’s really fascinating because in downhill for example, we’re seeing some of the best performances. The rider in the start has a very low heart rate – they’re super relaxed, super focused – and then you see the heart rate increases as the descent continues. And in cross country with the Olympic format of an hour and 20 minutes long, who is where in the red and when and what are they going to do is really interesting.”
Guy Voisin, vice president of cycling at Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, adds: “The true innovations [of this broadcast] are the capture network to collect the Whoop data on track live all the while the race is on. The collection of the Whoop data to our servers, sent back to the main Whoop servers, and returned to us in a matter of seconds, permits us to give insights to the viewers about the racing athlete that has been unseen before.
“We can examine relative effort in the strain gauge, compare athlete effort spent, stress on various athletes and finally heart rate live and historical throughout the race,” continues Voisin. “We can also examine the recovery of the athlete throughout the weekend, how well have they prepared through the race.”
Head-to-head
2025 has seen the broadcaster bring in head-to-head graphics, and also getting the teams and the manufacturers for the mountain biking industry involved in the broadcast through graphics. “We’ve taken a very basic graphics package, and with the teams and athletes have built out a lot more information,” Ball says. “The graphics this year was a huge investment from us, which is showing the fan much more who’s riding and what they’re doing. It’s also given us a huge amount of goodwill and investment and a feeling of partnership with the cycling industry and the athletes as well.”
Continues Ball: “We brought in head-to-head this year, so rider comparisons in cross country, but we also – and it’s innovative for mountain bike – we also brought the bike industry and the teams into the graphics packages, to show the fan who’s riding and who they are, what they look like, what their equipment is, but also to make sure that the bike industry and the teams and the athletes felt really invested in as well.
“We asked the teams to select team colours, and we built our graphics to replicate those colours for the teams at the beginning of the season. This year in our content capture with the athletes, we also captured their equipment and their bikes, so we have all of those images, which we built into the graphics. We also asked the riders to select career numbers and we built that to the graphics package, and we worked with the teams to develop logos and icons so that we can use team identification in the graphics.”
Although these team graphics are not unheard of in many sport broadcasts, they are unheard of in mountain biking. “When you look at Le Mans or F1, they use the cars and they use those two dimensional pictures quite clearly,” continues Ball. “But that had never been done in cycling before. My colleague, Guy [Voisin], took a lot of what we’re doing in mountain bike this year, and used it on the Tour de France in our TNT Sports and Eurosport broadcast; he’d taken some of our ideas that we’ve been developing a mountain bike and brought it into the Tour de France coverage around how the bikes are shown in the graphics to help with that kind of team engagement.”
Bringing the G-Force
All the data from the Whoop devices are shown as graphics onscreen in the live broadcast. Warner Bros. Discovery does not use augmented reality (AR) graphics however, because of the complications in tracking each of the race routes with multiple cameras and the need for flexibility in the fast-moving calendar.
Ball explains: “We’re not using AR because of the challenging nature of the broadcast. So because we’ve got 15 events in a year and every venue is really different, we’ve got to build things that are really resilient to change. If we want to compare rider X versus rider Y’s heart rate, at one minute they might be on camera 10, and the next minute they might be on camera 25. Putting AR heads onto cameras or whatever would restrict us quite a lot in terms of what needs to be a really flexible broadcast operation.”
Ball says a lot of effort has gone into bringing heart rate and strain into the broadcast so far, but there is more to come. “There’s a load more development to do in that space, but [to do what we’ve done so far has] taken us to network the courses, it’s taken us to build proprietary sensors onto the bike to capture the data, and it’s taken us to work with Whoop in Boston as to how we get the data from what is a consumer product into a live broadcast, which has been a fun challenge.”
Says Ball on introducing further biometric data into the graphics: “We’ll continue now that we’ve put those connections [for the production] in place. First through just heart rate, then strain, now at live heart rate zones and head-to-heads, and we’ll continue to develop that further and further.”
On what that development might look like going forwards, Ball says: In the graphics, I think we need to look at mapping and gradient, and further developing speed and G-Force graphics. There’s a huge amount happening that you don’t necessarily see because a camera flattens a mountain that can be over 30% gradient. The drone does a great job there, but still, you don’t necessarily always capture gradient and intensity and impact. It’s not a blacktop Formula One track here; it’s an incredibly rough trail down, something like a near cliff face. So how do we capture that?
“I think we need to look at graphics especially, and further developing that,” he continues. “We’ve been working on the biometric part. I think the next part is looking at that course and performance and intensity and telling the viewer what terrain they’re actually tackling. That’s the exciting part of the challenge.”
That is where the creativity of the team and technical innovations can come into play, Ball says. “Absolutely, I think we’ve got the sport now in three years to a really good place. I think our broadcast is being really well received for its very high quality. We’ve got really consistent; we can take it around the world now. I think it’s now all these additional pieces that bring the viewer even more into the action that are important, so graphics, audio, behind the scenes, capturing the teams. That’s the next part I think that in the next few years we’ll invest in.”
Haute-Savoie, France, is hosting the UCI Mountain Bike World Series from 22 to 31 August, spanning two back-to-back weekends. The action begins in Morillon from 22 to 24 August, as the venue hosts its first-ever UCI Enduro World Cup, followed by the ski and mountain bike resort of Les Gets delivering Endurance and Gravity formats, featuring Cross-country Short Track (XCC), Cross-country Olympic (XCO), and Downhill (DHI) UCI World Cup events from 28 to 31 August
