The strength of kindness: Collaborative effort helps Special Olympics World Winter Games reach a wider audience
Team Korea during the Opening Ceremony for the 2025 Special Olympics World Winter Games
(Photo by Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)
The broadcast coverage of this year’s Special Olympics World Winter Games, which took place in Italy from 8-15 March, was not produced using the traditional set-up of a main host broadcaster overseeing all the different aspects involved. Instead, several production companies, broadcasters and facilities providers worked on the various events and production duties, including the sporting competitions, ceremonies, video editing and distribution of live feeds, clips and other programming.
The individual components of what can be loosely described as the host broadcast were handled at different times by ESPN, Sky Deutschland, Balich Wonder Studio (BWS), Restless Films and NEP Italy.
“With the incredible support of these broadcast partners we were able to reach audiences through linear platforms such as RAI2, which aired the Opening Ceremony live and free-to-air in Italy, and global digital streaming platforms such as ESPN+ and, for the first time, Disney+,” says Chris Wragg, senior director of broadcast communications and social media engagement for Special Olympics. “We also worked with ZDF in Germany in making its digital stream of the Opening Ceremony available for viewing in all 56 EBU member countries. The World Games are the pinnacle of our movement’s sports events and this level of broadcast coverage allows us to showcase our athlete’s stories and spread the joy of inclusion in as many parts of the world as possible. And our broadcast partners do an excellent job of that.”
While the competitive events in Special Olympics convey its outlook and intent, the Opening Ceremony, as with those of the Olympics and Paralympics, encapsulates the aims of the organisation and introduces the host nation and the countries and athletes taking part. This was very much the case with the curtain-raising extravaganza on 8 March in Turin’s Inalpi Arena, which reflected the theme of the Games: ‘The Strength of Kindness’.
Rinaldo Burgener of team Switzerland with the torch during the Opening Ceremony for the 2025 Special Olympics World Winter Games
(Photo by Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)
Featuring American star Aloe Blacc and Italian singer-rapper Mr Rain, but with the competitors still very much to the fore, the Opening Ceremony was conceived by Milan-based BWS under creative director Pablo Solari and broadcast director Cristian Biondani. A specialist in live shows and immersive events, the company also produced the broadcast world feed for this show, with facilities provided by NEP Italy. ESPN, which employed NEP Italy’s HD 18 truck and Tender 18, supplied additional equipment: five Sony 4300 cameras – three handheld, two hard/fixed – plus a Panasonic 130 PTZ for the commentary box and an eight-channel EVS.
The parade of nations and performances were covered by 14 cameras, comprising: cameras 1 to 7 and camera 12 on tripods (lens including 86x, 101x and a 4.5-21x zoom), a wireless Steadicam (camera 8 with 4.3x lens); cameras 9 and 10 (both 16-35mm zooms) on wireless connected Ronin motorised stabilised gimbals; and camera 11 on a Jimmy Jib (4.5x), also with wireless connectivity. Cameras 13 and 14 were PTZs with onboard lens controlled remotely from the OB truck.
The Inalpi Arena, the largest indoor sports venue in Italy, was specially configured for the Opening Ceremony with a circular performance stage and presentation platforms arranged in the middle of the central area with seating around them. The permanent 15,657 raked seats were also available for athletes and spectators but additionally housed many of the cameras being used to cover the event. A TV area was constructed in seats 9 to 21 of rows 6, 7, 8 and 9, with cameras 1, 2 and 3 positioned together on a 6x3m platform. These are described in the BWS camera plan as “grammatical cameras”, which captured “the narrative side of the show” and were located as centrally as possible because they were used to cover what were considered the most important shots during the ceremony.
Camera 4, fitted with a long lens and mounted on a 10m long dolly track, was placed in an 10x2m area in front of the seats in the top right-hand corner of the arena that was isolated from the audience for safety reasons. Camera 5 also had a long lens but sat on a tripod on a platform in a similar position to camera 4 in the top left-hand side of the venue. Described as “crucial for the Athletes Parade” as they entered the arena, Camera 6 was tripod-mounted on a 2x2m platform with an 86x lens.
High point-of-view shots of the parade and geographic wide views were provided by camera 7, which was on a wheeled tripod close to the ESPN Studio. Camera 11 was fitted to a Jimmy Jib with a total length of 12 to 13m, with the distance from the fulcrum to the back of the rig measuring 2.5m. A fixed geographic wide shot came from camera 12, which was planned to be situated in balcony sector 217 on a tripod with no operator.
Of the two PTZ cameras, camera 13 provided a main stage top shot and was rigged in a “central zenithal position” on the “score table structure”; while camera 14 was dedicated to sign language translation.
ESPN was the global broadcast partner for Special Olympics World Winter Games but, as Jarrett Baker, senior manager for remote operations, explains, the broadcaster relied on the local organising committee to produce the world feed. “BWS produced the Opening Ceremony and the world feed, which was excellent,” he says. “We leveraged resources that were available from a previous event at Inalpi Arena to transmit three J2K paths from the Opening Ceremony to our headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. MTI Teleport in Germany delivered ESPN’s switched programme, along with clean and dirty world feeds, to BT Tower in London. We used ABC/ESPN fibre ties at the Tower to transmit the feeds across the Atlantic Ocean. The switched programme feed was backed up with a Haivision IP encoder.”
The third and final part of this in-depth examination of the Special Olympics World Winter Games will look at the live coverage of the skating events and how ENG teams covered the sports that took place in the mountains outside Turin.