With plans to broadcast more than 600 hours of live content, the launch of a new Commonwealth Games 360 channel and an on-site studio designed to immerse viewers in the atmosphere of host city Glasgow, TNT Sports’ first foray into the Commonwealth Games is certainly ambitious.

Speaking from the broadcaster’s purpose-built studio on the banks of the River Clyde in Glasgow, Scott Young, WBD Sports Europe executive vice president, explains how the concept for the games was developed.

“We start with the objective, which here is ‘every moment of the games’. That means 600 hours of broadcast, and we effectively model that backwards. So once we get the competition schedule, we look at what we need to build and who we need to bring in that can service every moment of the games. That’s effectively how we do all sports now – the Olympics, Tour de France, Roland-Garros.”

Despite being a remote production utilising galleries in London and Paris, there’s still a significant presence on site, helping TNT Sports achieve its aim of immersing viewers in all the action and atmosphere of the games.

“There’s 230 people on site instead of 1,000 but it’s all front-facing people, including our on-air team, which represents 165 World Championship and Commonwealth or Olympic medals. Our entire objective with Olympic Games and Commonwealth Games is to tell the story of the athletes, and we’ve built the machine, technology and people to do that. We invest on screen, invest in rights, and invest in production, not in moving trucks up and down, not in bringing people on site that we don’t need. We’ve got a strong technical base in London that allows us to do that.”

TNT Sports is also investing in ensuring that fans can watch every moment of the Commonwealth Games in the way that suits them best, offering both a lean back and a more personalised viewing experience.

“The 360 channel is an immersive programme where you can just lean back and we’ll curate the experience for you, showing you the best bits, with a rotation of content that just keeps going. Or you can go to HBO Max and choose which sport you want to watch. You can also bypass watching the studio and just watch the team in the venue making their own show with their own presentation desk, doing interviews and so on. You can go into the immersive bubble of one sport and never come out.”

To ensure fans don’t miss key moments, medal alerts pop up to highlight when a medal is about to be won. Viewers can click on this to be taken to that sport and then come back to their previous screen to continue watching their event of choice. In addition, Multiview allows subscribers to watch different elements of the same sport or to watch multiple events at the same time, while highlights of the day offer a quick way to get a taste of what’s been going on.

“That’s the product offering that we brought to the Olympics and now we’ve brought it to the Commonwealth Games, and we’re really pleased we’re the ones here,” adds Young.

While the content is behind a paywall it’s been priced at the Entertainment Only tier rather than the more costly Sports Plan to ensure it’s as accessible as possible. TNT Sports is also producing a daily highlights show for free-to-air broadcaster 5 in the UK.

“We’re delighted with the partnership we have with 5. We simulcast the production we did for the Opening Ceremony on 5 and there’s highlights every night,” Young says. “It’s a great and for fans who don’t want to subscribe, and means there’s another opportunity for them to be able to watch the games every night. We’re also producing a TNT Sports HBO Max highlights programme which is slightly different based on the durations and some of the sports we’re focused on. Again, all the editing teams, production teams and distribution is done from London.” 

Read more Inside TNT Sports’ production of its first Commonwealth Games from studio to innovation

Back in Glasgow, the river-side studio is at the centre of TNT Sport’s output with views out over Spectator Plaza ensuring viewers feel the energy of the crowds in Scotland. The facility is connected to the intermediate Broadcast Operations Centre located at the nearby host broadcaster facility; Eurovision Services is then used to take everything back to London. 

There’s also connectivity to each of the host venues located across the city, and TNT Sport’s Olympic experience is once again proving beneficial in ensuring a slick setup.

“We’ve had the experience of two Olympics behind us now,” says Andrew Ferrans, VP, sports planning and delivery, WBD. “We’ve got bespoke units that we built for the Olympics. They’re very plug and play. We literally walk into venues, drop the Peli cases and plug the boxes. Camera, audio, communications are all out of the box, with the whole system benefiting from landing at our muliple CoLos and the resilience of our 2110 network.”

In terms of studio features, AR graphics thanks to Osmosys on the camera jib and cutting-edge analysis tools are enhancing the output, while communications are now Riedel Bolero in addition to RF. The 360 focus continues in the studio with monitors carrying the multiview of 24 feeds, rather than the usual program output.

“The on-air team now have to react to every single sport and every single thing, so the monitors all carry the multiview of 24 feeds,” he adds. “They’re feeds from host broadcaster Actua Sport along with our own feeds. The team needs to know what’s coming next, so really what we’ve done is make them work harder by giving them 24 sources to watch all the time!” 

When it comes to coverage from each of the venues, there is some variation in terms of on-site facilities and the content that can be captured. 

“Every venue has mixed zone capabilities as a minimum. It’s not always about the sport, it’s sometimes about the complexity of the builds and the fact that there’s not a lot of room in some of these places,” Ferrans explains. “And then we tier for some of the bigger sports, so we’ll have announce platforms with full presentation facilities and RF platforms to support our roaming abilities.”

TNT Sports has crews in each of the venues on every day of competition to ensure it’s achieving comprehensive coverage. As Ferrans says: “You can’t give the viewer an immersive experience unless you actually immerse yourself in the event.”