The first 11 rounds of the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Series have been a roaring success, with images from host broadcaster, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, bringing fans ever closer to the thrilling action.
In 2023, a long-term partnership signed between Warner Bros. Discovery Sports and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) meant that almost all major mountain bike formats were unified under a single brand for the first time, creating the UCI Mountain Bike World Series. The series consists of two main events: downhill and cross-country.
Also in 2023, the broadcaster took over the live production of each season’s events, aiming to bring more innovation and better coverage to the series. From the beginning, drone coverage was seen as a way to push the production forwards.
Chris Ball, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports’ vice president of cycling events, comments on how that first season went: “When we started this project in 2023 – we had our first season in 2023 – the first thing that we wanted to bring in year one was live first person view (FPV) drones, which wasn’t the first time [drones had been used in this type of sport], but it was the first time drones were really being used at this level in heavy tree cover for mountain biking.
“It was a success, but the resolution wasn’t ideal,” continues Ball. “We had challenges about trying to bring FPV drones into such a challenging outdoor environment in 2023, but we did use it at every event, and we also invested heavily in a cabled camera, which obviously gave us weather protection because drones can’t always fly in mountain weather, with wind, snow, and rain. So with drones, with cable cameras, with an increasing [quality of] audio, we were like, “this is cool”. Everything engaged the audience really well, especially the FPV drone.”
Zooming in
Broadcast Rental is playing an integral role in the production’s content acquisition through a very specific RF drone solution, supporting Gravity Media, the technical services provider to Waner Bros. Discovery Sports.
Paul Chamalaun, CCO at Broadcast Rental, comments on the drone solution: “It’s a really specific part of the job. We are really zooming in on a small part of it, but that is because it’s so specific and it is such a custom solution on one hand, and on the other hand we are trying to think outside of the box for future jobs as well, to make sure that we not only develop something for the mountain biking, but that we can also use it in other sports or for other of purposes.”
Broadcast Rental has worked to create a complete drone solution that is fully integrated into the Warner Bros. Discovery Sports broadcast. Says Chamalaun: “We have built together a balanced drone, and the rest is now up to [the crew so] they can go full creative, flying here and there or whatever they need to or want to do.”
The success of the drones meant Warner Bros. Discovery has been able to reduce its use of caballed cameras along each course. Comments Ball: “We slightly reduced our cable camera usage into the second and third year, which is where we are now, and increased our investment in the FPV drone. We also use a beauty drone as well to give that sense of scope and scale and where we actually are in the environment.”
Custom development
Broadcast Rental worked with two drone companies for the UCI Mountain Bike World Series: Aeroplayfilms from Belgium; and Dutch Drone Gods from the Netherlands. Broadcast Rental went for two drone companies as there were so many races in the series, each happening in quick succession, that they could not realistically expect one company to be constantly available to fly their drone.
Comments Chamalaun on the development of the drones specifically for the mountain biking: “It was really a collaboration, about how can we make the transmitter and the whole equipment essentially as light and as small as possible, and how can they adapt their drone build to make sure they can put [the equipment] somewhere safe on the drone, and fully integrate it into the whole power system – battery packs – that are integrated into the drone. So in both cases they built their own drones [for our use], so it’s real custom from the drawings to the drones that flying now.”
Pilots from Aeroplayfilms and Dutch Drone Gods attend the events and fly their drones for the broadcast. Notes Chamalaun: “When you are working with the bigger drones, flying is so specific that the pilot needs to have experience with their own kit and they need to work with their own kit. The drones are really delicate, so they all want to fly their own equipment.”
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Broadcast Rental has also worked with Proton, a specialist in miniature cameras, for the cameras used on the drones. Chamalaun says: “We feel that with the cameras from Proton, they’re also really looking ahead into the future in new developments.”
Chamalaun comments on the challenges of getting RF coverage on a drone for a sport out in the wild, like mountain biking. “RF on a drone is already quite specific because the weight is a problem and you don’t have any space on it because it’s a really small, highly flexible FPV drone; it has to follow the mountain bike or the cyclist in general, and they go really fast and they go into the forest. The first problem you have to solve is how do you get it in a really small form factor from an RF transmitter point of view.
“The next step is make sure that you have full camera control,” Chamalaun continues. “Obviously you are in the forest, so you’re between light dark, light dark more or less all over the place,” he says, referring to how trees block and filter the light as the drone flies quickly through a forest.
“You have to work with a really small camera, but on the other hand it also has to be broadcasting quality and it’s all live; anybody can record with a drone, but to put it in live broadcasting in a multi-camera workflow [requires a lot more work]. Our main goal was to achieve that.”
Going forwards, there is more to be done to improve the drone pictures even further, says Chamalaun. “Of course you have the antennas, and you have some other challenges. But the next challenge we have is how can you get even more stability in broadcasting picture? At the moment we are working with a fixed camera, so obviously you have the horizon going up and down. The next step is how can you even reduce that so you get the most stability in your picture?
“In the first couple of months of this year, we did a lot of testing with the two drone companies to make sure that they could make something good, and they could put our equipment on it in the right place. They could fly stable, fast and well more or less aerodynamically, because the more aerodynamic you can get, the longer you can fly,” he says, referring to the balance between staying in the air and using unnecessary battery power.
“We have made such progress with really small transmitters and with really small cameras and with really light drones,” says Chamalaun. “So the next big hurdle is getting the battery packs even smaller. But to get smaller battery packs, you’ll also need to be really aerodynamic because if you have a perfect solution within the weight limits but it can only fly for 10 seconds, then, well, you have new problem. When you’re working on such small devices you really have to think about every small detail to come up with a working prototype, then a working solution.”
Important angles
Ball says that the team has experimented to work out the best angle to use the drones at in order to give the audience the greatest experience. He notes: “The angle’s been really important as well. We’ve really learned where the drone flies in relation to the rider and how that resonates with the viewer; if it’s too high or if it’s too close or if it swings around too much in amongst the trees, what makes people feel seasick, and what makes people really feel like they’re there.”
And the answer? “Low, definitely low,” says Ball. “It’s really interesting because in the first year we were equally investing in onboard cameras and trying to work out if we could use them; we didn’t use any onboard cameras [in the broadcast], but we were prototyping them. We found that actually the drone view where you can see the rider, you can see the entire body movement, you can see the trees coming past, you can see the dirt coming off the tyres, that was a far more engaging viewership experience than actually having a camera on the bike where you don’t see the rider, you just see what they see.
“So we cut our investment in onboard camera development and pushed it more into drones,” he continues. “It’s almost like you’re riding a tandem. The lower the drone can get and the more it can sit off the back wheel of the rider slightly to one side, so you can see the bike, you can see their legs moving, it’s a really unique angle. When you do get that dirt spraying and you really feel like you’re there, that’s when it really works.”
The onboard cameras did not work for mountain bike broadcasting because of the lack of stabilisation, which would give viewers a potentially bumpy ride. Ball explains: “Stabilisation was one of the biggest challenges for sure, because with non-live POV cameras, there’s tonnes of incredible stabilisation, but to get that live was really difficult. You can build all of that equipment into a car for motorsport and it doesn’t matter if it weighs a kilo or so. But these bikes are incredibly light and the athletes are wearing really as little as possible, so weight is crucial,” he notes.
Continuing on the dilemma with the onboard cameras, Ball says: “You could get stabilised and you could get light, but we couldn’t necessarily get both, whereas the drone was really engaging, really captivating; you saw a much fuller picture, you saw the bike, you saw the rider, you saw the fans, and you saw the environment flashing past. So we’ve really invested into drones.”
Resonating well
2205 has been the best year so far for the quality of the drone coverage, notes Ball: “The FPV drone definitely resonates well with the audience. We found that this year the resolution has been incredible. Because we control the event all the way to the on-ground delivery, we’re able to manage the crowd and spectator flow, and even educate the athletes as to where the drones are flying, so that we can actually build it very much completely holistically into our production.
“The riders know where the FPV drones are and we work with the LLCs on the ground to plan the spectator and the safety components around being able to fly these things at 70 kilometres an hour, or 60 kilometres an hour in the trees,” Ball continues.
Ball concludes: “Drones are very much a core part of what we’re doing, and now we’re finding the quality’s there and the engagement’s there, the richness of the content’s there, but actually just the amount of time in the broadcast isn’t enough. So we’re looking at the sports schedule and maybe other technologies like our app that we’ll be launching in the coming months and into next season, for how we can even further use more of the FPV coverage that we are actually capturing and not showing the in live broadcast because there’s just not the time in the schedule.”
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
