FPV drones, NRK’s coverage of Norway’s record Winter Olympics and a long-distance remote production case study are all on the agenda at SVG Europe’s upcoming Winter Sports Forum.
Taking place on Thursday 26 March in Oslo, Norway, the Winter Sports Forum – supported by Appear and NEP – will provide an opportunity for leaders from across the sports media and broadcast technology industries to gather at NEP’s Oslo Broadcast Centre and examine how winter sports are being produced, distributed and experienced.
Following the popularity of last month’s Milano Cortina Games, the first panel will focus on Norway’s coverage of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics, where the nation topped the medal table with a record 18 gold medals.
The SVG Europe Winter Sports Forum, supported by NEP and Appear, will take place on 26 March at NEP’s Oslo Broadcast Centre. For more information and to register visit svgeurope.org/winter-sports-2026
In a session titled “Reclaiming the Rings: NRK’s All-Platform Strategy for Milano Cortina 2026,” producer Jostein Jære Fjeldskår and colleagues from NRK will explore how public broadcaster NRK reunited audiences across broadcast and digital platforms after more than a decade without full free-to-air Olympic rights.
The panel will examine editorial decision-making around Norway’s strongest medal sports and the hybrid production model linking Oslo with venues across Italy. Topics will include OB and flypack deployments, bonded connectivity, one-person control rooms, experiments with XR production and NRK’s first 1080p production workflow for the Winter Games.
That will be followed by TV4 chief sports officer Johan Cederqvist, who will discuss the Swedish broadcaster’s debut Olympic coverage in a session titled “Building the Olympic Pulse.”
Sharing rights with SVT, TV4 created an all-day editorial format that blended live competition with continuous sports news coverage. The session will examine how the broadcaster differentiated itself in a shared-rights environment while coordinating production across multiple locations and four on-site studios in Italy – driving record growth for TV4 Play, the network’s streaming platform.
FPV Drones and New Perspectives
One of the standout innovations of the Winter Games was the use of FPV drones to cover a host of sports at Milano Cortina, from downhill skiing to skeleton. Andre Theis, founder of Theis Media and a pioneer of FPV drone use in winter sports coverage, will discuss the role of FPV (first-person view) drones in winter sports broadcasting.
The session will explore how custom-built drones are delivering high-speed, immersive shots for skiing, sliding and skating events while meeting broadcast safety and RF coordination requirements. It will also examine how the systems integrate with traditional camera plans and what challenges remain as demand for dynamic aerial coverage increases.
Remote Production at Scale
The final technical case study will focus on the remote production of the Norwegian National Cross-Country Ski Championships in Harstad – produced from more than 1,400 kilometres away.
Speakers including Krister Skaathun (TV2 Norway), Ola Fagerheim (producer/director) and Eirik Nakken (NEP Norway), and Andrew Rayner (Appear) will break down the end-to-end workflow using Appear’s X Platform, from on-site signal acquisition to centralised production and distribution.
The discussion will examine how connectivity, cloud-enabled workflows, multiviewing environments and collaborative production tools are reshaping live winter sports coverage.
Last year’s event drew attendees from organisations including Olympic Broadcasting Services, International Ski and Snowboard Federation, International Luge Federation, BBC, ORF Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, Sky Deutschland, Warner Bros. Discovery, DMC Production, Eurovision Services, TV Skyline and many more.
For more information and to register visit svgeurope.org/winter-sports-2026
