World Aquatics 25m Championships: Record-breaking action and cutting-edge broadcasts shine in Budapest

Image Source: World Aquatics

The World Aquatics Swimming Championships (25m) took place in Hungary between 10 and 15 December 2025, getting off to a fine start with eight world records being broken in the first two days.

All the action was broadcast internationally, with national broadcasters taking European coverage through Eurovision. Additionally, the Eurovision Sport OTT platform provided live streams and video-on-demand of all sessions not shown by rights holders and to territories in Europe without rights holders.

The host broadcaster for the five-day event was Budapest-based Visual Europe Production, with OB facilities, including hard cameras, provided by Antenna Hungaria. Fixed high-speed slow motion (HSSM) cameras were supplied by Broadcast Hungary, with moving and underwater camera systems from Special Grip Hungary (supplying railcam and Spidercam) and French specialist developer DEEP-VISION.

“With all this equipment we aim to present brilliant coverage and would like to bring the TV viewers closer to the actions, showing them more emotion of the sport”

World Aquatics organises what its senior broadcast manager, Peter Hall, describes as six “very different” aquatic sports – swimming, water polo, diving, artistic swimming, open water swimming and high diving – which call for different approaches to broadcast coverage. “The key factors, though, are adequate lighting for ultra-motion cameras and placement of cameras relative to the field of play,” he says.

The field of play in this case is a 25m short course pool, which is half the length of its 50m Olympic equivalent.

“That just means there is less time for using railcam, Spidercam and systems like that than in a 50m pool,” Hall explains.

The pool and surrounding areas are covered by a variety of different types of cameras in different strategic positions: two HSSMs poolside, one on a pedestal, the other on railcam; one HSSM submersible Polecam; three SSMs; three RF cameras (two on Steadicams; one Spidercam four-points camera; two underwater PTZs, one at the start point, the other in the middle of the pool; two PTZs covering the final call room and athletes tunnel; and two minicams, one each for the starting blocks of Lanes 4 and 5.

Zoltan Szele, head of broadcast operations for Visual Europe Production, explains that the camera plan is as it would be for a 50m pool but adapted for the venue and 25m size.

“The only big difference is that we don’t have an underwater railcam, because the pool is shorter,” he says.

“Instead we have an underwater robotic camera at the halfway point of the pool, which pans left and right. We also have a specific turning head at that halfway mark. Other features include a platform for a long lens camera and a submersible Polecam in the water.”

The world feed originates from the ITC (International Transmission Centre) in the TV compound. This operation, supervised by Dentsu working with Amazing World of Sports Events (AW of SE) provides the gateway for both satellite and SRT (Secure Reliable Transport) distribution.

AW of SE managing director Karel Svoboda describes the set-up as relatively simple, using a SNG uplink on-site.

“For further distribution we work with Eurovision Services SA, which uses its satellite capacity over Europe, uplinking from the fixed teleport on AsiaSat 5,” he says.

“From the ITC we use SRT streaming for SRT and RTMP distribution to Aqua platforms and for SRT Dentsu takers, using Net Insight equipment and Nimbra Edge cloud.”

Records have continued to be broken as the Championships have gone on. The story of the event is certainly American swimmer Gretchen Walsh, who is competing in her first 25m World Championships and has already set five new world records, including in the Women’s 100m Butterfly, and won three gold medals. These achievements have made for gripping television.

As Zoltan Szele concludes, “With all this equipment we aim to present brilliant coverage and would like to bring the TV viewers closer to the actions, showing them more emotion of the sport.”