HBS director of digital Johannes Franken talks SVG Europe through the operation built to serve FIFA World Cup 2026 rights holders remotely from Stratford, east London – and why HBS moved the kit to the talent.
For previous FIFA World Cups, host broadcast operations have meant exactly that: an operation built in or near the host country, with hundreds of staff relocated for the duration of the tournament. For FIFA World Cup 2026, Host Broadcast Services (HBS) has taken a different approach for its non-live content operation, building a 400-person hub at Here East in Stratford, London, rather than asking that workforce to fly to North America.
The hub is based in the LMA (Liverpool Media Academy) building, a media, music and performing arts college housed in the former Broadcast Centre of the London 2012 Games. Before LMA moved in, the building was home to BT Sport, prior to a joint venture being formed with Warner Bros Discovery and the operation moving into WBD facilities. There is some circularity to it all: a major feature of quadrennial events is legacy, with the space originally built to facilitate the London Olympics now playing a vital part in the FIFA World Cup.
“The location of talent is the pure driver…the question was, did it make sense to relocate them or bring the operations to where the talent is. And for the first time we decided to shift it.”
The hub was quiet on the day SVG Europe visited – the day after England played Ghana in a lacklustre group stage game – but not for lack of highlights to edit and share. The quiet had more to do with time zones, with the many edit rooms and galleries filling up as games kick off from early evening UK time.
A total of around 400 people work at the Non-Live Hub, which houses 126 edit suites in total, working across a mix of formats and content ranging from short-form social clips and TikTok-specific cuts to longer highlights packages. The set-up allows the bulk of post-production and content processing to take place overseas, with the editing teams for both broadcast and digital based predominantly in London, alongside a media-management operation that serves as a central nervous system for content sent from host cities across the US, Canada and Mexico.
Says Johannes Franken, director of digital at HBS: “Most of those people are people that are living in the Greater London area, and so they have the opportunity to operate from home, basically.”
The decision, he explains, came down to a straightforward calculation about where the necessary skills already existed. “The location of talent is the pure driver,” he says. “The question was, did it make sense to relocate them or bring the operations to where the talent is. And for the first time we decided to shift it.”
London calling
HBS considered other European cities before settling on London, but the decision narrowed quickly once the available pool of experienced production staff was weighed up. “The level of knowledge around football production within London is higher than other European cities.”
The Here East building also offered the setting HBS required, with plenty of space already built. HBS took over the facility on 15 March, beginning with additional power and HVAC installation before content operations began in earnest at the start of June – timed to coincide with LMA’s summer break. “It has its challenges – you are in somebody else’s house, you’re a guest,” Franken says of working within someone else’s facility rather than building bespoke temporary infrastructure.
He sets out the three broad models available to a host broadcaster: build temporary infrastructure such as a traditional IBC, take over and adapt an existing facility, or outsource entirely to a partner. “There are basically three ways of producing content,” he says. “First one is you build temporary infrastructure, like a traditional IBC. The other extreme is that you simply take your deliverables, and you find the best partner, and you work with them. Or, you take the approach we have with using space in the Here East building.”
The role of creators
Among the more significant shifts at this tournament is the growing role of independent creators working alongside HBS’ traditional broadcast and digital output. FIFA’s preferred platform programme gives selected social media outlets, including TikTok, expanded rights beyond those available to rights holders’ own owned-and-operated channels.
That distinction matters operationally: content produced specifically for the preferred platform programme is tagged within FIFA MAX (FIFA Media Asset Exchange Server) with a dedicated TikTok marker, and is restricted to a rights holder’s own platforms plus TikTok itself rather than other social media platforms.
HBS supports both creators working on site at venues and a wider cohort working remotely. “We are supporting the members of the TikTok creator programme with content,” Franken says. “That is true for the on-site creators that are in the venue, but also there is a larger cohort of remote creators working on those platforms, and we are supporting them with content from the tournament.”
On site, HBS also takes responsibility for helping creators – some of whom, Franken notes, are unaccustomed to working within a major broadcast operation – integrate smoothly alongside camera crews, producers and other accredited media.
He also points to differing levels of broadcaster appetite for working directly with creators, citing Fox’s relationship with streamer IShowSpeed as the most visible example to date. “It depends very much on the broadcasters,” Franken says.
“Fox for example has a direct relationship with IShowSpeed, and they are leveraging it. It’s a big story, while others are more conservative.” Looking ahead, he expects the creator relationship to keep evolving rather than settle into a fixed model, describing it as a segment HBS will continue to develop alongside rights holders in future tournaments.
The platform: FIFA MAX
At the centre of the non-live operation sits FIFA MAX, the tournaments media asset management environment.
“FIFA MAX is a combination of several tools,” Franken explains. “One of the media asset management systems that we’re using for the broadcast site is the EVS Media Hub, based on EVS Via technology… most of the desks are only thin clients. It’s basically a web browser that you use to access the software.”
That represents a significant change from the IP-based hardware set-ups of previous tournaments. Where editors and operators once worked from dedicated IP Directors at each desk, the Here East operation runs through Chrome, connecting to an in-house web server.
This World Cup also sees previously separate FIFA platforms brought together under one roof. Where the broadcast-facing FIFA MAX and a social-media-focused interface operated separately at the last tournament, the two are now unified. “There [were] two different places,” Franken says. “There was a service that was offered as FIFA MAX, and there was a service that was called a social media interface, and that was the split… Now both places live under one roof, and it’s all within FIFA MAX.”
The headline numbers associated with the Non-Live Hub illustrate the scale of non-live production now required to serve FIFA’s broadcast partners. HBS is recording 60 HD channels and eight UHD channels for archival purposes, storing what Franken estimates at around 10,000 hours of content across the tournament. Around 1,100 users – spanning broadcasters, participating member associations and commercial partners – access the platform, with accelerated file delivery reaching more than 100 locations globally.
With such a high volume of edit suites running in parallel, HBS has deliberately limited editorial flexibility in favour of consistency. Editors work within Adobe Creative Cloud, managed through Helmut workflow management software, provided by MoovIT with project templates restricting choices that might otherwise introduce inconsistency across deliverables.
“If you would allow everybody to do whatever they want, you probably would be running after a lot of your content, and the efficiency of the team can’t be guaranteed,” Franken says. He cites audio timelines as a simple example: a digital feature project in Premiere is locked to a fixed number of audio tracks, removing the option for an editor to add extra timelines and so guaranteeing a consistent export every time.
The approach is also designed to minimise onboarding time for a workforce that combines World Cup veterans with newcomers. “We need everyone who works with us to be efficient in what they do, and so one of the ways to achieve that is a standardisation of workflows,” Franken says.
The logging operation – responsible for enriching footage with metadata – has shrunk compared with previous tournaments, a change Franken attributes to closer integration with FIFA’s own data systems. Goal markers, once added manually by logging staff watching every feed, are now generated automatically from the FIFA Data Hub.
“This is because we have an optimal use [of] existing data where we can,” Franken says. “In Russia or in Brazil, we logged goals manually… and now that is automatically coming from the FIFA Data Hub.” Manual logging is still required for content without an existing data source, such as raw ENG footage, and for editorial judgement calls on the relevance of specific moments.
Interview and press conference content is transcribed and translated using a combination of artificial intelligence and human review, reflecting the sensitivity of publishing content under FIFA’s name. “It’s a mixture of AI tools plus human quality control,” Franken says. “Without the human quality control, we wouldn’t feel comfortable putting it out.”
Sustainability
Beyond talent and connectivity, Franken points to sustainability as a significant factor in the decision to operate from London rather than relocate staff to North America.
“It’s potentially 400 flights less than you need to book across the Atlantic,” he says. “It is temporary infrastructure that you don’t need to build for 400 people, and your ecological footprint is much smaller when you live at home than when you live in a hotel.”
He is careful to note the trade-off involved in a model that asks staff to work to North American match schedules from a London base. “That is the flip side, you have some people who need to work through the night and inconvenient hours, and this is a factor that shouldn’t be overlooked,” he says.
What comes next
Whether the model is repeated at future tournaments remains an open question for Franken, not least because FIFA World Cup 2030’s circumstances – and time zone – will differ substantially from 2026.
“Next time we have different circumstances,” he says. “It will be a European-based operation, the time difference will work in our favour. I, to be honest, I don’t know.” The decision, he suggests, will depend on where the next IBC is located and whether a centralised, remote-first model continues to offer a clear advantage over building on site.
