Heads Up on BT Sport's remote production of the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Chelsea By Heather McLean, Editor
Thursday, July 30, 2020 - 17:20
Print This Story
Arsenal's Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang celebrates with the Emirates FA Cup and his team mates on Saturday 1 August after beating Chelsea 2-1 at Wembley
The Heads Up FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Chelsea, which took place last weekend (Saturday 1 August) and saw the Gunners defeat their London rivals 2-1, was produced remotely by BT Sport.
BT Sport was the host broadcaster for Saturday's match, which was dedicated to the nation's mental health.
The competition was also broadcast by BBC Sport, which reported that the match delivered its viewing record for the 2019-20 season with 8.2 million viewers, a 46.1% audience share. This beats the 7.3 million recorded for BBC Sport last month on the semi-final at Wembley between Manchester United and Chelsea.
Jamie Hindhaugh, BT Sport's chief operating officer, told SVG Europe that the production for the FA Cup Final was carried out remotely, using the model the broadcaster has been using since the beginning of lockdown.
Early on in April, BT Sport took the radical step of moving its entire production operation out of its studios at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, East London, and in just three weeks turned it into a decentralised remote operation following the lockdown of the UK.
BT Sport moved quickly to be able to run the entirety of its channel output with just five people on location at its studios in Stratford, while every other member of staff worked from their respective homes.
Since then, in June it said that lockdown had accelerated its remote production ambitions' it revealed it has moved permanently to a fully remote, distributed production workflow for more of its content, including coverage of the Premier League. This brings forward its vision to go fully remote by 2023.
On the Heads Up FA Cup Final, Hindhaugh said: We are producing remotely from High Wycombe, with presentation live from Wembley Stadium, plus a remote gallery from the BT Sport studio.
Hindhaugh added: We will be making dynamic crowd noise available around the fixture, as well as broadcasting the game in 4K UHD with HDR and Dolby Atmos.
Following the semi-finals earlier this month, when Arsenal beat Manchester City and Chelsea saw off Manchester United, last Saturday's competition was a London derby at Wembley Stadium and a repeat of the 2017 Final, which was also edged by the Gunners.
This year's Final kicked off at 5.30pm BST in the UK and was shown live on both BBC One and BT Sport.
The Final was the culmination of The FA and Heads Together's season-long Heads Up campaign. Spearheaded by HRH The Duke of Cambridge, Heads Up aims to harness the influence and popularity of football to encourage more people to feel comfortable talking about, and take action to improve, their mental health.
In recognition of the unprecedented circumstances surrounding the fixture the first FA Cup Final to be held behind-closed-doors - the theme was the #SoundOfSupport. While Wembley Stadium was silent, the conversation around mental health was louder than ever, with fans urged to show the sound of support' - and to make sure it's heard by those who need it.
Ahead of kick-off, there was a powerful 60 second #SoundOfSupport moment dedicated to Heads Up. Unique artificial crowd noise was played in the stadium, created from a soundscape of real mental health conversations with fans and players. The crowd noise was introduced to the players and fans by a rallying spoken word piece from poet and mental health champion Hussain Manawer.
The FA Cup's historic anthem Abide with Me was performed by Brit and BET award winning artist Emeli Sand from the roof of Wembley Stadium connected by EE. The performance was pre-recorded and played within the stadium bowl and to the global television audience ahead of kick-off.
There was no presentation party and the post-match trophy presentation took place on the pitch.
For more news and content from the Heads Up campaign visit TheFA.com/HeadsUp and headstogether.org.uk/heads-up.
Most recent headlines
22/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Neerav Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
22/12/2025
Hitting the bullseye: Sky Sports readies itself for the biggest PDC World Darts ...
22/12/2025
Unique skillset: Bringing new directors to the world of darts at The Worlds with...
22/12/2025
Gravity Media prepares for a flight of fancy with the PDC World Darts Championsh...
22/12/2025
One hundred and eighty: Gravity Media on hitting the production bullseye at the ...
22/12/2025
The Famous Group's Jon Slusser on Fascinating Fans Through Immersive Content...
22/12/2025
ESPN's Meg Aronowitz on Continuing High-Quality Broadcasts of Collegiate Spo...
22/12/2025
ESPN Takes Data-Driven Storytelling to New Heights with MNF Playbook with Next ...
22/12/2025
For a decade, popular German podcast Fest & Flauschig has hosted an annual Chris...
22/12/2025
Paramount Scores Largest Share Increase Among Distributors as Paramount and CBS...
22/12/2025
New multi-year deal integrates Roku's data to fuel Nielsen's measurement suite
Roku gains access to Nielsen's streaming ratings, showing The Roku C...
22/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
22/12/2025
Berklee Wrapped 2025: Our Top News and Stories A look back at a year highlighted by faculty milestones, major film and television projects, Bob Dylan's ho...
22/12/2025
Partnership integrates complementary satellite data and AI analytics to enhance security, infrastructure, and environmental monitoring solutions for global cust...
22/12/2025
Workflows allow you to create a sequence of planned events which may be added to your template(s) or inserted directly into your sequential or background playli...
22/12/2025
Monday 22 December 2025
Sky extends PGA TOUR partnership until 2029, as Sky Spo...
22/12/2025
Back to All News
Global Anime Hits and New Releases Take Center Stage at Jump Festa 2026
Entertainment
22 December 2025
GlobalJapan
Link copied to clipboar...
22/12/2025
Siobh n McSweeney, Rory McIlroy, Elon Musk, Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Ivan Yates and Traitor Paudie Moloney lead new characters for Callan Kicks the Year 2...
22/12/2025
Winner announced in the picturesque surroundings of Wicklow's Avondale Tower and Treetop Walk
Andrew Trimble wins the show in his first series as coach
Th...
22/12/2025
The 2025 winners have been announced today, Sunday 21 December, for Ireland's largest choral competition Choirs for Christmas hosted by RT lyric fm.
Ove...
21/12/2025
Back to All News
Legoshi and Haru's Story Reaches Its Finale: BEASTARS Fin...
21/12/2025
John Shortt named Young Sportsperson of the Year Kerry are the Team of the Year
...
20/12/2025
Atomos announced the immediate availability of a new firmware update for its Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX monitor-recorders, unlocking ProRes RAW recording from the...
20/12/2025
CJP Broadcast has completed the digitisation of the European Gymnastics tape archive, converting 328 tapes containing more than forty years of recorded material...
20/12/2025
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced the launch of the Stream Lab MCP Server, to give AI agents and large language model...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
20/12/2025
Barack Obama Includes Laufey on His 2025 Favorite Music List The former presidents roundup of books, music, and movies includes a song from the Berklee alums ...
20/12/2025
Study reveals a key hormonal circuit in the kidneys Scripps Research scientists identify the protein that helps kidney cells regulate renin, providing foundatio...
19/12/2025
With Playout Release 2025.4, ToolsOnAir continues to push professional playout w...
19/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Diversified's Jared Timmins on AI for Broadcast Sports and Cre...
19/12/2025
2025 SVG Summit Audio Recap: Say What?The Audio Production and Distribution Workshop at the SVG Summit 20 took on issues including speech intelligibility, Next-...
19/12/2025
Gamified fun: Channel 5 on its NFL Big Game Night ambitions with Hungry Bear Med...
19/12/2025
College Football Playoff Preview: For ESPN, Round 1 is a Fantastic Yet Familia...
19/12/2025
AWS's Jason Dvorkin on Developing Partnerships With the NBA and PGA Tour, Em...
19/12/2025
Netflix Kicks Off Packed Sports Week with Paul-Joshua Fight Before Shifting to N...
19/12/2025
SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Presidio's Nareev Shah on the Role of Its Captiva...
19/12/2025
Mounted to the pylon of an AH-1Z Viper helicopter, a Red Wolf vehicle successful...
19/12/2025
L3Harris technology for the SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer program will provide in...
19/12/2025
Partnership brings Nielsen ONE measurement activation directly into XR's adv...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
19/12/2025
Berklee Announces Spring 2026 Signature Series This season's highlights include the Gospel Extravaganza, the 40th International Folk Festival, special gue...
19/12/2025
Performing arts centres across the globe have doubled down on live production infrastructure in recent years. For venues like the Queensland Performing Arts Cen...
19/12/2025
Share Share by:
Copy link
Facebook
X
Whatsapp
Pinterest
Flipboard...
Heads Up on BT Sport's remote production of the FA Cup Final between Arsenal and Chelsea By Heather McLean, Editor 
