Sustainable Conversation: NEP and Cloudbass Work with Sky Sports to Bring the New Premier League Season into a Greener Future

Sustainable conversation: NEP and Cloudbass work with Sky Sports to bring the new Premier League season into a greener future By Heather McLean

Monday, September 22, 2025 - 14:49

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One of Cloudbass' new e-HGV tractor units on location for Sky Sports' coverage of the Premier League

Sky Sports has jumped into its new Premier League contract with both feet, using an IP-based remote production model and new outside broadcast trucks with IP at their core, developed by its partners NEP and Cloudbass. This remote production strategy driven by cutting edge OBs is also advancing both the Premier League's and Sky Sports' sustainability goals more than ever before.

Read more Mass production: Taking the Premier League to new levels at Sky Sports with a rapid boost to the broadcaster's IP transformation

Over the course of the summer, Sky Sports' technical services partners Gravity Media, NEP and Cloudbass have each rolled out two new IP-based remote OB vehicles to work across cricket (Gravity Media) and the Premier League (NEP and Cloudbass), that are really, really cutting edge and they're now all in operation and are all delivering the remote workflows that were always envisaged, says Phil Marshall, executive director for production and operations at Sky Sports.

Inside one of NEP's new trucks for Sky Sports and the Premier League

IP-based OB

Kevin McCue, Sky Sports' director of studios and technology, says that Sky Sports' technical services partners for the Premier League contract have both stepped up with the development of new IP-based trucks that fit neatly into the new workflow at the broadcast's base in Osterley.

The new trucks that we've got on the road from Cloudbass and NEP are all purely IP and they're great trucks, they're really well built. [Gravity Media's] trucks that they've put on the road for us for cricket are also fantastic. It feels now that we understand what a remote vehicle should be and the suppliers are building great facilities to deliver what remote production is. We've gone through that using old rolling stock, to dedicated stock designed specifically for the job and specifically for us really to achieve our remote production ways of working.

Read more Huge uplift: Sky Sports goes large for the new Premier League 2025 season

Jennie Blackmore, head of production at Sky Sports, tells SVG Europe: We've worked really closely with NEP and Cloudbass. We've got the split of the games between them. I think they've done an incredible job from when they were awarded the contracts to working side by side with us to build these trucks specifically for our Premier League coverage. There's some great sustainability initiatives, with Steve Knee at Cloudbass and the electric tractor units, and also battery solutions on the trucks for power, and NEP have actually built much lighter trucks than they've ever built before, which in turn creates a 25% fuel usage saving travelling around the country because of less weight on the truck.

[The trucks from NEP and Cloudbass] also equally both require less power to run as well, notes Blackmore. So whereas traditionally we'd always at every Premier League club ask for two 125amps, they're now both running off a single 63amp, which in turn, working with the Premier League to ensure that we have power available at the stadiums, is a massive step forward. Throughout the term that they've been building the trucks, [the OB companies have] shared truck designs - the tech elements of the truck to really work alongside us to make sure that what they are building and what they are putting in those trucks really works for us and our Premier League coverage.

Adds Marshall: I think that's all through the strong partnerships that we've built over the course of the last few decades, through our journey, through remote production that really started from a host broadcast point of view with the English Football League (EFL) in 2019, the processes that we work through have brought about these trucks that really do now work fantastically for our needs.

McCue adds that connectivity is an important factor in enabling the Premier League contract to work with such a large remote production element. Sky Sports has recently moved to BT Media & Broadcast as its new connectivity provider.

Says McCue: BT Media & Broadcast unlocked a lot of that, because we've got a really great network partner; it's very, very smart, what they've built and the way that they operate. The way that they book services, we've got great capacity on the network. So even simple things like the way that we move audio around, we've rebuilt all of that so all of our audio is moved around in IP up and down the networks, now.

I'll reference Gordon Roxborough who works in my team; his vision and Alex Judd's vision of what real connectivity into tier one remote production facilities should be has been realised with what we've done this season, states McCue.

Sustainable conversation

On how sustainability becomes part of the conversation at Sky Sports, Blackmore says: It always starts with us, especially from an OB perspective. It always starts right from the beginning. It forms such a major part of our procurement process when it comes to OB suppliers because if you don't start from the beginning when you're actually talking about what we need for a production, it's so hard to add in down the line. We really look for what the OB suppliers are coming to us with in terms of sustainable power solutions. Power is probably the main thing obviously, but also all sorts of responsible business practises as well, and what processes and systems they have got in place for bringing new people into the industry and kee

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/sustainable-conversation-nep-...
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