Broadcast evolution: Formula E technology director Eric Ernst on taking the all-electric motorsport into a new centralised remote production By Heather McLean
Thursday, August 3, 2023 - 09:06
Print This Story
This year in Season 9, 22 drivers from 11 teams including iconic racing brands McLaren, Porsche, Jaguar, Maserati and Nissan lined up on the grid of the most competitive and entertaining season of Formula E yet
Formula E has come a long way since its inaugural race in Beijing back in 2014. The world's first all-electric motorsport world championship mandated by the FIA and only sport to be net zero carbon since its inception Formula E leads the elite sports industry in showcasing how high performance and sustainability can co-exist.
This year in Season 9, 22 drivers from 11 teams including iconic racing brands McLaren, Porsche, Jaguar, Maserati and Nissan lined up on the grid of the most competitive and entertaining season yet. With such an elite racing product on the track, it was critical that the broadcast product also took a huge step forwards.
Starting this season, Formula E's most significant gamechanger was to take the host broadcast technical facilities of all its content inhouse as a managed contract. This is based on a new broadcast system developed by the Formula E Technology Department and managed by Eric Ernst, technology director at Formula E.
Speaking to SVG Europe, Ernst comments on this evolution: Formula E is a very young sport and the goal at the beginning was just to get something going as soon as possible to prove the concept of an all-electric motorsport. The founders back then just went to a whole bunch of their contacts and said, Can you do TV? Can you do timing? Can you do whatever? Just do it .
This is not a broadcasting department. This is the technology department stepping in and saying, this is basically a networking operation and we can run this like we run the rights holder distribution or the timing network, like we run the connectivity into track; we can also engineer, provide and manage these services
The product has now outgrown that [original] workflow. When I joined five years ago, coming from the Volvo Ocean Race where we were already doing remote production on a smaller scale, I looked at the whole thing [as it stood then] and said, this is probably not the direction we should be headed .
Ernst wanted to push the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship further along to maintain its sustainability credentials, as well as making the entire system that the broadcast is based upon more reliable, flexible and futureproof.
The Gravity Media Production Centre for Formula E at White City, London
Overriding escalating risk
The pre-existing system was based on ageing broadcast equipment being sustained to maximise the investment. However, the issues and outages that began arising were escalating in risk, according to Ernst.
He notes: There was a need that we really, really had to do something soon, change the model and look at what's available in the market today. I have a lot of experience in building enterprise networks, enterprise deployments and doing global sporting events for the last 15 years.
What happened next is something of a coup, where Ernst's team in the technology department were entrusted with the technical facilities of the host broadcast for the championship. Ernst explains: It took a good three or four years for us as a company to get to a maturity level where it entrusted us to take this over; and I'm talking about the technology department. This is not a broadcasting department. This is the technology department stepping in and saying, this is basically a networking operation and we can run this like we run the rights holder distribution or the timing network, like we run the connectivity into track; we can also engineer, provide and manage these services .
That's where we [the technology department] engaged. We have massively grown as a championship and there were areas that we could run more sustainably and others where we could optimise the technology.
We initially did an RFI, then companies who responded to the RFI went into an RFP process. After selecting our host broadcast partner we took over the management last year, well, this season, and we have done eleven races in this set up to date.
Centralised remote production
The new set up is based on a centralised remote production model with a small footprint on location, and around 50 staff that were previously on site are now working from the UK at Gravity Media's Westworks production centre in London, including people on racking, tv graphics and audio.
Connectivity for the broadcast is over the public internet rather than dark fibre, facilitated by Tata Communications. We operate a data centre with really high availability out of a parking lot, notes Ernst.
There was a lot of convincing that had to happen, because everybody's scared when something goes black, for obvious reasons. It's a hard way for a supplier to prove to you why it's not their fault or it's a hard way for a client to prove why it's the supplier's fault. Taking down this mentality and getting rid of the finger pointing mentality of just kind of opened up this playing field
Regarding the connectivity over the public internet, he adds: My background in networks taught me that if I order a certain amount of connectivity, I pretty much get almost a similar service as when I get a dark fibre. The networks are now good enough that the added protection I would get with a dark fibre I can mitigate with a second fully diverse line.
With our partner, Tata Communications, they can move worlds for us. We're sending around 90 feeds back to Westworks over a 2GB internet connection. At Westworks we have our studio, so we'
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Broadcast evolution: Formula E technology director Eric Ernst on taking the all-electric motorsport into a new centralised remote production By Heather McLean 
