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'
