Channel Nine's Wide World of Sports Hits Livigno; XR From North Sydney Drives Coverage

Production is divided between a studio in the mountains and a brand-new studio in Australia

The hits keep coming for Wide World of Sports, Australian broadcaster Channel Nine's sports arm. Its production team leapt into Milano Cortina 2026 directly from last month's Australian Open and numerous other production-intensive events.

The production team came straight out of our Australian Open coverage into the Winters, the Rugby Union season began this past weekend, and the Rugby League season also began, says Alex Rolls, head of creative and innovation, Wide World of Sports/executive producer, Beyond the Dream, Olympic documentaries. And Wide World of Sports has never been so busy, with documentaries, digital, and social also part of our coverage.

Channel Nine has split its on-air presentation, with half its coverage coming from Italy and the other half in Australia, where the broadcaster has a brand-new XR studio. The team numbers about 50 in Italy, and 200 people are working on the event in Sydney. There are also 10 presenters/reporters in Italy.

We're on-air from 7 p.m. to 10 a.m. on Nine, our free-to-air channel, Rolls explains. It has been a massive team effort to bring the Games to Australia through the night. As always, we try to be live for all the major events.

But we're also big on storytelling, he continues. This is never more crucial than with the Winters, where a lot of our athletes aren't household names. We've spent a lot of time with them to make content and show the country who they are before showing the events they are in.

Only one channel (Nine) is broadcast free-to-air, he adds,

but our SVOD platform (Stan.) has every sport streamed, coverage from other broadcasters, catchup. It's a great content offering, and our ratings have surpassed our expectations.

Channel Nine centered its coverage in Livigno, Rolls says, because the events there are where Australia is strongest competitively. Australia is strong in Moguls and Halfpipe traditionally, and that has played out again with our gold medals so far. The traditional sports still attract a large audience also - like the Figure Skating, which has been incredible.

As with Paris 2024, Wide World of Sports has a small studio, this time overlooking the foot of the mountain, he notes, but we are wrapping AR content around [its output] from back here in Australia, which has worked really well.

Channel Nine is also taking advantage of a new studio in North Sydney.

The new studio here will be our home for all major productions for the network moving forward, says Rolls. Once again, we partnered with Jago Design and AE Live, who have worked incredibly well with our own design team here to create a space that we're proud of. Technology-wise, we purchased a new 12 4-square-meter screen, which has XR capabilities. Graphics-wise, we chose the Viz/Unreal offering.

A new XR studio is helping Channel Nine's Wide World of Sports shine a spotlight on Australia's winter-sports stars.Because not all shows that are broadcast from the studio will need the XR functions, it can also operate in a more traditional, non-virtual way.

The studio is operated by AE Live for the Winter Games, Rolls says, but our own internal graphics department will use it as they have a Viz-based production model, which is good because it gives us the best of both worlds. We've created a home of Nine' design. but each sport moving forward will have its own flavor and look and feel within the master brand of Wide World of Sports.

Perhaps most important, the Australian team has garnered three gold medals, a silver, and a bronze through Feb. 18.

We ve had some big events dropping in primetime, which has been great for us, says Rolls. The Australian team as always just amazed us. Our sunburnt country continues to produce athletes competing against the more established' countries, and they continue to get the results. We've got athletes who live on the road for seven or eight months a year to get the weather and access to the facilities they need, away from family and friends, and they've turned up here and been incredible.

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