Premier League re-start: How Sky Sports went remote for the first time EFL remote production experience invaluable as Sky team takes another giant step By Fergal Ringrose, Editorial Director, Europe
Thursday, June 25, 2020 - 15:49
Print This Story
The Premier League returned to action last week after a 100-day hiatus because of the coronavirus. Sky Sports was the first broadcaster back on air on Wednesday 17 June with a double header featuring Aston Villa v Sheffield United followed by Manchester City v Arsenal.
The next day, 18 June, several key members of the Sky production team including the Man City v Arsenal match director joined moderator Will Strauss to discuss the new production normal' at SVG Europe's virtual Football Summit 2020.
On the vMix/Singular Live virtual platform for the session were Lawrence Cawsey, senior director, Sky Sports Football; Jena Mihalovic, technical operations project lead, Sky Sports; Kevin Ramsey, director of studios, Sky Production Services; and John Turnbull, deputy managing director, NEP UK Broadcast Services.
The discussion covered match directing, remote production, crewing and staff protocols, social distancing and health and safety, and what life is now like when working on live football coverage.
There was quite a lot of pressure on the whole Sky team last night, directing Premier League football remotely, said Cawsey. There were many things we did for the first time last night. The technical and planning teams have done an amazing job in enabling us to deliver everything.
What was it like to direct? Being away from the ground has its challenges. Obviously there were new camera and interview positions, and as a director you're used to walking around before the game and obviously that is not possible when you are remote.
It was the first time I've directed a game with no fans, and I would say, coming away from yesterday, I had a real appreciation of how important stadium fans are to the TV viewing experience, said Cawsey.
We rely a lot as directors on emotional shots of players in our storytelling, and these shots just don't seem to happen as much with no fans in the stadium because the players don't have fans to feed off. And normally you will hear the noise of the fans reverberate through the walls of the truck and that emits an energy to you and your crew.
I chose to listen last night with the natural stadium audio as opposed to the augmented audio that Sky was offering, and it was a challenge to keep the energy levels up.
But the one massive bonus of remote production is to be able to be home within ten minutes of the end of my shift, rather than a four-hour drive down the M6.
Watch the session in full
The first thing we led with was health and safety, said Jena Mihalovic. We always want people to be safe, but this is a very unique situation, having people coming back and working two metres apart.
Everybody who has worked in television knows we like to be together! We lean on each other and work in very dense spaces.
So the first thing we had to figure out was how to give each person what they needed to do their job in a safe way. That meant deconstructing how we normally work.
So we created four separate graphics hubs, so that our graphics operators and stats people could operate at a safe place outside of the gallery. We looked at ways to limit the number of people on-site and people at Sky so that everybody can be kept safe. John can speak about that from the stadium side.
In addition to graphics are the replay rooms. EVS operators like to operate shoulder to shoulder. It's very hard to separate them out! So we built an entirely new replay area still side by side but a little bit further away then they would like to be.
Everybody who has worked in television knows we like to be together! - Jena Mihalovic
We also pulled our lighting directors out of the gallery and located them at another safe station at Sky. So it was really about unpacking our usual work spaces in a safe way.
Remote production has been with Sky for I think about five years now, added Mihalovic. We've touched on it for previous productions. But last year we made a commitment to take the EFL remote, so we transformed the gallery and added connectivity, working with NEP Connect, to get connectivity at all of the grounds.
We did about 50 games with the EFL and that has truly prepared us for slipping into the Premier League. I don't think we could have done what we've done as easily without the experience we gained from doing the EFL day in and day out and learning from that as we went. That was really important.
So while it wasn't easy' it was an easy decision to make to go to remote production and keep our people safe by moving Premier League into the gallery we created for EFL, and then moving EFL, with a slightly reduced spec, into another gallery - adding the remote connectivity we needed there.
The gallery still looks the same and acts the same to the production staff, which is a great comfort and also helps with the transition, she said.
Overcoming obstacles without compromising the safety of people
Kevin Ramsey began by saying, Well first of all I need to change teams after the Arsenal result last night! It goes without saying that Sky's production teams have incredibly high standards and expectations in the work they produce.
As the department that supplies both facilities and operational crews for Sky Sports it can be incredibly rewarding working side by side with people who push the boundaries. But there's a flip side to that in the amount of graft it takes to support their visions!
Especially at this time when there are so many logistical obstacles in our way. We clearly didn't want to be the weak link that undermined what went to air. So what
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
In a live broadcast from the Reagan National Defense Forum, L3Harris Chair and CEO Christopher Kubasik joined Morgan Brennan on CNBCs Closing Bell: Overtime. Ku...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Introducing New Perks to Help You Get Even More from LinkedIn Premium Published on Dec 5, 2025 Categories: Company News, Product News
LinkedIn Corporate Co...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
Premier League re-start: How Sky Sports went remote for the first time EFL remote production experience invaluable as Sky team takes another giant step By Fergal Ringrose, Editorial Director, Europe 
