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
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/07/2026
David Dvir, 2D founder (left), Sundeep Reddy (center), and Jean-Marc Bouchut (right), both of Zeiss...
23/07/2026
Screen Australia announces new national documentary accelerator program 23 July 2026
Screen Australia has today announced the Above the Line Documentary Accel...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang today visited the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, to commission an NVIDIA DGX GB300 system - bringing one...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
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 
