SailGP returns for a second season with the ultimate remote production' set up By Michael Burns
Monday, May 10, 2021 - 13:38
Print This Story
Data-driven, remotely produced, sustainably-minded and featuring fabulous locations and very fast boats, the second season of SailGP is underway and the broadcast production values are even higher
SailGP is back. The thrilling high-speed foiling catamaran race that takes place in spectacular locations around the world has returned following the postponement of the 2020 season, and the award-winning live broadcast coverage is even more innovative than before.
The Bermuda Sail Grand Prix presented by Hamilton Princess marked the opening event of the second season for the sport's pinnacle league and is the first of eight events that take place throughout 2021-2022 across three continents. Fans will be able to enjoy the action worldwide with broadcast coverage now reaching 175 territories.
From Bermuda, Warren Jones, chief technology officer for SailGP, gives SVG Europe the lowdown: For Season 2 we are bringing viewers closer to the action at each race. Key to this is how we communicate with the F50s [SailGP's supercharged foiling catamarans] via a direct connection to a remote Oracle data centre in London. This technology allows us to deliver real-time data to racing teams and fans alike, enabling spectators to gain a greater understanding of the sport and appreciation of the skill of the crews.
SailGP Season 2 features teams from Australia, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Japan, New Zealand, Spain and the US, including veteran sailors and Olympic athletes
Remote production
Jones acknowledges SailGP has been fortunate in that COVID-19 has not had too much of an impact on how the race is actually broadcast. SailGP deployed its first remote production in January 2019 in Sydney, continuing throughout Season 1, including San Francisco, New York City, Cowes and Marseille. This season, we built on the remote production ethos we developed in Season 1, bringing more services and software stack into the Oracle Cloud to enable a greater level of remote production.
The live coverage is once again being produced from a dedicated gallery at Timeline TV's Ealing broadcast centre by host broadcaster Whisper Films, but here too enhancements have been made, according to Daniel McDonnell, MD of Timeline Television.
This season, we built on the remote production ethos we developed in Season 1, bringing more services and software stack into the Oracle Cloud to enable a greater level of remote production
At the core, it's the same sort of concept as last season, a complete remote OB, says McDonnell. There are no production facilities on site, every single source comes back to our Ealing broadcast centre and that's where the director, the EVS operators and graphics [are based]. This year we took it even further. We brought the umpires back into Ealing, we brought all of the camera racking back and all the boats were controlled from within Ealing, so no operators were on site.
We have a high-speed, private fibre network provided by Tata from Ealing broadcast centre to the OB, he continues. So that gives us a huge opportunity to bring back all the feeds.
According to Jones, this takes the form of two redundant, dedicated, high-availability links installed for SailGP between each venue and the production based in London for every race. Each F50 has two on-board cameras that are operated in London alongside three camera boats, two ENG cameras and one helicopter camera, he says. We also manage SailGP digital output from London, including the SailGP app that has live data and video plus all social media output including YouTube and Facebook live streams. These feeds were streamed to London from 4,000 miles away in Bermuda and produced and distributed in near real time, which is an incredible feat of technology.
There's no internet involved, it travels two ways around the world to give us a full level of redundancy, says McDonnell. Once we've got all the feeds back into Ealing we can put them all in a MAM. We also had multiple OTT streams, so we had the ability for rights holding broadcasters to take their own onboard camera feeds if they wish to supplement the world feed. The opportunities are all very scalable. This is the ultimate way to do remote production, to get everything back.
The F50s have a crew of five: a helmsman, wing trimmer, flight controller and two grinders
Onboard setup
The boats have a crew of five - a helmsman, wing trimmer, flight controller and two grinders. The catamarans are state of the art in terms of sailing prowess, but they're not lacking in terms of comms and AV either. Each boat carries customised video cameras and microphones, and athletes are miked up, allowing producers to jump to individual crew members and cameras for detail-level shots or when an incident occurs.
Specialised onboard hardware, including GPS antennas and receivers, telemetry antennas and data radios, tracking equipment, inertial measurement units, wiring harnesses and batteries - most of which are fitted in the hulls of the F50 in protective Pelican cases - allow SailGP to achieve 2cm positional accuracy of each craft.
With the postponement of Season 2, we looked closely at improvements on the F50s, particularly with the ambient sound that these devices create, says Jones. For Season 2, in addition to the camera feeds, each F50 has two effects microphones installed within the platform and we have improved the athletes' communications between the team on the water and with SailGP departments. For the Bermuda SailGP race, for example, Iain Murray our race director was located in Sydney while still being able to communicate with each SailGP team. Craig Mitchell, SailGP chief umpire, was locate
North America Stories
27/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/03/2026
Marshall Electronics Showcases New Feature-Rich CV320 and CV520 IP and 3G-SDI PO...
27/03/2026
Sony Electronics Inc. Elevates Professional Video Workflows with Powerful Update...
27/03/2026
GatesAir Extends AirWatch365 Managed Service with Edge Gateway Site Appliance
Brie Clayton March 27, 2026
0 Comments
NAB marks global launch of servic...
27/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
27/03/2026
At NAB Show 2026, Net Insight will showcase the next evolution of Nimbra Edge, its orchestration and control layer designed to manage live media services across...
27/03/2026
Harmonic (NASDAQ: HLIT) today announced powerful new innovations that further elevate the company's sports streaming solution. The advanced capabilities enh...
27/03/2026
Bitmovin, the leading provider of video streaming solutions, today announced significant new capabilities for Player Web X, its next-generation web video player...
27/03/2026
Riedel Communications today announced that Czech-based production company CS live has equipped its newest outside broadcast (OB) van with an integrated Riedel i...
27/03/2026
130 Industry Experts Confirmed as Show Celebrates its 10th Anniversary
MPTS, the UK's largest and most influential event for the media, production and tech...
27/03/2026
Grass Valley today announced the successful completion of a major live production deployment with NVP, a leading European media company specializing in live spo...
27/03/2026
Showcases resilient solutions for satellite-to-IP migration, REMI and hybrid live production
Appear ASA (Appear, OSE:APR), a global leader in live production t...
27/03/2026
San Francisco, California, March 2026 - Microsoft Ignite, a major annual conference hosted by Microsoft for developers, IT professionals, partners and business ...
27/03/2026
Clear-Com is proud to highlight its support for worship teams through professional communication solutions, with the deployment of its EQUIP wireless system a...
27/03/2026
Orban Collaborates with Sage on Virtualized EAS Technology Demo
Brie Clayton March 26, 2026
0 Comments
Sage Alerting Systems (SAS), in cooperation wit...
27/03/2026
Berklee Alums Bring GIANT to Broadway Brian and Dayna Lee BM '13 met and fell in love at Berklee, and now their production companys first Broadway debut i...
26/03/2026
Extron and Audio-Technica have announced that their Design Solutions devices, Ce...
26/03/2026
SPORTEL Asia took place March 24-25 at the Orchard Hotel Singapore, drawing 370 participants representing more than 220 companies from 35 countries. Approximate...
26/03/2026
LTN will demonstrate satellite-to-IP migration solutions for broadcasters, cable networks, MVPDs, and station groups at NAB Show 2026 (Booth W2100).
The C-Ban...
26/03/2026
The Seattle Mariners have partnered with Daktronics to install an upgraded outfi...
26/03/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) has awarded National Team Partner status to organizations and individuals across more than 100 countries and territories for the Esp...
26/03/2026
Telestream has announced expanded integration between its Vantage workflow platf...
26/03/2026
FOR-A Corporation has announced a partnership with Nippon TV and NVIDIA to distr...
26/03/2026
CBS Sports and the WNBA have expanded their partnership through a new long-term, multiplatform rights agreement. CBS Sports will feature up to 20 regular-season...
26/03/2026
Zac Brown Band will star in the Sunday Night Baseball show open on NBC and Peacock, NBC Sports announced. The open was filmed at American Family Field, home of ...
26/03/2026
Major League Baseball opens the 2026 season with nationally televised games across multiple media partners. Fans can visit MLB.com/Watch for a complete schedule...
26/03/2026
DIRECTV has announced an agreement to carry nine new MLB-operated team channels, covering the Cincinnati Reds, Detroit Tigers (Detroit SportsNet), Kansas City R...
26/03/2026
Nationals.TV, the Washington Nationals' local broadcast channel, is now avai...
26/03/2026
Starting Thursday, March 26, MLB.TV will be available on the ESPN App, giving fans access to more than 2,000 out-of-market regular season games. Fans can also r...
26/03/2026
By Matt Klein
Hello to everyone reading this - whether you're a current YEP, HPA member, or just YEP-curious. I'm Matt Klein, one of the co-chairs of t...
26/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
26/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
26/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
26/03/2026
28 participating companies, from start-ups to blue-chips, lead the UK Group as part of the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland presence across all the Halls at N...
26/03/2026
Arkona Unveils BLADE//planner and Major Usability Enhancements at NAB 2026
Brie Clayton March 26, 2026
0 Comments
New graphical configuration tool and...
26/03/2026
Bitfocus showcases complete control at NAB Show 2026
Brie Clayton March 26, 2026
0 Comments
Continuing development drives advances in security, availa...
26/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
26/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
26/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
26/03/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
26/03/2026
Nevion introduces powerful new Panel Builder to enhance VideoIPath broadcast con...
26/03/2026
2026 Oscar Nominated Films Powered by Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton March 25, 2026
0 Comments
DaVinci Resolve Studio used on 27 of this year's no...
26/03/2026
Leader to present full suite of advanced Test & Measurement solutions at NAB Sho...
26/03/2026
Boston Conservatory to Present New England and Collegiate Premiere of Groundbrea...
26/03/2026
Back to All News
Have a Wish Worth Dying For? Netflix's First Korean YA Hor...
SailGP returns for a second season with the ultimate remote production' set up By Michael Burns 
