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
08/12/2025
Nielsen's robust data offering enables marketers to connect with their target audience more effectively and drive better results throughout Amazon's adv...
08/12/2025
LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK Paramount has launched a hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery with an all-cash tender offer to acquire all of the outstandin...
08/12/2025
EMERYVILLE, Calif. Media and entertainment technology and services provider Advanced Systems Group has named Macky Beheshti as director, enterprise storage and ...
08/12/2025
DENVER MediaKind, a global provider of cloud-based video streaming technology announced today that it is acquiring the video business of Harmonic Inc. for appro...
08/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsen has announced that its Audience Segments from Nielsen Marketing Cloud (NMC) are now available across the Amazon Ads marketplace, including the ...
08/12/2025
Marshall Electronics showcases the CV355-27X-ND3 Optical Zoom NDI (NDI HX2, NDI HX3) Camera at ISE 2026 (Booth 4N900). Designed for users seeking high-quality ...
08/12/2025
Cinnafilm today announced the immediate availability of IPx LIVE and Tachyon LIVE, delivering broadcast-grade, real-time IP video transcoding and motion-compens...
08/12/2025
Following a successful 45th anniversary year in 2024, Hiltron reports increasing demand for its wide range of satellite communication equipment manufacturing, p...
08/12/2025
Back to All News
Netflix ISP Speed Index for November 2025
Product
08 December 2025
Global
Link copied to clipboard
This month marks 15 years of the Netfl...
08/12/2025
Back to All News
Another Exciting Chapter in Our Book-to-Screen Journey and What's to Come
Entertainment
08 December 2025
Global
Link copied to clipboa...
07/12/2025
Back to All News
Netflix Takes Over the Oslo Skyline With Celebratory Troll 2 L...
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
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 important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public commen...
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
Back to All News
Netflix Unveils the First Look for Land of Sin' - Premier...
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
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
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
Coronal mass ejections caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun can have fa...
SailGP returns for a second season with the ultimate remote production' set up By Michael Burns 
