
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
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
02/07/2025
Hege Wik and Odin appear in FOLKTALES by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institut...
02/07/2025
(Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Patty Consolazio
This one's for any person who's ever felt put down, left out, marginaliz...
02/07/2025
Calrec expands ecosystem at NAB 2025 giving broadcasters access to dynamic workflows and ultimate flexibility Helping broadcasters meet the shifting needs of me...
02/07/2025
NEW YORK Paramount Global has agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit by President Donald Trump, ending a long-running legal saga that could clear the way...
02/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved the transfer of licenses for five TV stations from Sinclair to Rincon Broadcasting, which announce...
02/07/2025
As the media industry faces an uncertain business climate and rapidly changing consumer habits, TV Tech's most popular stories from the first six months of ...
02/07/2025
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. New data shows that U.S. homes now own an average of two smart TVs, with Samsung and LG dominating the market but Roku and FireTV continue to g...
02/07/2025
LOS ANGELES Funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management have acquired FilmRise, an independent digital streaming content distributor, and merged it with Shout! ...
02/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Advanced Television Systems Committee named Luiz Fausto vice president of standards development, succeeding ATSC vice president Jerry Whitaker, w...
02/07/2025
Boston Conservatory and the Sphinx Organization Join Forces to Make Classical Ed...
02/07/2025
02 Jul 2025
VEON Raises USD 200 Million in Private Bond Placement Dubai, July 1, 2025: VEON Ltd. (Nasdaq: VEON), a global digital operator ( VEON ), announces ...
02/07/2025
Brand new factual series follows mechanic and self-taught engineer Dom Chinea as he makes the move of his life to the far west of Cornwall
UKTV today announces...
02/07/2025
Progressive realism: Aurora on taking up the broadcast reins for World RX alongs...
02/07/2025
Great speed: New host broadcaster Aurora on getting the World RX 2025 season pro...
02/07/2025
Seat of its pants: Aurora boxes clever and looks ahead for the FIA as new host b...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: EBU, BBC Sport and Sunset Vine talk coverage plans, ...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Women's Super League launches new content series...
02/07/2025
UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Ignite puts fans and players front and centre with t...
02/07/2025
Storytelling in the Live Game Broadcast: ESPN Director Jimmy Platt Breaks Down t...
02/07/2025
CONCACAF's Miguel Angel Garcia on the Gold Cup's Enhanced 2025 Productio...
02/07/2025
Rohde & Schwarz acquires ZES ZIMMER Electronic Systems GmbH and expands its T&M ...
02/07/2025
Wuppertal July 2, 2025
Riedel Communications Launches RefSuite Ecosystem for S...
02/07/2025
Andrew will serve as Chair of ABC alongside his role at NED, APL Media, where he supports the executive team with strategic insight and global expansion plans. ...
02/07/2025
Black Forest Labs, one of the world's leading AI research labs, just changed the game for image generation.
The lab's FLUX.1 image models have earned g...
01/07/2025
The launch of Code of Silence, coupled with the Britains Got Talent semi final, gave ITV its best Sunday night of 2025.
The first episode of the new crime dr...
01/07/2025
ITV and Mammoth Screen have announced the start of filming for Betrayal, a gripp...
01/07/2025
L3Harris Technologies has delivered its second Bombardier Global 6500 missionize...
01/07/2025
MELBOURNE, Fla., July 1, 2025 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) will release its second quarter 2025 financial results before the market opens on Thursday, Ju...
01/07/2025
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has rejected license challenges to three full-power Baltimore TV stations, renewing the licenses for Chesapeake...
01/07/2025
Dalet has released a new update to its Dalet Flex media workflow platform, introducing powerful new capabilities to its flagship platform....
01/07/2025
NEWARK, N.J. With the FIFA Club World Cup final rapidly approaching and the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup now less than a year away, interest in soccer in th...
01/07/2025
COW Job Listing: Laser Engraved Logo
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
Laser engraved logo
July 1, 2025Steffie Beltt's Mi Amor Music Video Cr...
01/07/2025
LeGrow.Studio Builds Broadcast Hub for ePro League
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
TEM Constellation HD and BlackmagicURSA Broadcast G2 drive liv...
01/07/2025
Beeble launches SwitchLight 2.0, bringing AI-powered relighting to any footage
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
New AI model delivers full-scene p...
01/07/2025
Steffie Beltt's Mi Amor Music Video Created with Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton July 1, 2025
0 Comments
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K digital film camera...
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement and Media Bureaus have entered into a consent decree with Sinclair to resolve a variety of in...
01/07/2025
DENVER Low-power television (LPTV) station owners looking to navigate the complexities of selling their assets in todays dynamic media environment are invited t...
01/07/2025
NASA announced today that live programming from its NASA+ channel will be available on Netflix starting sometime this summer....
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr has appointed Katie McAuliffe to serve as policy advisor in his office....
01/07/2025
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. Alphabet's GFiber, the broadband provider formerly known as Google Fiber, has announced that it recently worked with Nokia to demonstr...
01/07/2025
NEW YORK, N.Y. DoubleVerify (DV) has announced the launch of DV Authentic Attention for Social. The product will first launch with Snap, the owner of Snapchat....
01/07/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has rejected license challenges to three full-power Baltimore TV stations and agreed to renew the license for C...
01/07/2025
Compact new converter lets users capture live NDI and streaming sources into software over a USB interface
Video interface and IP workflow innovator Magewell ...
01/07/2025
Disguise, the award-winning tech company driving visuals for Broadway and West End hits including Redwood, Stranger Things: The First Shadow and Disney's Fr...
01/07/2025
Vocal-processing plug-in joins NOIZ Hub series
Launched in 2024, KIT Plugins' NOIZ Hub series was created with the aim of providing a range of professio...
01/07/2025
New self-paced learning programme announced
Mastering.com have announced the availability of a new online course designed to cover the fundamentals of maste...
01/07/2025
Historic appointment ushers in unified leadership for WRAL-TV, New Media, and Digital Solutions
RALEIGH, N.C. - 6-27-25 - Capitol Broadcasting Company is prou...