Rebrand and refresh: SailGP talks bringing its graphics operations inhouse for a bright new look to keep viewers illuminated By Heather McLean Wednesday, April 24, 2024 - 15:55
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SailGP has rolled out a refreshed graphics package, now run inhouse
At the Australia Sail Grand Prix in late February SailGP rolled out a refreshed graphics look and feel, which has been designed to give viewers more information in a simplified manner.
The graphics refresh has been part of an overall plan to bring SailGP's graphics facilities inhouse so the team can have finer control over what they can show to viewers.
Chris Carpenter, executive and live producer at SailGP, works closely with Tom Peel, SailGP's head of graphics. Talking to SVG Europe, Carpenter elaborates on the decision to bring its graphics operation inhouse: We had a third party graphics provider who were our partners coming in prior to season four, and we found that there were lots of intricacies surrounding the sport and the data flow, to the technical aspects of SailGP, so that it just made lots of sense to bring that inhouse.
There was a bit of a disconnect in style, and sometimes storytelling mechanisms between our augmented graphics package LiveLineFX and the 2D sporting data. The refresh has actually brought those two graphical elements much more closer together in look and feel and how we implement them
He expands: Any company would've struggled to get their heads around the technicalities of not only the sport, but most importantly how the data flow works. It's a really intricate proposition and property, and it's complicated to be able to editorialise and educate a viewer, and also keep our sailing aficionados happy by digging deep into what is a technical sport. So the decision was made to bring that inhouse.
We have an incredible inhouse graphics team anyway with LiveLineFX, he continues. Tom's team was just tasked out to expand that team in order to bring in the 2D sporting graphics element within the SailGP production house. So that was the first iteration; throughout season three that was being developed in the background.
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Peel adds: I think one of the biggest things about bringing it inhouse was when we had a third party provider, they tried to make our shoe fit their boot. We own all the boats and we own all the data, so we're different to Formula One where they've got limited amounts of access to data that they're able to get from the teams; we've got absolutely everything. So it's an absolute treasure chest, but also an absolute needle in a haystack to try and find the bits of information that actually help tell the story and make it a better experience for the viewer.
Meanwhile, Peel comments: Visually, right now our deck looks very similar to the old one [perhaps like] we've just jazzed it up a bit but that's not true. There's definitely subtle differences and there's more to come, but ultimately, we've enabled the mechanics in the background to be way more flexible. When you're trying to do a broadcast, you need to have the flexibility to be able to move around quickly and get from piece to piece, and there's lots of content to fit in, and then there's another race coming up on the horizon that's coming like a train, and it's not going to wait for you. There's all sorts of bits, like having the ability to show the finishing order of the race from a second after they've started; what that enables us to do is if there's a big spread in the race, we can finish the first five boats and say, well, the provisional results are, these are the positions for the boats, even though they haven't finished.
The new graphics include a focus on the final race of each race weekend, to ensure SailGP is consistently telling the story of the teams taking part in that last head to head.
It's not common to do a mid-season rebrand from a broadcast perspective, but we wanted to do it anyway
Continues Peel: We've got a little lower third graphic which updates the penalty if there's any penalties applied between the races or it allows us to come back without having to add another segment to the rundown, which is a big graphics background, full frame graphic; instead we've got a lower third so we can update people. So I think you could argue right now we've added better functionality for Chris and the broadcast team to keep the show flowing, and that's going to lead to a better experience for the viewer because the show's going to be less affected by changes.
Why wait?
SailGP decided not to do a complete graphics rebrand and refresh for the entire broadcast at the start of season four, as the already massive leap to bring the whole operation inhouse had only just occurred. Instead, the graphics team working under Peel took the look that the series already had, and replicated it in its own systems which gave them time to get used to operating it, while also working in the background on a graphics refresh.
Carpenter adds: This meant we were happy and everything worked from a functionality point of view, before then doing our full rebrand and refresh. The original plan was actually to go New Year, new me, new broadcast look for our events in the UAE in January,' but we just weren't quite there with everything. So we delayed [the refresh] to the Southern Hemisphere races, which to be honest, have massive eyes on them anyway, from that end of the world particularly, with sailing being such a big sport in Australia and New Zealand.
Carpenter admits, it's not common to do a mid-season rebrand from a broadcast perspective, but we wanted to do it anyway
