Birmingham 2022: Inside the host broadcast set-up for the Commonwealth Games with Sunset Vine By Heather McLean, Editor Wednesday, July 13, 2022 - 18:18
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The Alexander Stadium in Birmingham has been built to be used first for the Commonwealth Games
With time ticking on the run-up to the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham later this month, host broadcaster Sunset Vine is working hard to ensure all rights holders have everything they need to bring every event to viewers.
This is Sunset Vine's third Commonwealth Games, but it's first working independently as a host broadcaster. David Tippett, Sunset Vine's managing director, told SVG Europe: Glasgow was the first one. We partnered with Global who are now NEP Australia, so that was a joint venture. And then on the Gold Coast, we were part of a consortium led by NEP, which included us and Seven Network. But this time around, we went alone. Obviously, lots of partners, including NEP, are involved, but we're the lead.
I genuinely think athletics is one of the hardest things to do, and to do it well, because you've got the scale but you've got the concurrent events happening
Over the 11 days of the Games, Sunset Vine will produce around 3,000 hours of coverage for rights holders. Tippett says: In terms of live coverage, there's going to be about 2,000 hours of live sport produced. Then [on top of that] we're doing a 24 hour Games channel, which is the best of everything. We're producing six multichannel feeds, as part of our multichannel service. We're producing two highlight shows a day. We're producing all of the clips, we're producing all of the extra digital coverage of squash, badminton, table tennis. We're producing other Games-time content.
It all adds up to another 1,000 hours or so, putting total coverage up to around about 3,000 hours, if you take everything that's being repurposed and repackaged.
In July 2020, there was not a lot to see at the Alexander Stadium
Logistically challenging
The production of this Games is not on the same scale as an Olympics, but it is still impressive and logistically challenging. Tippett says: We've got 19 sports but there's 22 outside broadcasts once you factor in all the sports. Within cycling, for example, we've got track cycling, there's road cycling, there's a track cycling, there's a mountain biking. So even within one sport you've got four different outside broadcasts with actually quite different requirements as well. They're all the complex ones, especially the road race and time trial on the mountain bikes. Those are big old operations in their own right.
On which sport can be particularly challenges, Tippett says, it depends who you ask!, but adds: I genuinely think athletics is one of the hardest things to do, and to do it well, because you've got the scale but you've got the concurrent events happening. So we're covering three field events and a track race at the same time I'm producing feeds for all of those things and there's an integrated feed, which is effectively what you'll watch on the BBC. But we're offering all of the components to allow the BBC to create their own integrated feed, so we'll produce an integrated feed which will be taken primarily by international takers, but the BBC has the option to customise that themselves if they want.
On OB partners, a myriad of providers are involved: Timeline is working on the IBC, badminton, boxing, netball, weightlifting and para powerlifting, plus table tennis and para table tennis at the NEC; EMG is on aquatics at the Sandwell Centre, the marathon in the city centre, cricket at Edgbaston, the mountain bike, road race and time trial cycling at Cannock Chase in Wolverhampton, judo and wrestling at the Coventry Arena, rugby sevens at the Coventry Stadium, and triathlon and para triathlon at Sutton Park; NEP is covering athletics and para athletics at the Alexander Stadium, gymnastics at Arena Birmingham and lawn bowls and para lawn bowls at Victoria Park; Gravity is covering the 3X3 basketball and wheelchair basketball and beach volleyball at Smithfield; and Cloudbass is on the cycling track at Lee Valley, plus hockey and squash at the University of Birmingham.
Adds Tippett: One of the challenges we faced at one point during the planning [of this Games] was the demise of Arena, because they were part of the original plans and they were going to be doing some of these sports. In fact, they were doing all of the NEC sports and the University of Birmingham sports. So Timeline stepped into take over at the NEC and Cloudbass stepped in to take over at University of Birmingham.
This is a view of the Sandwell Aquatics Centre in Birmingham back as recently as May 2021
There will be eight major rights holding broadcasters on site during the Games: BBC Sport; Seven Network (Australia); Sky (New Zealand); Supersport (South Africa); Sony (India); CBC (Canada); Astro (Malaysia); and Sportsmax (Caribbean).
Tippett comments: I think another interesting aspect to this that's largely been accelerated because of COVID is the way rights holders want to access the feeds. There's the traditional model which was we would produce video feeds at the IBC, and then it would be up to the rights holders to select which ones they want and figure out how they get them back to their base and that was it, end of story. Our job ended at the IBC.
Whereas now, what you're seeing is rights holders have got services at home and they want to take everything, or they want to take things and operate in a remote production model, which means we've just got to be a little bit cleverer and more flexible about how we make our feeds and our coverage available. That means looking at SRT options, for
