Inside SailGP, Part 2: The View of New York from London

Inside SailGP Part 2: The view of New York from London By George Bevir

Thursday, June 27, 2024 - 17:48

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Left to right: Director's assistant Liza Rowlandi, executive producer Chris Carpenter, vision mixer Tim Cook and director Lyle Fielmich.

The New York leg of the SailGP season gave New Zealand's Black Foils a chance to extend their lead in the sailing championship, while the London-based production team showcased new technology, including 5G-enabled on-board cameras.

When SVG Europe visited the Ealing Broadcast Centre in London during the Friday practice for the New York SailGP event (Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 June), CBS host, analyst and former American football player Nate Burleson was midway through a Sixth Sailor' experience on the US team catamaran.

As well as providing a chance for celebrities and influencers to experience the thrills of high-speed racing (and generate some shareable content, with additional angles from chase boats and helicopters provided by SailGP), the Friday practice also gave the production crew valuable time to rehearse camera angles and smooth out any technical issues.

When you're racing somewhere like Manhattan, it's really important that we're getting the amazing backdrops and iconic images like the Statue of Liberty into our coverage, as well as the crowds on Governors Island, says executive producer Chris Carpenter.

Chris Carpenter, SailGP, at Ealing Broadcast Centre (Photo: Andrew Baker for SailGP)

In some respects, when you are in a place like New York, it doesn't matter where you point the cameras because it all looks iconic, but the challenging thing about sailing is that we can practice today and then the wind might have changed by 190-degrees tomorrow, so the racecourse could be completely different and therefore how we cover the races might be completely different.

So, it makes it complicated for us, because even though we might be happy on rehearsal day, it's not always going to be the same when we come to racing. Today is really all about getting our ducks in line and flushing out technical issues which can crop up given we don't have a single wired camera in the entire production and around 47 video sources.

There are never two days the same with SailGP, with never ending curveballs, whether it's wind, thunderstorms, connection issues, whales, dolphins you name it, we get it!

And this season - season four - has been the most challenging so far with new venues, increasingly unpredictable weather, the introduction of quite a few new technologies plus a full mid-season broadcast refresh. We've had a busy year.

US traction

Last weekend was SailGP's first return to the Big Apple in five years, with the New York event the 12th stop on a 13-event global sail racing championship in which teams compete on identical flying catamarans at speeds of over 60mph. In New York, New Zealand's Black Foils triumphed in front of 8,000 spectators in the purpose-built Race Stadium on Governors Island.

Those not in New York were able to watch the live racing via SailGP's own app, Facebook page and YouTube channel, while viewers in Europe can also watch live coverage or highlights via deals with a host of broadcasters including ITV in the UK, Canal+ in France, Servus in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and Ziggo in the Netherlands. In the US, CBS Sports aired coverage of the weekend's races, having doubled its network coverage of SailGP in 2024 compared to last season.

Read more Inside SailGP Part One: What it takes to cover racing action sea and sky

We've got four rounds in North America now, so we're starting to generate a lot of traction in terms of people watching in the US, explains Carpenter.

The SailGP calendar also includes events in Chicago, Los Angeles, Saint Tropez, Dubai, Sydney - plus the final race in the calendar in San Francisco in July but wherever in the world the 10 teams are racing, live coverage is produced by the SailGP production team at Timeline's Ealing Broadcast Centre in west London.

The in-house SailGP production team of around 100 people takes over much of the Ealing Broadcast Centre during a race weekend, using all of floor one - including the production main gallery - plus LiveLine's new dedicated graphics and data space and additional galleries for LivelineFX augmented reality graphics and the remote umpire team, sometimes remote coaches and other integrated projects.

Around 13 edit suites receive the programme feeds, creating highlights packages and prebuilt features. These include a US-focused, 90-minute duration, overnight delivery for CBS (which given the New York location is a lengthier cut compared to the usual 44-minute show) plus a 47-minute show for ITV4 and an international highlights package. In addition, there's a 47-minute French-language show specifically for Canal+ and a Spanish-language show for RTVE.

Dedicated digital platforms also takes some of the highlights plus the digital team its own edit team to create bespoke content for online and social media.

By sea and air: A helicopter-mounted Shotover camera and a Cineflex camera towards the stern of on one of the chase boats.

All of this is supported by five EVS machines with four ops and a VT coord taking in some 47 feeds, including two helicopters (one pictured above), three chase boats, three onboards per catamaran and three onshore RF cameras. Another EVS is used by analysis producer Zoe Pike, who creates technical breakdowns at the end of each race.

Also based in Ealing is the commentary team of Todd Harris from the US, former Olympic sailor Stevie Morrison as a colour commentator, and Emily Nagel who specialise in the numbers and data to provide stats and analysis. They have an EVS and telestrator system, and Emily works with the t

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