Milano Cortina 2026: Inside the Milan-Based Warner Bros. Discovery Casa Italia Studio with Eurosport

A typical Winter Olympics day - or should I say evening - inside the Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Sport Italian Eurosport studio at Casa Italia in Milan is a hectic one. The perfectly formed, compact team - led by Enrico Scudo' Scudeler, the coordinating producer [pictured above on right], held together technically by Franco Cutroneo, a WBD engineer, and hosted on screen by the charismatic Dario Donato [pictured above on left] - work smoothly together to bring Italian viewers the host nation's winning athletes live and ecstatic straight from the floor of the striking Casa Italia.

Casa Italia, based at the Triennale Milano museum in the heart of the city, is a beautiful backdrop for excited fans to get up close to their winning athletes.

On the night I visited, the team was anxiously awaiting the arrival of Italian speed skater Francesca Lollobrigida, who that day had taken her second gold of the Games, this time in the 5000 metres, only a few days after winning the 3000 metres.

Things do not always go as planned when popular athletes are involved, however; the team were on air earlier than usual hoping to get Lollobrigida in front of the cameras next to Donato in just a few minutes, but as time ticked on, it seemed she was being pulled from interview to interview on her way up to the studio. Yet the professional team - including Guido Bagatta, iconic Italian sports broadcaster - kept the programme going as presenters in Cortina joined the conversation, alongside and VTs of the great and good being run and commentated on.

Italy's Francesca Lollobrigida, double gold medal winner, at Casa Italia in Milan after winning her second goldWhile anxiously waiting for Lollobrigida to arrive at the studio, Scudeler commented on the technical infrastructure and day-to-day workflow for the small studio in Casa Italia: We have a studio with two studio cameras, four microphones, and four IFBs. Then we have two network backpacks for live interviews outside of the studio.

Basically, we do our late show from here at Casa Italia; it's the show that closes the day. We are usually on air from 11pm to midnight but today we are a little bit early because of the gold medal that Lollobrigida is coming live to us with. We start late in the afternoon and then we wait for guests in Casa Italia here at the Triennale Milano. We cover interviews with athletes and capture the atmosphere of the fans downstairs as well.

Everything we do here we send to London first, and then to our control room in Cologno, in the Warner Bros. Discovery Italy headquarters. And then we play out live here with the host and some guests as well.

Eurosport Italia's host, Dario Donato, with Guido Bagatta, iconic Italian sports broadcasterAs the show producer, Scudeler ensures everything runs smoothly in and around the studio.

My job is to make everything happen and try to coordinate all the people, from the technical part to the journalist side. And then we try to fix the problems, the little problems.

He is enjoying his first Olympic experience from behind the screen, he says. It's amazing. This is my first experience in the Olympic Games, so I'm super-excited to be here. I have worked in broadcasting for 20 years, and the first time at the Olympics is always something different. I really enjoy it.

Eurosport has teams scattered all over Italy, and coordination between everyone is a large part of Scudeler's day in order to bring the late show programme together.

Content from those other teams and the two further Casa Italia's comes into the final live show, he says: We have tons of emails, tons of WhatsApp groups, and we try to coordinate. We are all connected and then sometimes we do live with the other Casa Italia's as well - one in Cortina and one in Livigno - and then this one here in Milan.

We try to do our best. It's a good window to the world, so we try to show how we care about things, Scudeler concludes.

Behind the scenes

A lot is going on behind the scenes across the entire WBD operation to ensure all its studios at the Winter Games are able to communicate with each other, share experiences and key moments, and get all the content out from Italy to the various home markets.

Cutroneo describes the complex infrastructure required to broadcast the Winter Games. I am one of WBD's technical guys engaged to do the broadcasting installation for the Olympics. This is my third Olympic Games.

Franco Cutroneo, WBD technical engineer, at the back of Eurosport Italia's studio We are about 20 or 25 engineers installing all this kit, he says gesturing towards the setup in the back of the studio. Each venue or each studio has connectivity to London. The signal gets to London via two paths, so if one goes down, there is the other one to recover.

When you get relaxed when you're doing this job, you know, you get into a routine, you think, ah this is fine, this is fine', but you should never lower your guard. Complacency doesn't end well, especially with live TV

Cutroneo explains the journey of the signal from the local cameras to the final broadcast for the Italian Eurosport broadcast. Basically, the cameras are connected to a box here and via an encoder, we send the signal to London, then they send it back to the studio in Milan. We do the lineup, so we make sure they can see us, they can hear the audio and video, and everyone is happy before we go live.

When asked about the delay between the live action and the broadcast return, Cutroneo noted that it is generally minimal.

The latency is something that could change, but normally it's two seconds. So when Dario looks at himself on the return video monitor, he knows there is a slight delay. He always listens to the coordinator so he knows where he is. There are also coordinators talking to

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