Warner Bros. Discovery on Making Olympic Magic for Multiple Local Markets From Its Studios in Cortina and Livigno

Making Winter Games Olympic magic is the goal for every broadcaster in Italy covering Milano Cortina. For Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), being the parent business for a multitude of local market channels means that task is perhaps a tad more complex.

The first step on the journey to Milano Cortina was finding the perfect studio locations, from which those local market channels would be able to give their viewers at home a sense of what the Winter Games is all about.

Finding the backdrop that screams where we are is the first challenge, says Scott Young, EVP at WBD Sports Europe, speaking to SVG Europe from WBD House in the heart of Cortina.

When we saw Piazza del Duomo in Milan, we knew it wasn't going to scream Olympic Winter Games. When we came [to Cortina] we thought whatever happens, we know that if our programming is based here, people are going to know that it's winter sports going on, it's the Olympic Winter Games, there's something quite special happening. So we knew we had to be in Cortina above Milan.

Warner Bros. Discovery Sports' studio in Cortina - WBD House - contains three studios plus outside standup positions, each with the stunning bnackdrop of the Dolomites and the three Olympic venues based in the town - the women's Alpine skiing events on the mountain, plus the Sliding Centre and Curling StadiumFrom global to local

Young says that the disparate locations of the Winter Games events has been a challenge for everyone, but the coverage is going well. He explains: It's been a challenge for a couple of years for everybody to work out the roadmap of what we want to do [in terms of] how do we step back and make it happen? The six clusters are not close to each other.

From our perspective, technically this production has been brilliant. But our real key is that if you're sitting at home in your local market, the production we've made for you locally connects you with the athletes that you resonate with.

This is a very big global production that we start with and it comes down to be super local by the time we actually put it to air, so that means being everywhere; that means being in the curling venue, being up the mountain for Alpine, being everywhere in Livigno, being down in Milan in all the indoor arenas.

WBD has 470 people in Italy working on the Games, backed up by around 1,500 people working across al the markets in their home countries.

Notes Young: There's roughly about 2,000 people that are involved in delivering the Games and supporting the Games production. It's not just TV people it's everybody across our business that comes together to support an Olympic broadcast.

From day one, this has been very, very successful. [Even with] the complexity of our technology and the team spread out, everybody was bought into the narrative of, let's focus on getting it right, let's focus on the rehearsals, let's do all the tests we need to do before we get to D-minus-2, which was the first day of competition. I've been really delighted with how our technology has allowed us to deliver our editorial ambition.

Centre of the action

On being in the centre of Cortina with withs from the studios up into the mountain where the women's Alpine events are taking place, down into the two where the Sliding Centre and Curling Stadium can be seen, Young says: At the top of the mountain you can see it's an amazing venue. We're in the mixed zone, so we can talk to all of the athletes that come through. We've also got an announce position, which two markets can use simultaneously, up on the roof of the stands, so we have a spectacular view of the mountain.

But also just being able to tell the story of what's happening, particularly in that venue and for that moment with those athletes, and just being up in the mountain in Cortina as well, is great.

As for the studio in Cortina, Young says: I like the fact that it's technically advanced for us to deliver every story of the Games, but these facilities are only successful when the athletes arrive and they sit in studio and they connect with our on-air team. That's when we see success.

We had 278 athletes come through WBD House in Paris and that was what I considered to really be the success of those Games; that the athletes decided it was a place to be and they could come and tell their story and share their experience and show us their medal. We're seeing that now as they come through here as well. So that's what the success of this location is; it's a technical masterpiece, but we really need the athlete to be here, right, to make it a real success.

On the igloo-style studio in Livigno, Young says it is going very well. Livigno is a huge success. They're having a ball! Livigno is a party town, and it is a fun studio and they're making great television. It's a perfect setting in Livigno for the Snowdome studio, and it's the perfect setting for the sports that are actually there. When we first looked at the idea, which has been supported by the city of Livigno, we said, how do we create content that is going to be respected by the competitors in those sports? It's a very different style of genre to, you know, the athletes that are competing here in Cortina, he says, referring to Livigno being the location for the snowboard and freestyle competitions.

Cortina cooperation

Scott Young, EVP at WBD Sports Europe in one of the three studios at WBD House in CortinaThere are three studios plus outside positions in Cortina for the home markets to use. Each studio has four cameras; three cameras in each studio are managed remotely by operators in London, while one camera operator in the studio works the jib camera, which also carries the augmented reality (AR) virtual graphics.

Notes Young on the c

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/02/20/milano-cortina-2026-obs-curling...
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