On Eve of World Cup Kickoff, FIFA and HBS Offer Deep Dive into IBC Operations, Commentary, and Ref Cam

Today is match day minus two for FIFA and HBS. On Thursday, there will be two matches in Mexico: Mexico vs. South Africa in Mexico City, Korea vs. Czechia in Guadalajara. And, although there will be a core production team in each city, plenty of remote operators will be tied into the matches, with replay, graphics, in-venue video operations, and even camera shading handled from the FIFA World Cup IBC in Dallas.

That will be true for all 16 venues of FIFA World Cup 2026. Oscar Sanchez, head of broadcast production, FIFA, and Paul King, senior producer, HBS, sat down with SVG to discuss how the core production teams were chosen, the overall production philosophy, and the challenge of maintaining editorial quality across so many teams and so many soccer cultures.

Let's go into the IBC operations a bit. Walk us through. Where exactly in Dallas is the IBC? How big?

Sanchez: Downtown Dallas. Construction started Jan. 14. It's going very well. We were delayed a couple of days due to a snowstorm, but everything is on track. First media partners will arrive there mid-May. We're having our operation there for the host broadcast, but also the VAR is centralized. The football technology and operations, the stadium entertainment - everything that will be seen in the stadium on big screens or jumbotrons - will be generated from the galleries at the IBC. Other FIFA agencies and departments will have a presence there as well. But the most crucial part is going to be the host-broadcast site.

Will the rightsholders be there, too? Will any of them have a studio located in the facility?

Sanchez: I don't think there's a studio, to be honest. Given the nature of the tournament, they will have presence positions there. They might have some commentary locations, but they are thinking more about being as close as possible to stadiums and not in a version of a traditional studio.

The FIFA World Cup IBC in Downtown Dallas will house the host-broadcast operation, in-venue entertainment, and space for FIFA agencies and departments.Before we get into the operations there, what's the signal workflow from the venues to the IBC and then out to the world?

Sanchez: We have a broadcast-contribution network through Verizon, which is our partner. All cameras come to the IBC, and we are doing centralized replays and everything there. From there, we generate the feeds that we distribute in different flavors to our media partners, and we have SRT and satellite distribution as well.

Also, for the first time in World Cup history, our partners will be able to access the same router that media partners have when they are onsite at the IBC, even if they are outside.

We also have a presence in London, where we have our postproduction and editing hub. That's another layer, and it replicates something that we did for the 2023 Women's World Cup in Australia/New Zealand, where it worked very well.

What was the advantage of having the postproduction and editing in London versus in Dallas?

Sanchez: We have found a lot of talent [for that kind of work] in the UK so we want to take advantage of that talent. Obviously, from our budget perspective, it's more advantageous as we are not flying 300 people to the U.S. You're saving costs, protecting the environment. It's a little bit of a mix of different reasons.

Let's go to the replay operations - and graphics and shading, too. They are centralized at the IBC?

King: There will still be a replay operator onsite so that, if connectivity is lost, we'll still be able to cover matches. The big talking point around the replay operation is, with 16 [production] teams, you need 16 replay operators, maybe 10 or 11 per crew. That's a lot of people. Having a centralized facility allows us to get the best in the world under the same roof, all working on multiple matches.

There will still be a replay producer from each team, and those teams are put into language clusters: English-, Spanish-, French-, German-speaking. I think it makes sense because the consistency we want is much easier to achieve. Everyone's doing a similar kind of thing.

The quality is the real thing for us: you get 50, 60, 70 of the best people in the same building, sharing experience, sharing knowledge. I think the replay operation will be really special.

As for graphics and shading, graphics again gives you consistency of operation, and the graphics provider was very keen to do this for the same reasons: quality, consistency, everyone working under the same roof, sharing knowledge.

Sanchez: On the graphics side, we're getting the top of the top in terms of sports-graphics operators from Vizrt. Centralizing them makes total sense. We have all sorts of redundancy - as much as we can and even beyond - to make sure that we have Plan B, C, and D in case something happens with the connectivity. But the plan is there, and we expect it to be working very solidly across the board.

The FIFA World Cup master control is the hub of broadcast operations, and the final touches and rehearsals are underway.Will the replay operators have similar camera assignments? Will their roles change? Will they be able to swap off?

King: Every team does things in a slightly different way, and some operators might move around, some might be specialists on certain cameras. Generally, we're not going to tell them how to organize themselves, because there are slightly different workflows. [For example,] some of the Argentinian crews at Club World Cup worked in a different way in their replay operation. But, because [replay operators] are going to be centralized, it means that they've all got the same facilities to work with and they can all bring their specific skills to the event.

Sanchez: The quality of replay operations must be much more standardized and harmonized.

King: And yo

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/06/10/svg-sit-down-part-two-fifas-osc...
	See more stories from svg

More from Sports Video Group