Live from UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Inside the Production Nuts and Bolts at ITV Sport with Technical Director Tony Cahalane

Live from UEFA Women's Euro 2025: Inside the production nuts and bolts at ITV Sport with technical director Tony Cahalane By Heather McLean

Friday, July 25, 2025 - 09:27

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ITV Sport's AR studio was set up and used extensively in the ealry stages of the tournament when ITV Sport was working mostly remotely from Ealing, London

ITV Sport has been bringing spectacular images of the UEFA Women's Euros 2025 to football fans in the UK throughout the tournament, most recently with the England versus Italy nail-biting semi final [22 July], which delivered ITV's biggest audience of the year with a peak of 10.2 million viewers tuning in across all devices.

In the early stages of the tournament through to the Quarter Finals, ITV Sport's team was working out of its technical services provider's facilities in Ealing, at Timeline TV. Now, a 70-strong crew is on the ground in Switzerland with a full OB for the Semi Finals and Final that will hit huge viewing figures in Great Britain across ITV1, ITVX, STV and STV Player as the Lionesses ready themselves for a final battle on the pitch.

SVG Europe caught up with Tony Cahalane, technical director at ITV Sport, on how the workflow for the broadcaster's coverage of the Women's Euros 2025 has operated.

ITV Sport's main PCR at Timeline TV's base in Ealing, London, where all the magic of the knockout stages for the Women's Euro 2025 happened

Sights and sounds

As one of the competing team's rights holders on site for the Semi Final between England and Italy on 22 July, ITV Sport used one of the open air presentation platforms at the Geneva Stadium to bring the sights and sounds of the event to viewers at home.

Speaking prior to that game, Cahalane says: We also have a pitchside reporter position, cameras that can move around to get us some in-match play, a big lens on the main camera position, and that's all really to try to tell the story from the ITV Sport fans' perspective and more dedicated to the audience that we might have at home.

The broadcaster is using a SuperNova super slo-mo camera for its games in Switzerland. FilmNova and Timeline TV jointly developed the SuperNova in 2023. It can capture high quality shots at 500fps, making it a strong tool for ITV Sport at the Women's Euros as it can be used in montages and replays, enhancing the quality and production values across broadcast output. It is being used in a gantry position in the stadium to get the broadcaster additional material that should look spectacular for viewers at home.

Adds Cahalane on SuperNova: It takes care of the replay on board, and we remotely control it as one single feed into an EVS. It's quite useful on the basis that during the match, the camera is just gathering colour for us so it helps us convey the drama of the story to ITV's audience.

At the UEFA Women's Euro 2025, ITV Sport covered the action remotely from the UK, bar three ENG crews in Switzerland. Shown here, the audio room at Ealing

Early stage plan

Cahalane comments on the overall workflow for ITV Sport at the Women's Euros: The way we've achieved this is with a green footprint in mind, and a little bit of budgetary requirement as well. We are a remote production until we reached the Semi Final pick that ITV had and the Final, where we move on site with a full OB truck; it's only Switzerland so not all that far away.

Cahalane comments on what's been on the ground in Ealing: The remote production is from our virtual reality (VR) hub, based in Timeline TV at Ealing. It's the usual bits and pieces that we're using and feature in our regular strands and tournaments like the RWC23; Star Tracker, Unreal Engine etc. Our main presentation team is based in Ealing and we are also on site during the Group Stages and the Quarter Final with three reporting teams. We save on travel by doing it this way and reduce our emissions in parallel, he says.

ITV Sport has honed its studio-based production in Ealing for the Women's Euros with a tried and tested plan from RWC23. When they have two consecutive matches with different talent teams, by adding a simple extra gallery and sharing VR engines, they make the best use of the overall VR facility and pre-recording the opening of the second game with the incoming talent.

Cahalane explains: Normally we pre-record the opening [of the second game's pres] because it can be relatively complex depending on what the Director wants to do. So, what we've established is this subcut gallery with another setup of radio mics and IFB's for presenters, and two green rooms where we can move the talent teams in and out of the studio while we're live on air, but keep in touch with them as we move the incoming talent team in and pre-record the opening to the next show, so we're making maximum use of that facility for every programme, he continues.

If something were to go wrong while we were recording [for the second game], we can still hear the current on-air talent team, we can still talk to them, and they can link to out of vision shots whilst we move them back into the studio. It's resilient, it's quick to change over, but it also gives us the maximum value out of the resource that we've got there.

Each of the three reporting teams in Switzerland in the knockout stages of the tournament - which have covered the England and Wales teams plus various European teams were equipped with LiveU kit so they could send material back to our Ealing based media management quickly, with the European reporting team being a self shooting production crew.

Adds Cahalane on the European ENG crew being entirely self shooting: We've grown our self shooting, self editing ability within the department in the last year. I've seen it as a log

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/live-from-uefa-womens-euro-20...
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