Dorna's MotoGP innovations fuel the need for broadcasting at speed By Michael Burns
Monday, May 23, 2022 - 14:17
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Capturing the spectacle - and the noise - of the race is a challenge that Dorna contends with on 19 circuits per season
Back in 1992, we were travelling all around the world and didn't really have any broadcast resources. We were just 15 people, says Sergi Sendra i Vives, head of global technology at Dorna Sports. We now have the privilege and the opportunity to manage [MotoGP] from end to end, from acquisition to contribution, but when we had to start doing the production, we didn't realise what a sport like this would demand. It's special and unique.
Since taking the reins of the FIM World Championship Grand Prix (MotoGP) in 1991, Dorna Sports has also been its exclusive commercial and television rights holder. When SVG Europe was granted access to the MotoGP race in Circuito de Jerez-Angel Nieto in Andaluc a, it was clear to see how far the Spanish company has come. Situated in a paddock surrounded by ranks of trucks and travelling garage facilities for the top racing motorcycle manufacturers in the world, Dorna TV was playing host broadcaster to the likes of BT Sport, DAZN, Sky Sports, Canal+, Ziggo Sport, ServusTV and RTVE, with a total of 187 cameras around the track, on shoulders and on bikes. There has been a lot of work and innovation to get here and, according to Sendra, there's more to come.
Racing in circles
MotoGP' isn't just one race, it is a 19-event season that visits 16 countries across four continents, showcasing the planet's fastest motorcycle racers in its three categories comprising the Moto3, Moto2 and MotoGP World Championship. It was a travelling tournament back in the early 1990s too, but the broadcast set-up then was bit different.
Three people were taking care of the TV. We were recording the signal from different broadcasters who were creating the content in each country, such as Channel Nine in Australia, the BBC in England, and so on, recalls Sendra. Every country did a different job in terms of TV coverage. It was really chaotic.
Rather than put up with such inconsistencies, the team, led by Manel Arroyo, then managing director of Dorna Sports and MotoGP, decided that it would be better to standardise the coverage.
We started to define a way to do the same job for everyone in the world independently of the circuit, says Sendra. We started contracting our own camera crew with experience and bringing them with us. Being responsible for providing content to the broadcasters, we realised that we should be part of the decisions to make the tools better and adaptable to the sport.
Arroyo, who came from a TV sports production background and is now Dorna's chief commercial officer, believed that if Dorna didn't control the cameras, it would not be able to develop them further. He also proposed that Dorna take control of the timing software for the race.
Timing data is such an important and key factor for MotoGP, says Sendra. In 1999, this was in the hands of a third-party company, so we decided to acquire that. Thanks to all these decisions, we are now a company that has software developers, we have hardware developers, we have people who know audio and video mixing, and people who know how to use metadata and data processing.
Being responsible for providing content to the broadcasters, we realised that we should be part of the decisions to make the tools better and adaptable to the sport
Sendra's role was to design a new methodology to cover the races and help create a standardised model for the editorial coverage.
There was only one master control room for everything and a feed from the cameras on the track. In the beginning, it was very expensive, complicated and challenging, because you had different combinations of circuits, he recalls. But, at the end of the day, you can simplify all the circuits into [riders] doing laps in a circle that is full of obstacles. So we found an easier way to monitor that.
In a baseball or football match, one camera can cover everything, he continues. In MotoGP, you cannot see everything, you have to create segments where one to three cameras will be able to see a shot.
You can see the result when standing in the track feed control room in the Dorna TV compound - like the output from the audio control room (ACR) across the way, the cut from here is folded into the international programme feed (IPF) next door. The screens showing the feeds around the race, though arranged in a rectangle, simulate a circular concept for the tracks, with the camera numbers running in a clockwise direction to follow the action.
Dorna plays host broadcaster for MotoGP to some familiar names in the world of sports TV
The race coverage is heavily focused on certain points. The straight is the busiest place because this is where the finish line is, where the grid is, everybody needs to go through this point to accomplish their goal, says Sendra. We also define every camera position in terms of advertising. Then there are the hotspots, such as the turns, which we cover from different angles to make sure that we capture it all. But you have to reconnect all the segments to recreate the sensation of speed.
Watching the track feed live at Jerez, for example, we could see cameras 9, 10 and 11 consecutively showing a bike approaching a corner, the zoom lens shot of the bike on the corner capturing the heavy braking, and then another view from the inside of the track as the bike leaves the corner.
In this way, Dorna can tell the story of each race in a logical, templated fashion, with all the action - and advertising - on-screen. But it's not the whole story; there are other elements in play. There is input to be selected from the hel
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Dorna's MotoGP innovations fuel the need for broadcasting at speed By Michael Burns 
