EMG Combines European Forces to Bring Giro d'Italia to Life

EMG combines European forces to bring Giro d'Italia to life First time that event organiser RCS runs host broadcast operation By Heather McLean, Editor

Thursday, May 19, 2022 - 18:22

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Angelo Carosi is the lead director on Giro d'Italia. EMG is utilising its plethora of broadcast technologies and the reach of its expertise across Europe to create an innovative production for RCS's first Giro d'Italia as host broadcaster

Giro d'Italia 2022 is being televised by EMG for the host broadcaster and event organiser, RCS. This marks the first year that RCS has run the production after taking the role back from Italian public broadcaster Rai which had produced the event for the last 20 years.

As of 2022 EMG is utilising its plethora of broadcast technologies externally and internally developed and the reach of its expertise across Europe to create an innovative production that misses nothing, and still hits the budget, to viewers. It plans to further develop its production with more innovations over the course of the three years of its agreement with RCS.

Fabio Guadagnini, EMG Italy chief commercial officer and project leader for Giro d'Italia, tells SVG Europe from his OB van in Italy: This year [RCS] decided to leave the former relationship they were having with the national broadcaster doing the production [Rai]. They were leaning on Rai for everything that was connected with the TV production. This year, they decided to centralise it and being chosen as their partner for this was for EMG very important.

EMG has bought together its Italian, French and Belgian divisions to work together on this project for the first time. Shown here, the Mount Etna TV compound

Combined forces

EMG has bought together its Italian, French and Belgian divisions to work together on this project for the first time, combining skills, expertise and technologies to come up with a strong and unique solution for RCS and the Giro.

Guadagnini comments: The thing that as a group has a very huge meaning is that in this project, we are working with three different countries Belgium, France and Italy as a group and a partner for the first time, with the three of us working together for a single project. So it's another small revolution that we have started from this year.

Our intention when started with the three year deal [with RCS] is to be connected with RCS for a longer period, and [we are] starting improving the innovations [used in the broadcast]. As a group [we know that] this is just the starting point of the path, [working together as a group on] innovations, and bringing new stories in; this is something we would like to do.

We are pushing the content over the mountain. That is one of the biggest challenges. If we are not able to detect the aircrafts while blocked because of high mountain tops, we use an additional team and set up a bounce' via satellite and several carriers back to the finish

Adds Guadagnini: The grand production is essentially something that the Italian entity is leading, because we know the territory the specific complexity in having a lot of mountain stages and we have people here. Aerials is something that we are leading in worldwide, thanks to the technology brought by EMG Belgium and EMG France, and also [specialist] knowledge of cycling comes from those countries, where cycling is like what football is in Italy. Putting all of this together as a group was the only way to provide to our partner the best a top class production.

Chris Demeuleester, EMG Belgium head of international projects and sales, and project leader for Giro d'Italia, says to SVG Europe: It's actually even larger [than EMG France, Italy and Belgium]. The uplinks, coordination and the quality control is done in Holland, with satellite trucks we're going to bring in next year from Holland. This year the OB trucks, the classic business, is coming from Italy. The helicopter coordination is coming from Belgium. The aircraft and the tracking is from the French [division]. So it's probably one of the biggest projects we [have done] as one solid, glued EMG. Guadagnini is leading for the group and we add in all our specialties and engineers, while Guadagnini coordinates everything, and we execute for Guadagnini s clients. Done deal.

Continues Demeuleester: So with the content team and the technology team, we have less people in the team, we are closer to each other, and I think it's one of the biggest advantages that our clients can see. The storytelling, the engineering, the commercial aspects of this project, the coordination by Guadagnini and his team, is in one smooth, lean and mean package that we can bring to the table. In the past with previous clients, they have looked at us as the technical guys; now we are bringing engineering and content and storytelling, knowhow, and new technologies for the future, because there's plenty other tools that we will bring [to Giro d'Italia] with Guadagnini and his team.

Lean and mean

RCS, the biggest race organiser in Italy for a number of sports, has one major Italian client for Giro d'Italia, Rai, and one major external client, Warner Bros. Discovery. On what is being produced, Guadagnini says: We produce about six hours of live production per day; at least six hours, sometimes more than that because we have to shoot the preparation of the race. We have also the ceremonies, the awards, after the race, so it's a very extended, long production that we have to do.

Demeuleester notes that EMG is using its experience on similar races such as the Tour de France to make the coverage work smoothly: We are lean and mean, we are fast, efficient, and we do this with less people we are doing this production with 75 crew in total but what do we do differently? We cover

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