Cherry On the Cake: Inside the Technical Production of the Tour de France 2025 with EMG / Gravity Media

Cherry on the cake: Inside the technical production of the Tour de France 2025 with EMG / Gravity Media By Heather McLean

Friday, June 27, 2025 - 08:37

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For the Tour de France 2025, EMG France is trialling a private 5G network on the finish line using technology from Neutral Wireless

There are just a few days to go before elite cyclists don their jerseys and begin the Tour de France 2025, with the town of Lille hosting the first stage on 5 July. This gruelling race ends 22 days later in Paris on 27 July, as riders zip over the finish line on the Champs- lys es.

EMG / Gravity Media is the technical service provider of the Tour de France 2025 for the host broadcaster, France T l visions. We caught up with EMG / Gravity Media France's CTO, Rudy Dendleux, to find out how this travelling circus is going to bring the drama in the fight for the yellow jersey to global cycling fans.

Capturing the action

Each stage of the Tour de France covers around 200 kilometres, and every twist, turn, crash and peloton needs to be covered by the broadcast. To that end, EMG / Gravity Media's France division is going to be using six video motorbikes using RF.

Comments Dendleux: We are doing the RF for France T l visions, which is the host broadcaster for this event. So we have six video motorbikes, seven journalist motorbikes, either with a POV camera or without, helicopters equipped with two gyrostabilised camera on each chopper, and two fixed wing relay planes and one helicopter relay onsite to cover the 200 kilometre stages every day.

He continues: The motorbikes and the helicopter that are shooting the action are running from the starting line to the finish line of every stage; there are 21 stages on the Tour de France. From an average point of view, every stage is 200 kilometres long, so the motorbikes and the shooting helicopter are capturing the action, and the fixed wing relays and relay helicopter are following the race. EMG /Gravity Media is using Grass Valley LDX 86 cameras on the motorbikes.

New for this year at the Tour de France is the trial of a private 5G network on the finish line, which EMG / Gravity Media France will be creating using technology from Neutral Wireless.

Comments Dendleux on the trial: The new thing that we are going to experience this year is we are deploying a private 5G network on the finish line. We are doing some experiments with a smartphone acting as POV cameras, to see what this exciting new technology can bring to the production. We already made some trials [using this technology] at Roland-Garros. We are expecting maybe to deploy this in the following Tour de France [2026].

Travelling circus

The international graphics and virtual production subsidiary of EMG / Gravity Media, Boost Graphics, is handling its area of expertise for the Tour de France. Dendleux comments on the workflow between the three companies involved in the production: It's a very complicated workflow where we are not the only ones involved; there is France Television and Boost and ourselves.

There is a big fibre network between all the different OB vans on the finish lines. So because there is the international feed produced by France T l visions, there is a super international signal produced by Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), which is the organiser of the race, and all the feeds are networked through fibre on the finish line. But this is something that is very complex and it's changing every year. All the RHBs are connected to that network to get the signals that they have paid for.

There are three OBs following the travelling circus that is the Tour de France. The largest is going to be at every day's finish line, with two others along the route, bouncing feeds from the numerous cameras following the field along each 200 kilometre stage to the larger OB.

Dendleux explains: We've got three OBs; one big at the finish line to retrieve all the signals from the race, but not directly. The other two OB vans are placed alongside the route and they're acting as intermediate points, retrieving the feeds from the aerial relays and then through satellite or microwave links, they are sending back all the signals down to the finish line to our main OB.

Everything for the host broadcast is then produced in the large OB on site. Dendleux adds that France T l visions has between 10 and 12 fibre-connected cameras on the finish line each day to provide those extra angles to capture the emotion of the athletes.

To keep the circus bouncing along, there is a detailed plan for every day of the race. Says Dendleux: The big truck is on the finish line. For the two other trucks, so we have done a three month survey period to know where we can put our intermediate points, so we [have been] sending some people with binoculars and some information regarding the route of the race so we know where we have to put the trucks to do the production; to summarise that, the first [truck] is covering the first leg of the stage and the second one is covering the last leg. Every day each truck in the morning park, rig, shoot, derig, and the crew goes to the hotel, and the day after they do the same thing. So every day they get a plan for the whole period.

Around 80 people from EMG / Gravity Media France are working on the Tour de France for the duration of the race. We've got the finish teams, the RX teams, which are not at the same location. We have the motorbike teams, we have the fixed wing teams, we have the helicopter teams. So it results in a lot of locations, and managing the hospitality for hotels for all that crew, which is changing location almost every day, makes it a very challenging production.

It is exhausting for the crew, Dendleux agrees: Yes, it is. It is indeed. But we are very excited to be producing this event. It's like a cherry

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