Premier League Restart: BT Sport's Plans Accelerate Its Permanent Remote Production Ambitions

BT Sport Premier League re-start plans accelerate its permanent remote production ambitions New remote operating facility acquired plus regional hubs to be rolled out By Heather McLean, Editor

Friday, June 12, 2020 - 18:09

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BT Sport's Live: Early Kick-Off moved to a truly remote, distributed team at the start of lockdown

BT Sport has revealed that it will move permanently to a fully remote, distributed production workflow for more of its content, including coverage of the Premier League. This move brings forward its vision to go fully remote by 2023.

The broadcaster is building on the strategy it first outlined on stage at SVG Europe's Football Summit in February 2019, which was to be able to operate fully remotely between 2021 to 2023, inspired by its world-first remotely produced live broadcast over 5G in November 2018.

This strategy has been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic lockdown and BT Sport's innovative remote decentralised production using a virtual gallery that it rapidly pulled together three months ago to enable live broadcasting to continue.

Jamie Hindhaugh, BT Sport's chief operating officer, told SVG Europe: With all the different innovations we've worked on in working from home and remote over the last 12 weeks, it won't surprise you that with our return to the Premier League, we have fast-tracked our plans and will be doing Premier League in full remote production.

This is a permanent change to the way BT Sport previously broadcast the Premier League. This was our original strategy; we've just fast-tracked it. That's absolutely the ambition, he said.

Remote operating facility

The Premier League will kick off on Wednesday 17 June, and BT Sport is set to show 20 Premier League live matches, 12 more than it was scheduled to show prior to lockdown. BT Sport's first matches will take place on Saturday 20 June, with a double header of Watford v Leicester at 12.30 followed at 3pm with Brighton v Arsenal.

To facilitate the production of the Premier League games, BT Sport is utilising and developing a new remote operating centre in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, in partnership with Telegenic, so our match coverage will be anchored from High Wycombe, Hindhaugh said.

Meanwhile, its match presentation remote coverage will be anchored in Stratford from its studios. Within both of those teams there will be roles and people that are also linked into those workflows that are working from home, continued Hindhaugh. So all of the different learnings we've got will come together.

He added: The thing to be really clear on this remote production, is we will still be doing 4K HDR. I've not seen many people do remote to that level, and we're the only broadcaster I think [in the UK] that does 4K HDR anyway. So it's really exciting!

Hindhaugh said the broadcaster is also set to reduce the number of people required on site at stadiums for each Premier League game as well, for social distancing and also environmental reasons. He explained: We'll have less than a third of people on site [compared to pre-COVID-19 staffing levels] and they'll be predominantly camera operators and engineers.

On site from an editorial perspective we'll have a commentator, a co-commentator and a reporter and our main presentation team will be coming from Stratford. Again that [team at Stratford] will be made up with physical pundits but also pundits coming in from home.

BT Sport presenter, Matt Smith, and Matt Stagg, director of mobile strategy, at Wembley Stadium taking part in the first ever remotely produced live broadcast over 5G in November 2018

Teamwork and sustainability

This rapid evolution at BT Sport is a significant accomplishment, Hindhaugh said: That for me is a huge achievement, and again it goes back to the strength of our partnerships with Telegenic and Timeline TV and our own inhouse team, but what's also really important is adaptability and the fact that everybody that works with us, whether that's partners, our own teams or freelancers, have really got behind this.

It's the cultural aspect as well as the technological aspect that is challenging and I'm really proud of how everyone has pulled together, to help me make sure we keep people safe, but to make sure we are putting a product on screens that is of the standard everyone expects from BT Sport, he continued.

The sustainability aspect is key, he noted: I think it's a huge step forward, especially with our longer-term drive around sustainability, and we'll evolve to create more regional operating centres. So we're also very cognisant of the fact that it shouldn't just be about people driving to High Wycombe or Stratford.

Regional operating centres

To that end, BT Sport is looking at Scotland and other areas of the UK to create a series of smaller operating centres that people in the area can go to for work purposes, that link into the BT Sport infrastructure that will include people working from home.

Hindhaugh likened it to very early on in the coronavirus epidemic when BT Sport scrambled to create its remote, decentralised gallery to enable people to work and produce live programming from home during the lockdown, but, fundamentally doing that on a bigger scale across the UK, so having the infrastructure in people's homes but also having somewhere they can travel to, because you can't always assume people have the space or the connectivity [needed for broadcast production] at home to be able to do this .

He went on: Remote production isn't about reducing the number of people; it's about driving the efficiency of those people involved, but also our charge on sustainability as well, reducing the need for travel for people.

Sounds good

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