Rubgy World Cup 2023: Host Broadcast Services, IMG Offer Look Behind the Scenes of Massive Production

28/09/2023

Paris 2023: HBS and IMG go behind the scenes for the live and post production of the Rugby World Cup 2023 By Heather McLean

Thursday, September 28, 2023 - 13:17

Print This Story

HBS CEO Dan Miodownik and IMG's David Shield, senior vice president and global director for engineering and technology, provided a behind the scenes look at the key broadcast workflows, tools, and operations of Rugby World Cup 2023 at the Sports Production Summit SPS HBS IMG in Amsterdam

The Rugby World Cup 2023 was a subject of discussion at SVG Europe's Sports Production Summit in Amsterdam, where HBS CEO Dan Miodownik and IMG's David Shield, senior vice president and global director for engineering and technology, provided a behind-the-scenes look at the key broadcast workflows, tools, and operations of Rugby World Cup 2023, which is currently taking place in France.

Miodownik and Shield outlined how their respective organisations are working together to produce one of the largest global sporting events of 2023. For the Rugby World Cup in France, HBS and World Rugby took the decision to create a remote IBC, disconnecting almost all of the post production into a remote IBC in the UK.

When you're doing a big event - and this is a big event you have to put reliability and risk management at the absolute front

This has resulted in HBS working from the IBC in Paris which is based at Roland-Garros, while IMG is working from its hub in Stockley Park, London, handling all the post production aspects of the World Cup.

Speaking from the Sports Production Summit stage in Amsterdam, Miodownik said: When you're doing a big event - and this is a big event you have to put reliability and risk management at the absolute front, so it had to be working with a partner with a set up that made sense and Dave and the team [at IMG] put together a great response [to the RFP], by far the strongest. That why we ended up with the split where IMG are in Stockley Park fulfilling what is a major part of what we're doing, while the French end is dealing very much with the live events operation.

Miodownik commented on how the World Cup is going so far: It's going well. It's had its challenges - that's normal - the key thing is that we feel that the majority of it is going extremely well. There are a few areas that we want to do better and the plan will be to get those right so as we move through the tournament everything gets better in terms of the services we provide to broadcasters and the content we produce.

Shield added: I think it's going really well. Great first round of matches. It's going very well from our point of view and we're really looking forward to working our way through to the sharp end.

Going into more detail on what is happening at Stockley Park, Shield said: It was a happy dovetailing of activities, so we were going to look after the satellite distribution of the world feed, so we needed to get connectivity from Roland-Garros into Stockley Park in the first place. But that enabled a remote non-live post production solution.

2019 had been the first time Rugby World Cup has had a media server, and that was quite a big landmark actually. In 2019 it had been provided using an EVS solution. In our response to HBS' [question on] how we would do [the post production from the UK], we said we'll look at all the options, but actually settled back to the EVS option, which, given we're a big EVS user anyway, meant we had quite a lot of infrastructure at our disposal that we could build into the solution. So that's the major bit of technology that's happening at Stockley Park; the EVS media server.

Shield continued: We also have 72 edit suites there, so rather than building into an IBC as you typically would, we can just cordon off an area [at Stockley Park] which would be for exclusive use for HBS.

Historically we've had a great relationship on production [with HBS], so it's largely IMG production people working on that non-live, but with quite a few leaders from HBS at Stockley Park, also being part of it.

The conversation also went onto discuss the future of the onsite IBC and the significant popularity of smartphone-created content, which HBS is catering for by going digital first' this year for the first time with content filmed in 4:5 and 9:16 ratios.

Watch the full session here:

LINK:	https://www.svgeurope.org/blog/headlines/paris-2023-hbs-and-img-go-beh...
	See more stories from svg

North America Stories

17/07/2026

Foundry Unlocks Professional-Grade AI for VFX with Gripta...

Creative software developer Foundry today announced Griptape Enterprise, a new tier of the Griptape AI workflow orchestration platform, extended to meet the str...

17/07/2026

Foundry Releases SmartRoto for Nuke

Creative software developer Foundry today announced the availability of SmartRoto, a new AI-powered plugin upgrade for Nuke, NukeX, Nuke Studio, and Nuke Indie ...

17/07/2026

The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available!

The Final Release of Blackmagic Fairlight Live is Now Available! Brie Clayton July 16, 2026 0 Comments Fairlight Live is a new audio mixer designed fo...

17/07/2026

Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP

Leveraging All of Entertainment's IP Andy Marken July 16, 2026 0 Comments Nobody ever wins the games. Period. There are survivors. There\s no win...

16/07/2026

SVG Students To Watch: Kaden Sherman, Albany State University

This recent graduate and Georgia native has turned an early fascination with live production into a growing passion for camera work In the live-sports-video in...

16/07/2026

TNDV Marks First Year of Aspiration 35 Cinematic Production Truck

TNDV is marking the first anniversary of Aspiration 35, a mobile production truck built around ARRI Alexa 35 Live camera systems. Over its first year, the truck...

16/07/2026

ATSC Releases First Major Revision to A/85 Audio Loudness Recommended Practice Since 2013

ATSC has completed a major revision to its A/85 Recommended Practice: Techniques...

16/07/2026

FloSports Named Exclusive Global Media Partner for 2026 CrossFit Games

FloSports has announced an exclusive global media partnership with CrossFit for the 2026 CrossFit Games, presented by Air National Guard, beginning July 21 in S...

16/07/2026

Sennheiser Releases Spectera Firmware 1.4 and Command Button

Sennheiser has released firmware version 1.4 for its Spectera wireless system and announced the Spectera Command Button (Cat. No. 701014). The update adds comma...

16/07/2026

ESPN and Southwestern Athletic Conference Announce Multi-Year Media Rights Agreement Through 2030-31

ESPN and the Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) have announced a multi-year...

16/07/2026

Audio-Technica Releases 20 Series Control Application for Elgato Stream Deck

Audio-Technica has announced the 20 Series Control Application, a Stream Deck plug-in for compatible Audio-Technica USB microphones. The application is compatib...

16/07/2026

SSL Live L550 Plus Consoles Power Audio Production for The Voice France Season 15

The fifteenth season of The Voice - La plus belle voix on TF1 used four Solid St...

16/07/2026

Gray Media and Atlanta Hawks Announce Georgia-Wide Broadcast Partnership for 2026-27 NBA Season

Gray Media and the Atlanta Hawks have announced a broadcast partnership that wil...

16/07/2026

SVG Sit-Down: Quarterback Showrunner Joe Zucco on Cinematography, Building Trust, Carrying On the NFL Films Legacy

Season 3 of Netflix's docuseries, which dropped this week, follows Jayden Da...

16/07/2026

Texas Rangers Switch Direct-to-Consumer Streaming Partner to BZZR

The Texas Rangers and Rangers Sports Network presented by Progressive (RSN) have announced BZZR as the new direct-to-consumer distributor for Rangers game broad...

16/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: BBC Sport on Moving Across the Pond to Bring the Atmosphere of the Final Matches to Fans

With England's FIFA World Cup 2026 team getting ready to fly home after losi...

16/07/2026

With 36 Unilateral Cameras, NBC Sports Shapes 154th Open Championship Coverage for U.S. Viewers

In a return to Royal Birkdale, the team enjoys partnering with ETP and Gravity M...

16/07/2026

Altitude Sports & Entertainment's Tim De Lay on New SkyCam Digital Feed, Upgraded Studio Space

Along with a new studio at Ball Arena, the Colorado-based RSN is working with XR...

16/07/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026: Inside ORF's Austria-Based Production to Bring All the Emotions of the Tournament to Fans

Austria was back at the World Cup for the first time in 28 years, and the team d...

16/07/2026

Inside Gravity Media's Effort To Power the 154th Open Championship Production

With 42 RF cameras and high-power radio mics deployed, the spectrum environment ...

16/07/2026

The Gauge: Poland | June 2026

June brought stabilization to the television market. Poles spent an average of 3 hours and 36 minutes a day in front of their TV screens exactly the same as i...

16/07/2026

New studio monitoring leads Glensound's 60th year line-up...

Glensound returns to IBC with a major new addition to its intelligent loudspeaker range, the Greater Divine Supernal studio monitor, alongside recent developmen...

16/07/2026

Complete spectrum of innovation from British exhibitors a...

33 leading exhibitors are taking part in the GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland Pavilions and linked locations across IBC2026 (Amsterdam RAI, 11 14 September)...

16/07/2026

Hitomi Broadcast to showcase HDR colour verification and...

Hitomi Broadcast will introduce Spectra, a new HDR colour verification solution measured in picture, not using VPID, at IBC2026 (Hall 10, Stand A40). Expanding ...