Ruck, maul, Twickenham: ITV Sport on bringing its host broadcast coverage of the 2023 Six Nations to viewers By Heather McLean
Wednesday, February 8, 2023 - 13:58
Print This Story
ITV Sport crew hard at work on the first of the Six Nations games played at Twickenham Stadium on Saturday 4 February 2023
The 2023 Six Nations has kicked off, with England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, and Wales rugby union teams competing to win the tournament over the next five weeks.
ITV Sport is the host broadcaster for matches played at the legendary Twickenham stadium in London. At Twickenham the broadcaster has presentation positions pitch-side in the studio, with 130 technical and production crew on site, and is producing a world feed and ITV presentation from two separate OB units.
It is bringing all the excitement of the tournament to fans with the help of a hefty 41 cameras, including six super slomo's, two high motion cameras, a Spidercam, Batcam, corner post cameras, goal post cameras, plus dressing room and coach cameras.
In addition, ITV Sport is also covering the away games, with rights for coverage from Paris, Italy, and Ireland. For each overseas location the broadcaster is using small remote units, which will then be relayed back to the hub gallery in Ealing, London, where the tournament will be broadcast from a brand new virtual reality (VR) studio hosted by Timeline TV and Moov.
Speaking to SVG Europe in an EMG truck outside of Twickenham Stadium, chief technical officer at ITV Sport, Tony Cahalane, explains: In Twickenham we act as a host broadcaster; we deal with all of the visiting broadcasters in terms of what facilities they require, what trucks they might be bringing, power, commentary positions, camera positions, other needs. We plot that out within the stadium and then present it to the stadium to make sure they're happy with it, and work with their side of things as well, which is press, photographers, social media outlets and any positions they might want.
My role really is to produce all of the technical information for both the match and the ITV presentation side of things for our suppliers and the stadium operations team, the schematics, the diagrams, the camera plans, any commentary facilities we have to provide for visiting broadcasters.
Cahalane began working with ITV Sport on the 2022 Six Nations coverage from Twickenham as a freelancer, before he took on the CTO role late last year. He comments: I've decided to carry on [in my] staff role and [continue working on the Six Nations broadcast] because I feel it's better to be out and amongst the suppliers and the technical teams because you gather much better feedback about what they require, in terms of information and how it genuinely goes, and you're not doing it from a report on a computer at the end of the game.
Chief technical officer at ITV Sport, Tony Cahalane, in an EMG truck in the TV compound at Twickenham Stadium
Strong partnerships
ITV Sport is working with EMG as its technical services supplier for the Six Nations. The entire host broadcast production for Twickenham is all on site, with remote services being utilised for coverage of matches played in Italy, France and Ireland.
Cahalane comments: On site here we have two big EMG trucks, one of which does Six Nations match host coverage, taking care of any unilateral needs, so that's visiting broadcasters, stand-ups, and the like. The other truck is the ITV presentation truck.
Then outside of that, there are any number of specialists with smaller trucks, such as ACS who are providing remote pan tilt heads, and there are a couple of graphic trucks from AE Live, who are also bringing us augmented reality (AR) graphics over the Spidercam in the stadium.
We've obviously got Spidercam in the stadium for all the matches as it's grown in its usefulness for within field coverage as the team of pilots and camera ops in the industry have gained more and more experience; it's a great tool! And on top of all that, we have some on-site edit presence.
So in total onsite we've probably got a total of about 27 trucks, with several big ones and then lots of auxiliary ones. In terms of a crew presence, I would guess it's probably about 130 all in between the talent teams, the production teams, all the tech teams and the visiting broadcasters as well.
EMG is the technical services provider to ITV Sport for the Six Nations, where the broadcaster is host for all games played at the Twickenham Stadium
Remote production VR
For its away matches, ITV Sport launched its smart new VR studio on Sunday 5 February. The VR studio has evolved from an initial idea to create a studio for the FIFA World Cup coverage last year.
However, the idea expanded, says Cahalane: We decided that actually what we really needed was a sports hub, something that gave us an identity, something that gave us a look' for lots of the different sports that we have, where we present darts or snooker or the Six Nations remotely. Therefore [the plan] changed as we started to talk about it, into more of a generic sports hub, which could be grown for larger competitions if we required. So this is very much a VR sports hub for our general output, and our Six Nations, and possibly other group stages of large events in the future.
We launched it last weekend for the Six Nations, on 5 February for the Italian game, he states, adding: It's got its challenges because the access provided to set up remote side was very short, due to the fact that [the game was] played in the Stadio Olimpico and there are two other football teams in there [sharing the stadium]. There was a very short set up period on the day, but we were confident that we've tested and refined the VR studio well and so the remote connectivity was the only variable.
F
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
Ruck, maul, Twickenham: ITV Sport on bringing its host broadcast coverage of the 2023 Six Nations to viewers By Heather McLean 
