Global launch: Aurora Media Worldwide on bringing the never-seen-before sport of E1 World Electric Powerboat Series to life By Heather McLean
Thursday, February 29, 2024 - 08:30
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Aurora Media Worldwide has taken up the challenge of creating the Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM) E1 World Electric Powerboat Series broadcast from scratch
Creating a broadcast for a never-seen-before, brand new sport is no easy task. However, Aurora Media Worldwide has taken to this challenge once again with the Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM) E1 World Electric Powerboat Series, which took to the water for the first time at the beginning of February.
The creation of the first E1 broadcast took up much of 2023 for host broadcaster, Aurora. Lawrence Duffy, founder and CEO at Aurora, explains what went on during that period: As most producers will tell you, when global launches like this happen or when major events happen, there's so much work that goes on in the background before teams land on site or before hiring gets done, or before plane tickets get booked, or before even equipment gets commissioned.
Understanding that tech stack, understanding all that with all the partners and all the interdependencies and understand the sport, and go to Jeddah and work with a machine on the water which is amazing, which we hadn't seen work before in a competitive environment before the first race that is just a different technical level of sports production, which we've seen come on in the last 10 years
We knew a bit about how we'd cover E1, but really we were developing the coverage plan and particularly the graphics pack most of last year because, with a new sport like this, so much of it is about the data and the technology.
We had to work out the course layout and the integration of the course layout, the boats themselves, the data on the boats, what data we required to be able to visualise the course and the competition, and then get to camera technology; what cameras and what graphics would we use. So that took us six to nine months to work all that out. At that point, we're doing a paper exercise, and then we start commissioning, buying kit or renting kit and then we start to put it together.
Aurora Media Worldwide put a massive effort into differentiating E1's broadcast graphics from anything else out there
Tech stack
Duffy believes that productions today are better thought of as a stack of technology, as more and more aspects are put in the cloud and digitised. He says: The market's really changed in relation to how these shows get made. This is what I describe as a tech stack; we called it layering before, but really it's a tech stack; you've got land cameras, you've got long lenses, you've got RF cameras, you've got on-board cameras and you've got special cameras, and you've got drones. And then on top of that, you've got more standard sporting graphics which carry data.
Then you've got augmented reality (AR), then you've got virtual reality (VR), then you've got audio from the water, audio from the athletes which allow them to talk to shore, he goes on. Then you've got music effects on top of that. And then on top of all that, you've got remote production, which is all done pretty much with signals sent in the cloud.
Understanding that tech stack, understanding all that with all the partners and all the interdependencies and understand the sport, and go to Jeddah and work with a machine on the water which is amazing, which we hadn't seen work before in a competitive environment before the first race that is just a different technical level of sports production, which we've seen come on in the last 10 years, continues Duffy. We're not the only people to do it and to understand it, but I think we have an MO that is required for that level of sophistication, for that level of championship.
Blank slate
Aurora came at E1 with an almost blank slate regarding water sports; previously Aurora's water-based sport projects included SailGP, which it joined after the production was designed and set up, and in a previous life Duffy worked on America's Cup content and the Volvo Ocean Race.
Duffy notes: So I'd done water in my career, but to be honest with you, the world's moved on so much that Aurora had to be super diligent about just everything in relation to the boat. Mark Sheffield, who is broadcast and innovation director for E1, his knowledge was really important to us in the beginning.
There's a sort of a brain's trust in the beginning of what cameras would we need, what technology could we use, how did the boat operate and what was the optimisation of what we're trying to achieve from a broadcast point of view. Mike's [Scott, Aurora executive producer] background in motorsport, having launched Formula E and Extreme E, was so appropriate to this as well because of the layering of the media product. So it was really a super-sophisticated build.
Remote complications
As with its work developing another start up, Extreme E, Aurora decided that the best plan for the E1 broadcast was remote production, given the complexity of what it wanted to achieve technically as well as from a sustainability perspective, which is a key pillar for E1 and important to Aurora as well.
Duffy explains: We made it even more difficult for ourselves by deciding to be remote straight out of the box. We only did that because we'd had the experience of being remote successfully for Extreme E, and we thought we could broadcast from anywhere in the world, which we can. But we would never have taken this into the remote world had we not had the positive experience with Extreme E.
Even late in the day, there was a debate about would it be safer t
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Global launch: Aurora Media Worldwide on bringing the never-seen-before sport of E1 World Electric Powerboat Series to life By Heather McLean 
