Pinning Digital Content Onto the Backbone of a Strong Linear Infrastructure for BBC Sport in Cortina

BBC Sport is bringing together its linear TV and streaming digital arms in a strategy that pulls together both aspects of broadcasting for the first time at Milano Cortina. However, the whole backbone for BBC Sport's broadcast of the Games is still pinned onto that engineering infrastructure the Beeb is known for.

The broadcaster's linear TV coverage is the essential backbone upon which the digital strategy can hang, says Rachel Wright, BBC Sport's head of production, speaking to SVG Europe outside the studio in Cortina: It's a real pivot in that the TV has to happen because you need that infrastructure, and the lines and the feeds have got to go somewhere so you can do anything.

But it's just that pivot for all the stuff that sits around it; how you best serve the audience, Wright continues. You're really going, okay, what's the proposition we're giving? What are the targets? Which underserved audiences might we be able to attract for this event? . Then looking at all the parts and having that coordination to get the best outcome, Wright says.

We have a team - led by Kath Hogan, who's our content editor who does a brilliant job at coordinating all the parts of the BBC with all our other partners on radio or breakfast or Morning Live or The One Show, putting in all the bids to the athletes [for interviews] which we will facilitate if we can with their sport schedule, just to get that biggest impact [across all our platforms].

The power of the BBC can really come to its own on an event like this because you can pull it all together, notes Wright.

Efficient operation

Kevin Craven, BBC Sport engineering manager for the studio in Cortina, hard at workTechnically, the operation in Cortina is efficient, utilising a remote production model from Cortina, through the IBC in Milan, and back to Salford where the magic happens, all of which keeps the physical footprint onsite as small as possible.

While a monitoring station and engineering hub are maintained in Cortina to oversee local cameras and outgoing signals, the primary control rooms and galleries are located back in Salford, UK. This remote setup is supported by redundant systems, including fibre connectivity, satellite backups like Starlink, and internet-based transmission tools to ensure uninterrupted coverage.

Kevin Craven, engineering manager for the studio in Cortina, spends much of his day sitting in a small cabin - the engineering room - out the back of the studio in Cortina, carefully monitoring feeds and distribution.

This is our operation centre, he says. We're sending all of our signals to Salford and to Milan, to the IBC. We're monitoring our outgoing lines. We've got our encoders here. We've got some more kit in the studio, so this is just a monitoring station. Our job is to keep all this running.

Double redundancy

Operationally, the small but perfectly formed studio runs with an early and a late crew which consist of a camera operator, a sound supervisor, a lighting operator, a floor manager, and presenters.

Craven says on the technical set up in the Cortina studio: We have two studio cameras, and we also have a radio camera here. We've got two circuits from here to the IBC [in Milan] and we will switch down whatever we need to switch down.

So we'll always switch down a studio camera, but if our roaming camera is out and about, we'll switch that down our second line. It just means we can squeeze more things down the same connectivity that we've got.

From the IBC we've got connectivity back to the UK on 12 lines, so we can get those cameras from all over the place from your other crews back via the IBC. These cameras are actually decoded in Salford, but the data pipe runs through the IBC.

He continues: The hard part was getting it working and now it's maintaining that. Everything should run redundantly, so we've got two of everything. We've got uninterruptible power supplies on broadcast critical equipment. We've got two data pipes to get to the IBC.

Craven says there have been some small issues, but the redundancy built into the studio and the network means nothing has been insurmountable. He says: At one point we lost one of [the lines to the IBC] briefly; there was a circuit outage somewhere in Milan, so we were running one-legged briefly, but that's the reason we have two.

We're also sending all the cameras back on a LiveU, so just straight back to Salford over the internet just in case we lose all connectivity here we still actually can get to Salford via this. Our main circuits are fibre connectivity but we've also got a couple of Starlinks on the roof, so should someone dig up all of our fibre, we could get signals to Salford from that LiveU in the studio.

Craven continues: In Salford they will just pick up the different SOS in Salford. We present everything to them twice in Salford, so if they see it go to black, they'll jump over to the other one, he concludes. Well, that's the theory!

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/02/20/pinning-digital-content-onto-th...
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