UEFA Women's Champions League Final 2025: DAZN on Plans and Challenges for the Arsenal vs Barcelona Face Off

UEFA Women's Champions League Final 2025: DAZN on plans and challenges for the Arsenal vs Barcelona face off By Heather McLean

Thursday, May 22, 2025 - 10:07

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Arsenal and Barcelona are set to meet in the 2025 UEFA Women's Champions League final on Saturday 24 May at the Est dio Jos Alvalade in Lisbon, with the North London team facing up to the reigning champions in what is bound to be an exciting match. Barcelona won the final 2-0 in 2024 for its second consecutive and third overall UEFA Women's Champions League title, and is hoping to make it a hat-trick this year.

DAZN is host broadcaster for UEFA. Dave Wade, VP production and editorial at DAZN, states on the excitement building up to this game that it is the culmination of a lot of effort out in by DAZN over the course of its contract: I feel like DAZN has been a driving force in the women's game and democratising it, bringing it out to people with our free to air policy, games on YouTube, the fan zones, all of these things. We haven't hidden it behind paywalls. It's been very much a mission to drive awareness and the popularity of the game.

We've had this contract for four years and I think the numbers of fans engaging tells a story, so I'm proud to be a part of it.

Host broadcast

DAZN's planning for this match started in September last year with an initial site visit with UEFA Women's Champions League team. Says Wade: We looked through the TV compound where we've got to put scaffolding in, where all the presentation positions are for us and also for sublicensees; just everything down to where makeup will go, where the DAZN office will be, where the host and uni trucks will go. Then we did another one, I think it was in February or March, when we roughly knew who's going to be in it as we were in the knockouts by then.

The technical producer and production manager were out there in early May for the sublicensees meeting some of them want to come on site with a presentation team, some in a studio, some do it pitch side and others will just bring their own commentary on site, so we've got to allocate all those seats and make sure that everyone's got what they need and the equipment that they need.

On the day Wade will be working in the truck providing a layer of knowledge and support for DAZN's senior producer of women's football, Andrew Slaven. He will be producing the live coverage. The unilateral director is Rhys Griffiths, with Gustavo Fonseca as host broadcast match director.

Medialuso is the technical service provider, with Vizrt providing graphics. Medialuso started setup for the match on match day minus four. They will all be ready to go on match day minus two, when there'll be rehearsals for the opening ceremony and things like that, says Wade.

And then on match day minus one, we will have a preview show. It's just a half hour show, but Barcelona will come in and do some training on the pitch, and there'll be a player and a manager interview opportunity, and then Arsenal will come in later, in the early evening. They're not going to train, but they'll come for a walk about, just get the feel of the stadium. So we'll be live on air when Arsenal are there, and it'll be a buildup show just to drive some interest for the next day's game.

UEFA Women's Champions League 2205 camera plan

Viewer experience

On cameras for the host broadcast, there are 16 in total including a spidercam and two Steadicams, and four super slowmos. So in terms of the cameras that we've got, 16 might not be as many as a Men's Champions League final, but all the big cameras that you would expect to see like a spidercam, like super slowmo cameras, big lens Steadicams and special cameras like the Batcam selfie stick, they are all there present and correct.

DAZN is producing the world feed and also its own for which it adds extra cameras where it feels its own coverage requires it. However, it also makes those camera positions available to the World Feed, including Batcam player selfie stick shots.

Explains Wade: We work really closely with UEFA. If we've got extra cameras, we try to make them available to the host as well. So for example, we did it on the Eindhoven [Women's Champions League] final in 2023, and it was the first time UEFA had ever had it on a final, which was you may have seen it now on a few big finals where the players are effectively given a selfie stick with a little camera on and they can film themselves.

Read more UEFA Women's Champions League Final 2025: Broadcast facts and camera plan for Arsenal Women FC vs FC Barcelona Femeni

The 2023 UEFA Women's Champions League final was played between Futbol Club Barcelona and VfL Wolfsburg at the Philips Stadion in Eindhoven, Netherlands on 3 June 2023.

It's real first person, so you're right in amongst it, continues Wade. That's our camera. It's a unilateral camera, but we will make that available to the host because with that immediate post match [excitement], once the final's been won, it's great shot. We're interested in getting the best coverage out to as many people as possible, so rather than cutting inbetween the unilateral coverage and the host coverage, we'll make that available to the host as well.

For its own coverage, DAZN is adding to its own post-match coverage using the wirecam. Although the camera is part of the host broadcast, DAZN is organising a separate recording from it that will be used to provide a more analytical view of the match after the event. It first did this in Eindhoven in 2023.

Explains Wade: [In Eindhoven] we did a highlights edit of the match, but just using the spidercam, which is a different angle on the game, it's a bit more tactical. In

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