Creativity costs nothing: Sunset Vine Scotland on the challenges of bringing Gaelic sport to BBC Alba viewers all year round By Heather McLean Thursday, June 5, 2025 - 15:27
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Sunset Vine's contract for BBC Alba is currently in year two of the three year long deal
BBC Alba trusts Sunset Vine Scotland to cover around 176 hours of live and as-live sporting events including football, shinty and rugby over the course of the three year contract won by the production company in 2023.
Sunset Vine has raised the bar on production quality for BBC Alba across its Scottish sport coverage
BBC Alba is a Scottish Gaelic-language free-to-air public broadcast television channel jointly owned by the BBC and MG Alba, also known as Gaelic Media Service. Sunset Vine's contract for BBC Alba is currently in year two of the three year long deal at this point. The production company has raised the bar on the quality and depth of coverage of sports in Scotland, and is continuing to do so.
Sunset Vine produces a minimum of 26 live Scottish Women's Premier League (SWPL) games each season, a deal which BBC Alba has the rights to until the end of the 2024/25 season. It also produces shinty a team sport played with sticks and a ball played mainly in the Scottish Highlands including the Camanachd Cup Semi-Finals, the MacAulay Cup Final, the Valerie Fraser Cup Final and the historic Camanachd Cup Final.
SVG Europe caught up with Grant Philips, head of Sunset Vine Scotland, to find out more about the success that the independent production company has made of the BBC Alba contract.
The heartbeat
Sunset Vine's BBC Alba team covers around 90 events every year, with sporting events across women's and men's sport in Scotland, covering shinty rugby and football. It is actually a lot, and across 10 months, it just never ceases. There's no rest. We just keep going, says Philips.
The BBC Alba contract is, really the heartbeat of our Scottish operation, notes Philips.
Philips says growing the Sunset Vine team in Scotland has been key to delivering the BBC Alba contract successfully, but it has also been instrumental in allowing the company to, win more contracts and grow our business here in Scotland, he says.
The Scottish base for Sunset Vine is growing around the ALBA contract, Philips explains further: We also produce the World Indoor Bowls Championships for BBC Sport, and for BBC Scotland, we make the Scottish Cup highlights. So for a relatively small operation, we like to think we pack a punch and deliver high quality stuff. It's really is non-stop fun!
We also now produce the Triple Crown Snooker for BBC Sport and this summer our team with be split between Salford and Switzerland covering the UEFA Women's European Championship, for BBC Sport.
The relationship with BBC Alba is a great one, according to Philips. He says: To my mind, I find this a success story because our client and us are aligned. We're aligned with the ambition; we know what we've got to try and achieve. Obviously the Gallic language is central to it, but also good sports production is, and they really just leave us to get on with it, and support us to deliver the best we can for them.
Sunset Vine has grown its portfolio since it won the BBC Alba contract, to also cover the Scottish Snooker Women's Euros, bowls for BBC Sport, and BBC Scotland Scottish Cup highlights
Creativity costs nothing
On challenges faced by Sunset Vine to broadcast for BBC Alba, Philips says: Sometimes we go to venues that are a field; literally just a field. So we have to build a gantry. We present pitchside, which obviously in Scotland comes with some challenges given the weather and whatever, but the team just get on with it. I think we make some of our best programmes from not very much, if I'm honest.
Philips gives an example of what his team have to deal with in terms of the huge variety of locations they have to work in. Well funnily enough, just the other week, we had to deal with a condemned castle, and the other one was an asbestos roof in Elgin [Moray, Scotland]. Going to Old Trafford and Arsenal and all these places comes with their own challenges, but we certainly face different ones with the smaller locations and more remote venues.
The budget is tight [for these productions] but that doesn't stand in our way. We still make pre-produced, with a presenter, and live sporting events all over Scotland. So the budget is tight, but it doesn't really stop us; creativity costs nothing. We just come up with different ideas and that's it.
On the creativity that gets unlocked when the team is up against it, Philips comments that filling time slots with features and analysis involves a lot of work for some of the sports. He says on the football matches the team cover: For every single match we open the show and also we have a 15 minute halftime window that we have to have to create content for. The guys and the girls are out filming on self shooters, off filming every other day, here, there and everywhere trying to gather interviews.
Our presenter goes [out with a] lot of [the ENG crews] and we make a feature per match basically, so we try and split the halftime into two or three sections with a nice big feature, editorially relevant to the match or something that's coming up. And then beyond that, obviously we do analysis that you would see on most things, and then we try and engage with the clubs and players; access to some of these matches is better than some of the bigger grounds, he adds.
Rugby and shinty are treated the same way, Philips says: Obviously for the rugby we need to fill half time as well, even if it's a feed. So we need to go and do a feature relevant to the team. Shinty is very much part time, it's amateur. It's a very un
