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
Print This Story
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
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
19/06/2025
Home chevron_right News & Events chevron_right News chevron_right Singapore R...
19/06/2025
May 2025 was a month packed with events that captivated viewers, from the presidential campaign in Poland to the international Eurovision Song Contest. It's...
19/06/2025
During May, streaming's share of TV viewing in Mexico showed a slight decrease of 0.8 percentage points compared to the previous month, accounting for 23.5%...
19/06/2025
Combines octave-up and octave-down effects
Described as a dual octave engine, the latest release from Fuse Audio Labs combines octave-down and octave-up eff...
19/06/2025
BRUSSELS Mediagenix, a provider of smart content solutions, has announced that it has been selected to supply global broadcaster France M dias Monde (FMM) with ...
19/06/2025
NEW YORK Charter's Spectrum Reach advertising sales division has promoted Dan Callahan to senior vice president and chief revenue officer. He succeeds Jason...
19/06/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. The European News Exchange (ENEX) added an ad hoc channel to LiveU's Matrix cloud-native IP video distribution platform, used for the first...
19/06/2025
Avid today announced an extended agreement with Amazon MGM Studios to integrate Avid's industry-leading creative tools, Media Composer and Avid NEXIS , on...
19/06/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, today introduced key innovations in the newest version of Telestream Qualify, a cloud-native quality...
19/06/2025
Limecraft, a leading provider of cloud-based production and delivery tools for the media and entertainment industry, today announced the general availability of...
19/06/2025
Grass Valley, the media and entertainment industry's leading technology innovator, today announced a significant advancement in Greek media production: the ...
19/06/2025
Linear, Live Sports and Playout Origination from Globecast's Newest Facility in Westlake Village, CA
Globecast, the leading provider of broadcast, media an...
19/06/2025
Cobalt Digital, the leading designer and manufacturer of award-winning signal processing products and a founding partner in the openGear initiative, is pleased...
19/06/2025
Lightware Visual Engineering, a pioneer in signal management, has begun rolling out paper-only packaging for its flagship products, heralding another important ...
19/06/2025
Mediagenix, a global leader in smart content solutions to profitably connect the right content to the right audience, today announces that it has been selected ...
19/06/2025
HighField AI, the industry's first multimodal, agentic AI solution purpose-built for broadcast newsrooms, today announced its integration with CGI OpenMedia...
19/06/2025
Amino, a global leader in enterprise video and digital signage technology, today announced that its flagship media player, the H200W with Orchestrate, has been ...
19/06/2025
News agency ENEX, a long-term LiveU customer, has expanded its use of LiveU's Matrix cloud-native IP video distribution platform with the addition of an ad ...
19/06/2025
Broadcast Solutions, one of Europe's largest media systems integration groups, has completed a remarkable project to create an extensive infrastructure at A...
19/06/2025
Relo Metrics and VideoAmp today announced the official launch of Total Sports Performance, a next-generation measurement and attribution solution purpose-built ...
19/06/2025
In today's connected world, constituents expect real-time access to live government proceedings. In the last decade, governments worldwide have responded by...
19/06/2025
Latest entry-level sample library announced
VSL have just announced the launch of Fazioli F308 Essentials, a new, packed-down version of their library Synch...
19/06/2025
Chelsey Green Makes History as Recording Academy Board Chair The violinist, violist, vocalist, and Berklee professor is the first Black woman and youngest per...
19/06/2025
Fizzy peaches, banana millions, peach hearts? Or, put it another way: creative, marketing, digital? ICG was among the exhibitors at the Northern Marketing Festi...
19/06/2025
Fox Corporation Acquires Caliente TV in Mexico FOX Expands its Sports Broadcasting Footprint in Mexico with the Acquisition of a Market Leading Streaming Chan...
19/06/2025
Apple presents Big Man, a new short film shot on iPhone 16 Pro, produced in association with Somesuch and #Merky Films, directed by Academy Award-winning direct...
19/06/2025
RT and ITV have today announced that filming is underway in Dublin on the third and final series of Element Pictures' award-winning 8 30' comedy drama ...
19/06/2025
GeForce NOW is throwing open the vault doors to welcome the legendary Borderland series to the cloud.
Whether a seasoned Vault Hunter or new to the mayhem of P...
19/06/2025
Calibr-Skaggs doses first patient with switchable CAR-T cell therapy in a phase 1 trial for metastatic breast cancer CLBR001 ABBV-461 is a novel, investigatio...
19/06/2025
Two-part vaccine strategy generates a stronger, longer-lasting immune boost against HIV Scripps Research scientists' new approach combines two immune-activa...
18/06/2025
Kasi Lemmons with fellow Daniel Kaluuya at Sundance Institute's 2016 January Screenwriters Lab. Photo by Brandon Cruz for Sundance Institute...
18/06/2025
Sam Feder at Heightened Scrutiny premiere (photo by Robin Marshall / Shutterstock for Sundance Film Festival)
By Bailey Pennick
Editor's note: Since the...
18/06/2025
Since popping up in 2020, RADAR Italia has not only supported emerging artists but also reflected the cultural and musical richness of Italy. Over the past five...
18/06/2025
Media asset management transformation isnt about replacing old technology with new technology. Its about transforming how people work. After analysing dozens of...
18/06/2025
NEW YORK Warner Bros. Discovery's Max streaming service is making some major updates to its user interface that are designed to improve content discovery an...
18/06/2025
Lionsgate and DirecTV have announced plans to launch the Lionsgate Collection, a free ad-supported streaming channel that will offer programming from the studio...
18/06/2025
BRUSSELS Mediagenix, a provider of smart content solutions, has announced that it has been selected to supply global broadcaster France M dias Monde (FMM) with ...
18/06/2025
LEXINGTON, Ky. The ad rep firm Viamedia has appointed Robert Benoit as its new chief financial officer. Benoit appointment fills a role that has been open since...
18/06/2025
Avid delivers game-changing Splice integration to power music creators with new ...
18/06/2025
Gencom Technology Upgrades Fijian Parliament's Video Monitoring Distribution...
18/06/2025
Nebraska public broadcasters are among the first in the nation to launch a free virtual channel over NextGen TV and the former CTO of Nebraska Public Media wa...
18/06/2025
Splice integration, Speech-to-Text & more
The latest version of Avid's popular DAW software has just arrived, delivering a wealth of new features for bo...
18/06/2025
3D Model Not Showing in After Effects? Fix It Fast with These Tips!
Graham Quince June 18, 2025
0 Comments
Imported a 3D model into After Effects, but...
18/06/2025
COW Job Listing: Video Editor Needed for Special Birthday Slideshow Project
Brie Clayton June 18, 2025
0 Comments
Video Editor Needed for Special B...
18/06/2025
Documentary Storytelling Through Spatial Video with Blackmagic Design
Brie Clayton June 18, 2025
0 Comments
DaVinci Resolve Studio underpins a blend o...
18/06/2025
HUELVA, Spain Alfalite has launched SKYPIX RGBW & IM, a new series of ceiling-mounted LED panels designed specifically for virtual production (VP XR) environmen...
18/06/2025
In an investment that highlights the growing importance of the creator economy and social media influencers, Fox Advertising said it has made a strategic invest...
Creativity costs nothing: Sunset Vine Scotland on the challenges of bringing Gaelic sport to BBC Alba viewers all year round By Heather McLean 
