Capturing the sights, sounds and sensation of the Le Mans 24 Hour motor race places unique demands on the team behind the TV production. Ahead of this year's event, TVBEurope talks to WBD's Eurosport's Will Brooks about the challenges they have to overcome
By Matthew Corrigan
Published: June 14, 2024 Updated: June 17, 2024
Capturing the sights, sounds and sensation of the Le Mans 24 Hour motor race places unique demands on the team behind the TV production. Ahead of this year's event, TVBEurope talks to WBD's Eurosport's Will Brooks about the challenges they have to overcome
target=_blank title=Share on LinkedIn class=share-linkedin> Capturing the sights, sounds and sensation of the Le Mans 24 Hour motor race places unique demands on the team behind the TV production. Ahead of this year's event, TVBEurope talks to WBD's Eurosport's Will Brooks about the challenges they have to overcome
https://www.tvbeurope.com/features/how-eurosport-captures-the-spectacle-of-the-worlds-best-known-motor-race title=Share via Email class=share-email>
For motor racing fans around the world, the name Le Mans is special. Alongside Monaco and Indianapolis, the event is steeped in history and romance, bearing witness to some of the most spectacular performances ever seen on a race track over more than a century of top level automotive competition.
(Photo by James Moy Photography/Getty Images) This weekend, upwards of a quarter of million eager fans will make their pilgrimage, descending en masse on the Sarthe circuit in the north of the lush Loire region. But millions more will watch at home, following the action as the race-worn pack charges on through the night.
For the Eurosport team, there are obvious comparisons to be drawn with the teams who are lining up to contest this 92nd iteration of the 24 Heures du Mans. In every pit lane garage, the men and women behind the cars that will be heading out on track started their preparations as soon as last June's race finished. So, too, did the TV production crew.
It's an ongoing planning operation, Will Brooks, senior producer at Warner Bros Discovery, tells TVBEurope. The team works across a lot of different productions. This weekend, we have Le Mans but we also have World Superbikes at Misano, British Superbikes at Knockhill and Speedway Grand Prix in Malilla, but this is Le Mans. It's something we think about right from the beginning of the season.
The intensity of broadcasting a dynamic, fast-moving event necessitates a pattern of rotating shifts for the production crew, explains Brooks, similar to the stints pulled by the drivers and pit crews. A team of around 30, including the presentation team, five camera operators and audio engineers are on site with an equivalent number in support at WBD's London facility.
At 4:00pm CET, when the waving tricolour signals the start of the race, the rolling pack will begin the charge in earnest. As many as 62 cars will start this year's race, with entrants split into three different categories. The sheer size of the grid makes capturing the spectacle in all its sound and fury a challenge all of its own.
A Le Mans grid is rather large, says Brooks, with amusing understatement. To cover it with two cameras is tricky, so we have three RFs for the start and then we go down to two for the remainder of the race. One camera has full grid plus pit lane coverage and the other has wider paddock coverage to get a bit of the colour of the event.
(Photo by Alessio Morgese/NurPhoto via Getty Images) RF cameras are used, with audio provided by specialists from Tall Audio. On site, the host broadcasters use AMP Visual TV, which WBD is able to tap into. Feeds are brought back by Evertz encoders connected to the Globecast backbone that feeds WBD's colocation based in Paris and London.
In order to minimise delay, the cameras come back using J2K compression. This year the onboards, seven timing pages and heli-cam will be fed back to London using a mixture of Haivision SRT and AMP Let's See Cloud.
In contrast to many other motorsport formats, endurance racing demands the highest performance over a long period of time. Teams must be resilient, able to withstand adverse conditions for hours on end. Once again, stark comparisons can be found in the approach taken by the broadcast operation. To ensure reliability, WBD is adopting a tried and tested methodology, as Brooks explains, Because of the duration we've gone for a robust set up rather than an innovative one. Sony RF cameras, Wisycom audio and AMP handle all the frequencies in conjunction with ANFR. All Intercom on site is provided using a Digigram Iqoya Servlink on direct RTP or SIP.
Further complicating matters, the Le Mans 24 Hour race takes place in part on closed public roads. The infamous Mulsanne Straight, for example, is actually part of the route d partementale RD 338. Overcoming these difficulties is a key consideration for the team.
If we want to go and film anything trackside, we have two options, says Brooks. If we want to go out of range all our RF cameras will record to card and then we can feed whatever we have recorded down the line to London when they're back in range. We also have an ENG kit with us and in the past, we've gone and filmed at night time in the woods, at the back of the circuit. In that scenario, we have a system called Woody which lets us do our ingest over internet. We can ingest to our Grass Valley Framelight MAM and then push to our LiveTouches that we're using for replays and inserts in the gallery.
As the sun slips beneath the horizon, light begins to fade and the unlit sections of the track soon fall into complete darkness. Racing on through the night, the attrition rate grows as the teams battle mechanical failure, an inevitabl
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
19/11/2025
Sphere Sound Kicks Up Its Heels at Radio City Music HallUltra-immersive system from the singular Las Vegas venue is also ready for sportsBy Dan Daley, Audio Edi...
19/11/2025
The Future of Stadium and Arena Video Control Rooms: Tech Leaders Talk 4K, IP, a...
19/11/2025
One Year at Intuit Dome: Walking Through the Stunning Arena's Advanced Video...
19/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: IMG's Francois Westcombe Goes Inside IMG's Annual Digital ...
19/11/2025
Inside Brighton & Hove Albion's fan-first media machine By George Bevir
Tuesday, November 18, 2025 - 10:10
Print This Story
Brighton & Hove Albion'...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 1: Kansas Athletics Brings New Production Power to Rebu...
19/11/2025
Rock Chalk Rebuild, Part 2: A Pro's Guide to Kansas Athletics' New Video...
19/11/2025
MLB Media Rights Shakeup: NBC Inks Three-Year Deal for Sunday Night Baseball, Pe...
19/11/2025
Rohan Parashuram Kanawade attends the premiere of Sabar Bonda (Cactus Pears) at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival at Egyptian Theatre on January 26, 2025, in Pa...
19/11/2025
Awards season is heating up, and the International Documentary Association just ...
19/11/2025
Aerojet Rocketdyne President Ken Bedingfield and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders were joined by state and local officials to celebrate the groundbreaking o...
19/11/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
19/11/2025
Calrec gives Phoenix Broadcast Solutions its full support in strategic multi-year enterprise partnership New Singapore OB company invests in Calrec technology f...
19/11/2025
October brings a larger audience in front of TV screens. The cooler autumn weather and the continuation of new programming schedules brought increases in both t...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Vitec has acquired Datapath, a developer of real-time video processing for large-scale video walls, AVoIP content distribution and KVM control in mission-critic...
19/11/2025
NEVADA CITY, Calif. Telestream has introduced ARGUS Version 2.3, which introduces Live Look, a feature that lets operators inspect live and on-demand streams vi...
19/11/2025
STAMFORD, Conn. and NEW YORK Charter Communications, Inc. has announced a major deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that establishes AWS as one of Charters stra...
19/11/2025
TOKYO Atomos has announced a major firmware update that brings integrated camera control to the Ninja TX GO and Ninja TX its new CFexpress-based monitor-recor...
19/11/2025
Berklee's Signature Series Reimagines the Musical and Visual Artistry of Col...
19/11/2025
PlayBox Neo departed the NAB Show New York 2025 on a high note. The company's all-new PlayBox Neo Suite made a splash on the show floor, drawing strong inte...
19/11/2025
AAVBR (American Audio Visual Baton Rouge), a leading full-service event production company serving Louisiana and the Gulf Coast region, has enhanced its product...
19/11/2025
In its mission to deliver live event services combining advanced engineering with a creative approach to captivating live sports and entertainment experiences, ...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK Short-form vertical video has exploded across platforms like TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, but a new survey commissioned by Media.net, a provider of c...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK YES Network, the regional sports network home of the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Nets, and CAMB.AI have struck a partnership they said will leverage ...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has issued detailed guidance on filings that were disrupted by the government shutdown. While many of those fil...
19/11/2025
NEW YORK The popularity of NFL games is largely responsible for continued seasonal momentum in TV viewership into October (measured Sept. 29-Oct. 26), according...
19/11/2025
DirecTV has announced that its MyFree DirecTV streaming service has added seven new channels. Those include four sports services, NBA FAST, Red Bull TV, DAZN Ri...
19/11/2025
SURREY, U.K. Mark Roberts Motion Control (MRMC) has launched Flair Bridge, a compact device that transforms how operators control the company's motion-contr...
19/11/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission, which is continuing to rapidly ramp up its operations after the end of the federal government shutdown, has se...
19/11/2025
IRVING, Texas Nexstar Media Group and Tegna filed applications on Nov. 18 with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeking its consent to transfer broad...
19/11/2025
Martin Freeman, Jessie Buckley, Wu-Tang Clan's Raekwon, Eddie the Eagle and ...
19/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz collaborates with Broadcom to enable testing and validation of n...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Innato, starring Imanol Arias and Elena Anaya, arrives on Netf...
19/11/2025
Back to All News
Guillermo del Toro Sits Down With Troll 2 Director Roar Uthaug...
19/11/2025
Some projects feel monumental from the moment the first phone call comes in. When BCE, the host broadcaster appointed to coordinate the national coverage, asked...
19/11/2025
November 19 2025, 08:00 (PST) BAY AREA HOST COMMITTEE AND DOLBY PARTNER TO DELIVER IMMERSIVE FAN EXPERIENCES
During the Week of Football's Biggest Game...
19/11/2025
Michael D. Higgins: Ireland's Ninth President features RT Archives footage and interviews across seven decades
Watch Wednesday 19 November at 9:35pm on RT...
19/11/2025
Scripps Research scientists receive $1.1 million to advance AI modeling for HIV vaccine development New AI system helps scientists rapidly pinpoint the most pro...
18/11/2025
Independent media across Central America are operating under intensifying financial pressure, yet there is a clear appetite for models that can sustain both ind...
18/11/2025
NBA Debuts New Comms Infrastructure and Systems for RefereesTwo-phase rollout is intended to improve game flow, enhance officiating accuracyBy Dan Daley, Audio ...
18/11/2025
Platinum White Paper: How Aggreko Delivers Certainty For Broadcasters On The Wor...
18/11/2025
Kiswe Extends DTC Products With Kiswe Core Cloud-Based Tool for Distributing Con...
18/11/2025
Spanish Basketball Federation partners with ScorePlay to power digital transform...
18/11/2025
HBS selects BBright encoders and decoders to connect ST 2110 live production wor...
18/11/2025
Ashes to Ashes: Inside TNT Sports' hybrid and maverick' production plan...
18/11/2025
SVG All-Stars: Mimi Fotopoulos, Director, Talent and Production Operations, Tenn...
18/11/2025
SVG LIVE! Conference Explores the Tech Side of Sports and Entertainment ConvergenceLive sports and music productions increasingly share gear and infrastructureB...
Capturing the sights, sounds and sensation of the Le Mans 24 Hour motor race places unique demands on the team behind the TV production. Ahead of this year's event, TVBEurope talks to WBD's Eurosport's Will Brooks about the challenges they have to overcome
