BT Sport: Looking Back at 10 Years of Innovation and Technology Advances

BT Sport: looking back at 10 years of innovation and technology advances By George Bevir

Friday, July 7, 2023 - 10:38

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BT Sport's main studio at the Here East building in the Queen Elizabeth Olympics Park back in 2013

With the BT Sport brand set to disappear in just over a week's time, SVG Europe reflects on some of the pay-TV broadcaster's milestones.

On 18 July, the BT Sport brand will disappear from screens in the UK, marking the end of a ten-year period that has been characterised by innovation.

From the launch of the first UHD sports channel in Europe, to debuts for Dolby Atmos, advances in 8K and a pioneering approach to remote production, BT Sport has been synonymous with enhancements in the way sports content is captured, produced and shared with viewers.

Following the joint venture between BT and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the decision was made to adopt the TNT Sports brand WBD's sports-focused offering in territories such as South America and the US, where it airs coverage of the NBA. When that was announced back in February, WBD - itself no stranger to innovation pledged to continue the spirit of what BT Sport has built over the past decade.

But, with many of the BT Sport employees responsible for pushing those boundaries no longer part of what will become TNT Sports, and those who remain moving from BT Sport's iconic Stratford studios to Warner Bros. Discovery's facilities in West London, it felt like a timely opportunity to reflect on some of BT Sport's milestones.

4K, HDR and 8K

Two years after the August 2013 unveiling of BT Sport, the broadcaster launched Europe's first 4K UHD channel with coverage of the 2015 Community Shield clash between Arsenal and Chelsea. Reporting from the launch, SVG Europe described it as the biggest game-changer in European sports broadcasting .

BT Sport worked with long-term partner Timeline Television, which built UHD-1, a bespoke OB truck kitted out with the first deliveries of Sony's new HDC-4300 2/3 inch UHD 4K camera, the world's first Fujinon UHD 4K 2/3inch 80:1 box and 22:1 ENG lenses and a Snell Kahuna UHD 4K switcher with Sirius router.

4K UHD leaders (L/R): Jamie Hindhaugh, BT Sport; Dan McDonnell, Timeline TV; and Andy Beale, BT Sport, back in 2015

At the time, BT Sport chief operating officer Jamie Hindhaugh said: Broadcast innovation is really important: our whole aim for 4K is not about our own self-congratulation, it's not about getting one over on our competitors. Actually, the whole ethos of BT Sport is how do how do we get the best pictures, the best experience, to our customers.

Four year later, in August 2019, BT Sport launched a new channel, BT Sport Ultimate, the world's first service to feature regular programming in High Dynamic Range (HDR), as well as 4K UHD and Dolby Atmos.

One month after the launch of BT Sport Ultimate, the pay-TV broadcaster collaborated with BT's Media & Broadcast arm to broadcast the world's first live 8K test broadcast into the IBC exhibition in Amsterdam.

8K kit was in short supply, so a single Ikegami SHK-810 camera (supplemented by a regular UHD 16-camera setup), along with a Fujinon 8K PL-mount lens, Blackmagic Design Atem Constellation 8K vision mixer, encoding and decoding from Appear TV and an 8K scope from Leader plus a custom-built Moov graphics system were used to capture the action at a Premiership Rugby 7s match in Northampton, with the signal carried over BT's broadcast network to the RAI exhibition and conference centre in Amsterdam.

That was followed in February 2020 with the UK's first public live 8K sports broadcast, when BT Sport teamed up with Samsung to screen the UEFA Europa League match between Arsenal and Olympiacos to an audience of 50 viewers in the Emirates stadium.

A couple of years later, in March 2022, BT Sport again teamed up with BT Media & Broadcast, plus EMG, Appear, Synamedia and host of other vendors to deliver the UK's first live 8K broadcast of a top-tier sporting event into the home, airing the Saracens v Bristol Bears Premiership Rugby match into selected homes.

The game was produced entirely remotely and without a significant on-site presence, allowing BT Sport to explore OB and production workflows for future live 8K broadcasts, including testing the ability to run 8K HDR with match coverage, domestic presentation and playout including ad insertion.

Immersive audio

It wasn't just about the pictures; in 2017, BT Sport's live coverage of a pair of European ties in February (Manchester United v St Etienne, and Manchester City v AS Monaco) aired in Dolby Atmos, which was a first for the UEFA Champions League and Europa League ties.

It followed on from the January 2016 coverage of Liverpool v Chelsea, which was the world's first live broadcast of Premier League tie in both Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos, which was the culmination of 18 months' work with Dolby to get the proprietary three-dimensional surround sound system into BT Sport's live production chain.

Remote production

The lockdowns and restrictions that resulted from the Covid pandemic forced broadcasters around the world to come up with novel ways to remain on air, BT Sport included.

In April 2020, BT Sport moved its entire production operation out of its studios at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, East London, and in just three weeks turned it into a decentralised remote operation. That channel output included seven topical programmes produced live or nearly live with all on-screen participants working alone, based out of their own homes, connected to the production teams by broadband or over EE's 4G mobile network.

BT Sport's Live: Early Kick-Off moved to a truly remote, distributed team at the start of lockdown

That led BT Sport in June 2020 to announce t

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