HIGH HOPES The BBC‘s virtual studio gave the impression its presenters were operating out of Switzerland
Using Unreal Engine, ITV can adapt its studio to any given event. “It’s designed so that we can ‘skin it’, we call it,” begins Tony Cahalane, technical director at ITV Sport. “Once we had the graphics, we gave it to Timeline – the suppliers of the VR set-up – and they were able to reskin it.” As well as adding the Women’s Euros branding, ITV incorporated AR and video elements such as ‘meet the team’ content. “We didn’t do the normal AR ‘meet the teams’,” adds Cahalane. “We actually did videos in their home environments. That was a departure.” ITV worked out of its UK production hub for most of the tournament, travelling to Switzerland for England’s final pair of matches. “We have tons of media coming in, and that needs to be filed, stored and made available for all of the edits that we have constantly running,” Cahalane explains, noting media management is handled in the UK.
audience of the year so far, and it will probably stay that way.” Booth is citing the BBC’s peak live audience of 12.2 million viewers across all platforms. At one point, 11.6 million fans tuned in to BBC One, while an additional 4.2 million streamed the match on BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app. Besides the sheer numbers, “we were pleased with how the virtual studio looked. Virtual studios have made leaps and bounds in just the last three or four years. They are looking more and more real,” Booth says. “One thing that we were very keen on was to make it a real environment, meaning guests could walk to the screen and back. The challenge is still where the feet connect to the floor – that’s always the hardest bit to get right.” Vizrt’s Reality Connect tool rose to the occasion, using AI to generate accurate reflections, shadows and lighting, thus boosting the overall sense of immersion. According to
Murphy, the BBC received ‘lots of great feedback’ on its virtual studio. “It’s all gone really well,” he says. Team effort For the ‘first time in a long time’, ITV broadcast the Women’s Euros alongside the BBC, according to Katie Reed, head of production at ITV Sport. “Before we got the rights,” she recalls, “we looked at the tournament and how we thought we could approach it from a budget perspective. We decided to do the group stage from the UK and then fly out for the semi-final and final.” Like the BBC, ITV created a virtual set ‘not long after Covid-19’, according to Reed. “That makes us quite versatile in terms of all the different productions we do.”
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