SVG Europe
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When the Saudi Arabia-backed Esports Foundation announced
that the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC) would relocate from Riyadh to Paris with
barely two months’ notice, the headlines focused on logistics, travel, and
venue availability. But behind the scenes, the most dramatic pivot was
happening inside the broadcast engineering department. Hundreds of technicians,
operators, and systems specialists were suddenly tasked with rebuilding one of
the world’s largest esports production environments from scratch.
“Moving an event of this scale is complicated,” admitted
Ralf Reichert, CEO Esports Foundation. “The principle guiding us was simple - to
put players and clubs first. Our job was to elevate the competition, protect
the integrity of play, and make sure fans get the experience they deserve. The
competition remains unchanged — what changes is the city.”
The EWC format is more Olympics than World Cup given there
are 24 different games being played, many of them simultaneously. These include
Honor of Kings, League of Legends, Dota 2 and EA’s soccer game FC Pro. Together
they represent a mix of genres, including first-person shooters, multiplayer
online battle arenas, fighting games, and strategy games.
“Esports is fragmented like most other sports,” Reichert
explained. “Every game has its own language, heroes and traditions. EWC
respects this and brings it together. No single game can unite esports – but
EWC can.”
Running from July 6 to August 23, the event bringing
together more than 2,000 players and 200 clubs from over 100 countries
competing for a $75 million+ prize pool. Individual players can win cash prizes
while the winning club, which last year was Saudi team Falcons, shares a $7
million bonus.
“It was really, really hard to move such a big show in such
a short time,” says Sebastian Fjellström, Technical Manager for the EWC at ESL
FACEIT Group (EFG), which is also owned by Saudi’s public investment fund (as
part of Savvy Group). “But it’s been amazing to see everything come together
and see how talented the crew are at adapting to all these issues.”
The result is a temporary control room built almost entirely
from flypacks accommodated on about a quarter of the floorspace inside the
Paris Expo Porte de Versailles.
Its production footprint spans four main broadcast stages
for finals, three smaller stages for group rounds, and another area for public
gameplay. Every one of those stages feeds into a central engineering hub.
“Every event we do is a mix of our own gear, rental gear,
and partner gear,” Fjellström explains. “We don’t have a fixed control room
building. It’s a modular kit we transport with us. A lot of our equipment is
purpose‑built for us, but it lives in flight cases because we need to be
flexible.”
That flexibility was essential when the Foundation made the
call to leave Riyadh as a result of the region’s current instability. The
engineering team had already shipped some equipment to the Middle East, and
some en route had to be turned around immediately.
“It was an eleven‑hour decision,” he says. “If we had waited
another two or three days, more equipment would have been in transit. We had to
reverse shipments, rebuild racks, and redesign the entire layout for a
completely different venue.”
The Paris venue is packed with simultaneous productions and dense
with RF. For this, the EWC relies heavily on Riedel networking.
“We have around 300 Bolero belt packs deployed at this
venue,” Fjellström says. “That’s quite insane. We needed additional frequency
licences approved by the government to deploy this amount in such a small
venue.”
Another coup for Riedel and Arri
One of the biggest upgrades for 2026 is the introduction of
ARRI Alexa 35 Live cameras with the intent of bringing a cinematic aesthetic to
esports coverage.
“It gives us a completely different look in terms of colour
and image quality,” Fjellström says. “We’re testing different lenses to improve
further.”
The Alexa 35 Live systems were first deployed at scale by
the EBU at the Eurovision Song Contest earlier this year, where there were some
integration challenges. The EWC team benefited from that experience.
“We had the luxury of getting some of the experts who
handled Eurovision’s ARRI integration to help us,” he says. “There were
challenges — especially power systems and RF congestion — but we’ve made it
work.”
There’s no HDR which was considered too great a leap for
this edition in the time available.
“The game capture is already amazing from the publisher. We
work on frame rate improvements, super slow‑mo, and stage LED colour control to
ensure everything looks good both on camera and in the arena.”
Fighting game Fatal Fury for example is being captured in
120hz and broadcast at 60hz with options for replay and super-slo.
Each stage has to be reconfigured from the proposed plans
for Riyadh given the different height, weight load, and space of the Paris
venue. Partly because of that, and also to provide presentational diversity,
each of the stages here are designed differently with a unique set of camera
gear, though they all share player POV cameras on each gamer PC. These are PTZ
units from Chinese firm Obsbot.
The Alexa 35’s feature mainly on stage one. There are 11 of
them; only four are cabled. One is on a winch camera — top‑down in the middle
of the stage for effect shots. Another is mounted on a four‑point wire-cam to
capture the audience.
Some compromises were necessary due to the accelerated move
from Riyadh. “We wanted to fly more systems in Stage 1 but we needed additional
screens installed [for audience view]. Maybe not the ideal workflow, but
together with the RF cameras we have here, we can still capture the whole
venue. We can film all the way up to the top when players walk onto the stage.”
Stage 4 uses a mix of
Sony systems cameras and handheld RF units. “It’s easier to have long shots on
the gamers so we don’t interfere with play,” he explains. “Operators usually
have both options - the handhelds can rest on tripods or they can take them off
when needed.
“On Stage 2 we’re
using rail cameras to get different footage because the stage design is very
different. You don’t want everything looking the same. It’s really about
choosing the best tool for the presentation.”
Four cameras with RF links are roaming the entire area doing
studio segments or interviews inside and outside the building encoded with
Haivision.
For some games, EFG also has a full vertical video production
line.
Balancing Core Gamers and Mainstream Audiences
The media strategy behind the EWC is to create a product
that can generate interest worldwide for hardcore gamers and mainstream sports
enthusiasts.
It has signed have more than 100 media partners broadcasting
in more than 160 countries, in forty languages.
In France, that includes daily segments on France
Télévisions and partnerships with L’Équipe and NRJ, the country’s biggest radio
station. Since the French interest is so
high, EFG is running a French language production on top of the main feed.
“Not only are we broadcasting it in French, we also have a
local team working with us to make sure that we do everything with the right
wording in the French language,” Fjellström says.
In the US, Fox Sports will carry the event. In Saudi Arabia,
Tamanya, the broadcaster of the Saudi Pro League, has taken rights. China,
meanwhile, will see non‑exclusive distribution across Huya, Douyin, Bilibili,
and Kuaishou. Eurosport, DAZN and TNT Sports are covering in Europe.
That’s on top of 5000+ co-streamers who are permitted to
take live streams, apply their own commentary and stream on their own Twitch,
YouTube or TikTok channels.
“We always work on the balance between what core gamers want
to see and what mainstream audiences can understand,” he says. “We want to
create a story even for someone who’s never seen the game before.”
In part two of SVG’s coverage of the EWC2026 we dive into
the massive – and massively complex - production gallery.
End part 1
Inside the production gallery
In the sprawling production area the engineering philosophy
is pragmatic.
“We use a mix of equipment,” Fjellström says. “Our main TD
sits with a Grass Valley Maverik modular control surface for GV Kahuna. We also
use Blackmagic ATEMs (20 of them) for sub‑switching or sponsor streams. For
converters, we run Blackmagic Micro Converters, YelloBriks and Barco.
“Instead of trying to go one brand for all we really look at
the challenge we need to solve and try to bring in the right tool for the right
place. For example, we have Blackmagic ATEM for some parts where we feel like
we didn't need to go all in with an additional Kahuna.”
Each of the four big stages runs two ATEMs plus a Kahuna.
The smaller stages run two ATEMs or more depending on needs.
“When we need additional language streams or specific
localised sponsor stream for regions instead of throwing in a giant mixer it's
sometimes easier to just go for a Blackmagic, key some graphic on top and then
send it out again always ensuring that the graphic is triggered with the rest
of the package.”
There are 110 physical encoders sending out around 280
streams concurrently for different platforms, different media partners and also
for monitoring and remote productions. The goal is to build a flexible,
scalable system that can support dozens of simultaneous outputs.
“We’re producing almost 10–12 live hours per stage, four to
five days a week — sometimes Monday to Sunday,” he says. “On top of that, we
produce in multiple languages. There are dedicated Chinese, French and English studios
on site, plus studios across the world.”
Some 7000 hours will be produced over the tournament. Content
is stored on EVS systems and NAS arrays.
“We dump clips weekly to archive or media services, then
clean out the rest,” he explains. “It’s rotational content.”
Real‑time game data
Where traditional sports rely on manual data entry or AI‑driven
analytics, esports offers direct access to game servers.
“We work much more with computer sources and real‑time game
data,” Fjellström explains. “We can grab stats directly from the game server
and integrate them into graphics packages, stage elements, and triggers.”
This allows for dynamic storytelling, instant stat overlays,
and automated triggers that sync with in‑game events.
“It’s something traditional sport can’t do in the same way,”
he says. “It lets us build features around the game that would be impossible
otherwise.”
Sync is a huge deal and relies on automation. “We have a
whole dedicated team for developing our internal tools and supporting us with
game integration. That’s really helpful for a project like this. We also have
our own IT department on site making sure that all the data packages arrive at
the right time at the right place. That means that our broadcast engineers and
producers can focus on what they need to focus on while everything in the
background works.”
EVS setup
Instead of a mix of EVS XT-3s, XT-4s and LSM-VIA controller
of previous years, the production has equipped entirely with VIA “because we
wanted to make sure that we can use a lot of the IP features and send content
back and forth in real time, to be able to edit and also for integrating
cameras with Xtra Motion.”
Last year Xtra Motion was on one stage; now it is a feature
on every stage for capturing player emotions.
“We also have some areas where we use VMix for different
reactions, where we feel like an EVS might not be needed or that we have a
limitation because an EVS cannot do the compositions we want.
“For instance, we may want to do a composition with a whole
team's camera with a replay. We could do that by creating it and sending it to
an EVS and so on but in a VMix you can make a composition, turn it into virtual
source and replay it all in one place.”
Setup began on June 1st with remote testing beforehand, some
of it in Poland. Last year’s event in Riyadh used a full SMPTE 2110 core. This
year, however the team opted for baseband and 125 Riedel MediorNet Micron
nodes.
“Everyone has their preferred solution,” he says. “We
evaluate what scales best each year.”
In-game observers
Esports also requires a specialised form of camera
operation: in‑game observers.
“Our in‑game camera operators specialised for each game,”
Fjellström says. “They know exactly what is most interesting for the viewer.”
The multiplayer Battle Royale titles such as Free Fire, Apex
Legends, PUBG: Battlegrounds and Fortnite (introduced for the first time) add
another layer of complexity.
“For games with many teams playing at once, we use scouts
around the stages to follow the action and alert observers,” he explains. “It’s
about capturing the most interesting action and creating the best
storytelling.”
EFG already do REMI productions for other events and is
looking to expand that for EWC. Its broadcast team numbers around 300 people,
with additional remote operators working virtually from Sweden.
“In our facility in Stockholm, we have a team working with
different remote tools to control, either the gear here, or do stuff on their
own and send it to here. So we can, for example, have graphic editors working
remote and sending the packages to us, and we can have operators sitting in one
of our facilities and physically controlling devices here.”
“We’re always looking to adapt. For instance, how do we
improve the space for our co-workers on-site and also the experience for the
viewers?
“It's always a balance of what can we do without risking
anything because games are so time sensitive.”
The players play on their own gaming computers and the game
server [from the publisher] they're playing against are also located nearby.
This means that the game data is able to be tapped in real time and in turn
that enables EFG to build new features around the game’s on-screen
presentation.
“We're trying as much as we can to have the game server and
the players and a lot of the API machines together on one network to maximise
what we can do and minimise the amount of delay.”
The venue’s dark fibre is connected to a local data centre
“so we have the possibility of really scaling the amount of bandwidth we need.”
Balancing Core Gamers and Mainstream Audiences
The EWC has signed have more than one hundred media partners
broadcasting in more than 160 countries, in forty languages globally.
The Foundation’s strategy is two‑pronged: reach endemic
esports audiences while simultaneously breaking into mainstream media. In
France, that means daily segments on France Télévisions and partnerships with
L’Équipe and NRJ, the country’s biggest radio station.
Since the French interest is so high, EFG is running a
French language production on top of the main feed.
“Not only are we broadcasting it in French, we also have a
local team working with us to make sure that we do everything with the right
wording in the French language,” Fjellström says.
In the US, Fox Sports will carry the event. In Saudi Arabia,
Tamanya, the broadcaster of the Saudi Pro League, has taken rights. China,
meanwhile, will see non‑exclusive distribution across Huya, Douyin, Bilibili,
and Kuaishou. Eurosport, DAZN and TNT Sports are covering in Europe.
That’s on top of 5000+ co-streamers who are permitted to
take live streams, apply their own commentary and stream on their own Twitch,
YouTube or TikTok channels.
“We always work on the balance between what core gamers want
to see and what mainstream audiences can understand,” he says. “We want to
create a story even for someone who’s never seen the game before.”
