FIFA World Cup: A cyber criminal’s cash cow

IBC

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Alongside financially motivated cyber crime, politically motivated hacktivists are also likely to target organisations linked to the tournament through distributed denial-of-service attacks, website defacements and disinformation campaigns.

The FIFA World Cup will be the largest, most digitally connected sporting event ever staged. Billions of viewers, millions of devices, sprawling broadcast infrastructure, and a three‑nation footprint create a perfect storm of opportunity for cyber-attack.

“This tournament will face more sophisticated, more automated, and more politically charged cyber-attacks than any event before it,” warns Darren Anstee, CTO for security at Netscout.

The scale of the tournament across the U.S, Canada and Mexico dramatically increases the potential attack surface for criminals and hacktivists alike.

Matt Hull, VP of Cyber Intelligence and Response at Manchester-headquartered global cyber security firm, NCC Group says the 2026 World Cup will present cyber criminals with “the biggest opportunity to make money this year”, as threat actors increasingly exploit global sporting events for fraud, disruption and political activism.

All the host nations recorded an increase in the weekly average number of cyber-attacks  in April 2026 compared to both March 2026 and April 2025.

A history of attacks

Cyber-attacks targeting major sporting events are nothing new. “Pretty much every single one of them over the last 20 years has seen attack activity,” Anstee explains. The severity varies depending on geopolitics, the host nation, and even the sponsors involved.

During the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, a China-linked crime group reportedly hacked into a major telecommunications provider, syphoning customer data and with potential to blackout live streaming of the games. Cybercriminals stole personal data from 15000 Uefa customers during Euros 2024; the French authorities recorded over 500 cybersecurity events during the Paris Olympics and earlier this year, Russian hackers targeted foreign ministry offices and Winter Olympics sites, including hotels in Cortina.

Anstee explains that attackers begin probing infrastructure six months before the event and ramp up again three months out.

“During the event, attacks spike around opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies, and high‑profile matches,” he says. “Some attackers aim for real disruption like taking services offline and keeping them down. Others simply want attention, using the global spotlight to amplify their political or ideological message.”

What makes 2026 different is the combination of geopolitical tension, automation, and scale. The last five years have seen a surge in activist‑driven cyberattacks linked to conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other flashpoints.

“This is a great opportunity for activists to get out their messages,” Hull says. “Being able to take down services that are associated with this event to impact the reputation of North America in general.”

DDoS

A major concern are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks where the aim is to disrupt or take down the live stream. Netscout has identified over 100 groups actively using DDoS as a tool. Their attack campaigns, which can last days or many weeks, fall into three major categories.

Anstee explains, “The ones grabbing the headlines happen when the network is flooded by 20-30 terabits designed to overwhelm connectivity. If you fill the pipe everything behind it is unreachable.”

So-called ‘state‑exhaustion’ attacks target firewalls and load balancers with extremely high packet rates, overwhelming their ability to track connections.

The most sophisticated, and the hardest to detect, are application‑layer attacks. In this type of attack, bots behave like real users. They connect over TLS, even logging in and issuing queries.

“They are mimicking normal behaviour but at scale, they crush the application’s ability to serve legitimate users,” Anstee says. “There are also more supply‑chain dependencies and more legitimate traffic sources making geolocation filtering harder. It makes the threat surface bigger and it makes simple things harder.”

Every digital service associated with the tournament represents a potential target for DDoS. Not just for financially motivated attackers, but also for politically and ideologically driven actors looking to make a statement on the world stage “in the most-viewed country-versus-country competition.”

Streaming and broadcast platforms

Rights‑holders worldwide are on high alert. They’ve paid enormous sums for exclusive distribution rights and attackers know that knocking out a national broadcaster during a key match would cause chaos.

“You might not even need to hit the media itself,” Anstee says. “If you can’t log into your TV service, you can’t watch the match.”

Attackers increasingly target secondary vendors upstream of major services which are likely to be less defended. Anstee explains, “If I knock one of them over, what’s the downstream impact? Does it slow things down? Stop things in certain regions?”

With the World Cup spread across three countries, the supply chain is larger and more complex than ever.

Rather than directly targeting FIFA infrastructure, many attacks are expected to focus on the wider ecosystem supporting the event, including airlines, transport operators, hotels, payment systems and ticketing providers.

“All of the things that are critical to making the event a success are likely to be targeted,” Hull says. “How bad would it be if you can’t fly over to North America because one of your flights has been cancelled because of some activist activity? Or you’re over there and you can’t buy your tickets?”

Criminals are already using the World Cup as bait in phishing campaigns and fake online stores.

“We’re starting to see through some of our research phishing links being used with the World Cup as context, fake merchandise sites being spun up to buy kits.”

Automated attack

The rise of artificial intelligence has also made cyber fraud more convincing and easier to scale.

“Gone are the days of the dodgy phishing email that’s badly written,” Hull says. “AI-generated websites, deepfake videos, fraudulent betting platforms, and fake social media content could all be used to support scams or spread disinformation during the tournament.”

For consumers, the primary risks are likely to be ticket scams, fake merchandise websites and payment fraud. But Hull also warns that successful cyber attacks on infrastructure providers could create wider disruption for travellers and fans.

“It’s going to be scams essentially. Or they’re going to be losing money because they bought a dodgy ticket or they’ve purchased from a website that isn’t legitimate.”

More alarming is the rise of AI‑driven attack tools using chatbots.

“A novice can now orchestrate a complex, multi‑stage attack with a single instruction: ‘Disrupt this service tomorrow during business hours’,” Anstee says

Chatbots can automatically run reconnaissance to select the most vulnerable points of attacks. They can be programmed to launch attacks at scheduled times, monitor the ‘success’ or otherwise and adjust tactics on the fly.

Botnets like Mirai variants (a range of malware), and the AISURU botnet (reportedly the most powerful ever), and others now include millions of compromised devices. “You don’t need high‑rate traffic anymore,” Anstee explains. “If you’ve got a million and a half devices, each doing a tiny amount, you can generate enormous impact.”

Parking the bus

The role of cybersecurity specialists is to support the service providers, broadcasters, and sponsors who form the digital backbone of the tournament.

“No single layer can stop every attack,” says Anstee. “A 30‑terabit flood must be handled by the service provider, not the enterprise. But small, stealthy application‑layer attacks must be caught at the enterprise edge.

Over 540 service providers feed data to Netscout every hour, generating intelligence on 16 million attacks per year. This allows the company to identify active botnets, track attack infrastructure and feed intelligence back to customers in realtime.

Coordination is important too. For events like the World Cup, service providers, vendors, sponsors, and governments are sharing information. “It’s one of the reasons you haven’t seen major outages so far,” Anstee notes.

For major organisations involved in the tournament, Hull advises cyber preparedness should focus on “doing the basics right”, including password security, resilience testing and incident response planning. But he also stressed the importance of preparing staff for increasingly sophisticated social engineering attacks.

Hull says, “Major sporting events like this combine huge digital dependency with emotional public engagement and that creates ideal conditions for cyber-attacks and online scams.”

BTS Spider-Noir

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The Marvel universe series is designed to work both as a gritty monochrome detective story and as a stylised, visually saturated comic book world. 

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The familiar webbed crusader is given an adjacent character and origins story as a world weary gumshoe in between-the-wars New York for Amazon MGM’s series expansion of the Spider-verse.

Nicolas Cage plays Ben Reilly, aka The Spider, whose characterisation as “70% Humphrey Bogart and 30% Bugs Bunny” is about as accurate as you can get.

He arrives, in the pre-credit sequence, with a backstory that makes clear he is knackered and basically wants to hang his mask up for good. It’s this version of Spidey rather than as invincible superhero that sold editors Jennifer Barbot and Eric Kissack.

 “When [showrunner] Oren Uziel pitched to me, he said it was his chance to deal with his fears and insecurities about getting older,” recalls Kissack, who cut episodes xx and xx. “I immediately connected with that. My issue with superhero stories is the lack of vulnerability. It puts me at a distance. My favourite action movie is Die Hard because when John McClane is taking a punch or walking barefoot across glass, you feel his pain. Nick did such a great job being weary — someone who’s ‘over this’ but still feels responsible because he has this power he doesn’t want.”

Fellow editor Jennifer Barbot agrees. “I didn’t come in with years of attachment to Spider‑Man, so I could approach it purely as a story. I loved that we see Ben Reilly ageing, struggling, imperfect. I relate to that. I struggle in my own life, so I like seeing characters I can identify with represented on screen.”

Editorially, this meant amplifying moments of awkwardness and strain during action sequences. “We spent a lot of time amping up his pain in the action scenes — the grunts, the awkward landings, his physical exhaustion,” says Kissack. “He doesn’t fly effortlessly. He flies and then crashes. That was my way into the character.”

Stylistically, the show is remarkable for being presented in identical cuts with a genre-homage monochrome and a Looney Tunes Technicolor.

“It’s never been done before to have something that simultaneously would be in black and white and in colour,” Barbot says. Early in post-production, the team debated numerous approaches to monitoring dailies. “At one point we talked about just desaturating our TV and then we could see it in black and white,’” she recalls.

Irish cinematographer Darran Tiernan established the look shooting the pilot plus episodes 2-4, 7 and 8. He says, “Film noir cinematography is really about the psychology of what’s going on, telling the story in a visual and graphic sense. It was clear to me that we needed to go back to using older fixtures and rewire my brain accordingly.”

He chose to limit the use of softer light LED sources for older lighting equipment such as  Mole-Richardsons, Fresnels and other hard-light sources for deep contrast and sculpted shadows. He shot on Sony Venice 2 in RAW format to which one monochrome and one colour lookup table (LUT), devised with Picture Shop colourist Pankaj Bajpai, was applied on set.

To ensure consistency, they built a miniature studio where costume, production design and other departments could preview fabrics, textures and set elements under the exact lighting conditions and colour palette used on set.  

“Once we discovered the recipe, everyone was moving in the same direction,” Tiernan says. “We would monitor in black and white, except for focus pullers who required colour. Even before we'd do a take, I'd be flicking between them to see. Within a few days, you get very used to that because this is the way we are creating this world.”

Visual effects were created in colour because colour imagery contains more detail for compositing and effects work.

“When I edited, I only edited in black and white,” Barbot explains. “Sometimes we would go in for VFX reviews and that would be the first time I would see it in colour.. Suddenly the alcove is blue and orange! Then we’d apply the black‑and‑white LUT for the noir version and bring it into the Avid.”

This distinction began to affect the pacing of scenes. Barbot notes that certain shots simply “played better” in black and white. Wide atmospheric compositions featuring shadows, steam, silhouettes, and dramatic lighting often lingered longer in the monochrome version because noir imagery thrives on texture and visual contrast. In colour, those same shots could feel different - sometimes more like a Dick Tracy styled comic-book.

Barbot says she prefers the monochrome presentation because of how it intensified the noir atmosphere. “I hope everybody watches it in black and white first, then colour. The black-and-white imagery heightens the cynicism, darkness, and ambiguity, particularly during the introduction of arch villain Silvermane (Brendan Gleeson). All the shadows are in the background of that shot. It’s a very strong feeling.”

Kissack agrees that the two formats almost felt like separate shows. “The colour version feels trippier to me,” he says. “It was Influenced by early colour photography and [Alfred Hitchcock's 1958] Vertigo to become deliberately bold and psychologically expressive. It feels like something you haven’t quite seen before.”

While he admired the vivid costumes and production design visible in colour, he found the black-and-white version more emotionally immersive. “The black and white allows me to settle a little bit more into the story and the performance. I find it more engrossing.”

The film noir canon from the 1940s and ‘50s were an obvious source of editorial inspiration - The Third Man (1949) being one of the project’s key references. However, both editors quickly realised that simply copying classic noir pacing wouldn’t work for a modern audience.

“We did a lot of experimenting in terms of whether a 1930s style pacing would work in a modern piece,” Barbot explains. Early cuts that leaned too heavily into slow noir rhythms felt dated. “We settled on an blend where there’s some ’30s pacing that’s a little bit slower, but then there’s the rat-tat-tat of modern movies as well.”

Kissack cites romcom His Girl Friday (1940) as a major influence, particularly for dialogue scenes between Cage and Karen Rodriguez, who plays Reilly’s secretary and sidekick. “That kind of quick rat-a-tat dialogue was something we really tried to emulate,” he explains. “The hardest part was figuring out how much was pure noir and how much was modern. We weren’t making a slavish copy.”

This challenge came to a head when conceiving the show’s score. Initially, the editors temp-scored scenes with classic noir compositions from the likes of Sunset Boulevard or Vertigo. “That didn’t quite fit, but neither did straightforward modern scoring,” Barbot says. “We were searching for a hybrid approach that might match the show’s fusion of genres.”

The breakthrough came when editing episode 1’s ‘Dream a Little Dream’ number sung by femme fatale Cat Hardy (Li Jun Lix) in a smoky night club. “There’s sequence drums to it and a more modern production and this became the tonal blueprint for the entire score,” says Kissack. “It was a nod to lushness of the music of the past, but with more modern elements.”

For Barbot, this became the emotional centrepiece of the series and her favourite scene to edit. “It was romantic and beautiful and slow. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to make the scene feel dreamlike through less literal editing choices. It didn’t need to feel like a fast music video.”

Because much of the show depended on unfinished effects, editorial often had to construct sequences working closely with VFX.  The opening of the pilot, featuring The Spider swinging through Manhattan, required extensive storyboarding and collaboration between editorial and visual effects. Barbot worked with storyboard artist Jim Martin, gradually transforming static images into animatics.

The final fight in the pilot proved particularly difficult because temporary effects could only suggest the final imagery. “You have to use your imagination,” Barbot explains. “We had many conversations about how long to hold on shots. Long enough to appreciate the effects and understand the action, but not so long that it drags.”

One sequence in episode six was especially experimental. This is a surreal fever dream resulting from the drugged mind of Ben Reilly which Kissack built in the edit in collaboration with visual effects supervisor Nordin Rahhali.

“Nicolas was filmed on a green screen kind of waving his hands around, just being Cage,” according to Kissack. “We had no idea what it would be. We spent two months figuring out what he was looking at.” Salvador Dalí’s concoction for Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound was the major visual reference.

With fellow editors Geraud Brisson and Tirsa Hackshaw, Barbot and Kissack worked with showrunner Oren Uziel, executive producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Although Lord and Miller were often busy with Project Hail Mary, their occasional visits to editorial provided valuable outside perspective. Kissack jokes that after spending months immersed in the material, editors sometimes become blind to obvious trims or improvements. “They would come in and be like, ‘Oh, just lift that line,’” he says. “And we’d be like, ‘Oh … of course!’”

BTS: FIFA World Cup 2026

IBC

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Time-zone differences, travel demands, and the geographic spread of host cities have forced FIFA’s host broadcast and rights holders the BBC to rethink traditional production approaches.

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup nears kick-off, FIFA’s Host Broadcast Production division is confronting what may be the most ambitious live sports production ever attempted. With 16 venues spread across the United States, Canada, and Mexico — and 104 matches across a 39-day tournament — the scale of the operation is forcing a fundamental rethink of traditional World Cup workflows. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has likened the endeavour to “104 Super Bowls” which six billion fans are expected to watch at home.

At the centre of that transformation is a highly centralised production model built around the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) in Dallas, which FIFA Host Broadcast Production Head Oscar Sanchez describes as the “17th venue” of the tournament.

“We’ve been working on this project for over two years,” Sanchez explained at NAB in April. “The FIFA World Cup 2026 is humongous. I genuinely haven’t found another adjective for it. This is the largest project we have ever tackled.”

Sanchez should know. He has produced over 10,000 football matches worldwide in a 25 year career which has seen him contributed to six FIFA World Cups as a broadcaster or as part of the host broadcast team and a decade at Concacaf’s overseeing the broadcast of tournaments such as the Copa América Centenario, for which he won a Sports Emmy.

“Obviously, cost matters,” he says. “Centralisation saves a lot of money in travel and logistics. The less we need to travel, the lower the operational risk. No flight delays, no weather disruptions, no logistical issues. But the bigger factor is consistency.”

Valuable insights were learned during the FIFA Club World Cup in the United States last summer especially around staffing, logistics, and evaluating new directors. Working in US venues with local crews gave FIFA and production partner Host Broadcast Services (HBS) a clearer understanding of available talent, including replay and camera operators.

This includes deploying 16 dedicated production teams, one for each venue across the three countries, rather than rotating a smaller number of crews around the tournament. They are supported by seven centralised replay operations teams working from Dallas.

Dallas works well because it’s one of the few locations from which you can reach virtually every World Cup venue within about three hours.

The IBC is the technical heart of the tournament and the operational backbone for replay, graphics, camera shading, VAR, data processing, and stadium entertainment workflows. More than 2,000 media partner personnel are expected onsite, alongside FIFA’s own production and technology teams.

At venue level, however, the production footprint remains substantial. Each stadium will support around 50 commentary positions alongside a complex routing infrastructure capable of serving approximately 50 media partners per match.

While the core world feed philosophy remains familiar - football is still primarily directed through the main Camera One - digital production demands have transformed the scale of content creation surrounding each game.

“We’re producing six feeds per match, plus isolated feeds and over 10,000 hours of additional content and shoulder programming,” Sanchez explains. “The greater challenge now is helping broadcasters efficiently locate and curate content quickly.”

 Crew composition and local integration

Historically, World Cups have used 6-8 core production teams, mostly European. FIFA intentionally broadened the talent pool to include directors and crews from South America, the US, Mexico, Australia, and beyond.

“We wanted to open more opportunities to people who live, breathe and enjoy football,” Sanchez explains. “Nobody can say that a country like Argentina, the world champion, doesn’t live and breathe football.”

The Club World Cup proved particularly valuable in evaluating how those newer directors handled the pressure of a FIFA event.

“Anybody can direct a football match,” Sanchez says. “But when you realise you are going to a FIFA World Cup with 50 cameras and an audience that could reach a billion people, we need to go beyond technical knowledge. We need to analyse who is mentally ready to take on this challenge.”

Directors are encouraged to bring their trusted core team members (vision mixers, replay producers, etc.) with different editorial teams bringing slightly different directing styles. For example, South American directors often focus heavily on coaches, while European directors prioritise players. French directors may favour more artistic ultra‑slow‑motion shots.

To maintain consistency FIFA and HBS will continue using extensive editorial guidelines and a quality-control (QC) operation. The QC team provides live feedback for directors and produces reports for every match and every multi‑feed (training, press conferences, etc.).

EVS’ AI-enabled XtraMotion will also be used to create super slow-motion content from any camera. The latest version includes a Cinematic effect that simulates a shallow depth of field and again can be applied to any standard footage. Two replay specialists are producing a guide for HBS’ EVS ops as to how to consistently apply the techniques. Operators can trigger the application of the chosen effect directly from the LSM-VIA remote controller, with a single click on a shortcut button.

The camera plan

All 104 matches will receive premium coverage with 45 cameras, including Pole cams, Cable cams, Ultra‑motion and super‑slow‑motion, Cine‑style cameras, RefCam, 360° cameras and aerial/drone coverage (subject to strict US/Canada/Mexico regulations)

FPV drones were tested previously but face regulatory and insurance challenges. Their use remains under evaluation.

For the Round of 32, additional ultra‑motion cameras and isolated player cams will be added.

The camera plan is not designed solely around broadcast but to create content for every platform and every audience. Indeed, the most downloaded shot from Qatar 2022 was a Lionel Messi celebration which was shot on an iPhone.

The RefCam (called Referee View), developed internally by FIFA’s Football Technology & Innovation team, was considered a major success at the Club World Cup. It is not part of the ISO feeds for rights‑holders but is included in the host broadcast and will be used sparingly to maintain impact. It features AI-enabled image stabilisation to reduce motion blur.

Signal workflow

A clean world feed is produced from every stadium, sent back to Dallas where graphics are added and for onward distribution.

All camera feeds travel via Verizon’s contribution network to the IBC where centralised replay and graphics are produced.

Feeds are distributed via IP (using SRT) and satellite. For the first time, remote partners can access the same router as those physically at the IBC.

Fifa’s official post‑production hub which will handle editing for the tournament is not in Dallas, or Texas or even in the United States. It’s in London principally to leverage the large UK pool of talent experienced at fast turnaround matchday edits. It’s also another way for HBS to reduce travel costs.

Centralised replay & graphics

Replay operators will be based at the IBC, rather than stadiums (with on‑site backups for redundancy). This allows FIFA to assemble the world’s best operators in one location, improving consistency and quality. These teams are organised into language clusters (English, Spanish, French/German).

Graphics operations are also centralised and produced by specialists from AE Live.

Commentary strategy

With 104 matches, English‑language broadcasters will be stretched, increasing reliance on host commentary. FIFA is fielding 32 commentators (16 play‑by‑play, 16 analysts), with a more global, less English-centric mix than in past tournaments.

Their commentary is now used across highlights, clips, social media, and digital content not just live broadcasts.

3D Avatars for VAR

Lenovo’s sponsorship of the event as Official Technology Partner has yielded a number of innovations. These include AI-enabled 3D player avatars for integration into match broadcasts during semi-automated offside technology replays.

The system was tested at last year’s FIFA Intercontinental Cup staged in Qatar.  Before the start of World Cup 2026, each player’s body was scanned in process that took just 1 second. The scans form the basis of the avatars which are unique in appearance, dimensions and proportions which Lenovo says will provide a further data source for player tracking and VAR officiating.
Previously, VAR replays were generated solely using player tracking data. FIFA can use avatars to show a “visually matching” image of the player.

“The output will depict the player more accurately for fans watching in the stadium and around the globe,” Lenovo said.

The Chinese tech provider has also helped deliver an AI-powered data analytics tool. Football AI Pro is available to all coaches, players and analysts of all 48 teams at the World Cup and has been trained on “hundreds of millions” of FIFA-owned and -organised football data points to generate insights in text, video, graphs and 3D visualisations.

It is being pitched as a means to level the analytics playing field since it is available to newbie national sides Curaçao and Cabo Verde as well as the European and South American elite.

BBC opts for home advantage

The FIFA World Cup offers rights holders a chance to rethink how major tournaments are presented in an era shaped by sustainability, cost pressures, and increasingly sophisticated XR technologies.

The BBC is moving away from traditional green-screen presentation toward a fully LED-based virtual production environment at Dock10 in MediaCity. The project reflects wider industry trends toward hybrid production models.

While the BBC will still deploy teams on location, particularly for the latter stages of the tournament, much of the presentation output will originate from Salford.

“We’re still doing hybrid coverage,” explains BBC Sport design director John Murphy, “but the scale of the tournament and the realities of travel and sustainability mean this approach makes much more sense operationally.”

The broadcaster’s move builds on lessons learned during Euro 2024 coverage from Berlin, where the BBC successfully combined XR graphics with real-world scenery, including the iconic Brandenburg Gate backdrop. However, Murphy admitted that replicating that sense of realism inside a fully virtual studio presents a very different challenge.

“In Berlin, we had the advantage of a real location and were layering XR elements into it,” he explained. “This time we’re starting with a blank canvas, so the question becomes ‘how do you create something that still feels authentic?’”

The answer lies in a hybrid visual approach that combines LED volume technology, physical scenic elements, real-world imagery, AI-assisted processing, and Unreal Engine-style environments. Rather than attempting to recreate photorealistic cityscapes entirely through live-action video, the BBC is developing stylised virtual environments inspired by the architecture and atmosphere of World Cup host cities.

Murphy describes the goal as building “a space and a feeling” that reflects the cultural identity of the tournament’s host nations.

The production setup itself will feature four cameras, a jib, Mo-Sys camera tracking, LED walls, LED flooring, and HDR workflows throughout. The transition to HDR has proven particularly complex, with the BBC leaning on external expertise and technologies already proven in the American sports market.

Dock10 and Pixotope are central to the technical workflow, with the BBC also working alongside graphics provider AE Live and other specialist vendors. Perhaps the biggest lesson has been understanding just how many operational layers full LED virtual production introduces compared with traditional green-screen workflows.

“We probably went into it a little naively,” Murphy admits. “You quickly realise this is not just an extension of green-screen production. There are many more partnerships, technologies, and dependencies involved.”

Testing has reshaped key creative decisions. Early plans to use actual camera footage as virtual backgrounds proved problematic because of the precision required for parallax and perspective accuracy. The production pivoted toward more dynamic game-engine-generated environments built from processed still imagery and AI-enhanced assets.

 Importantly, the project is not being viewed internally as a one-off World Cup investment. The LED infrastructure is expected to be integrated into future football production workflows, creating a longer-term legacy for Match of the Day and other studio-based sports programming.

 

ends

 

Jean-Michel Jarre: treat artists as commercial partners not data suppliers

RedShark News

The French electronic music star evangelises use of AI in creative work but wants copyright rules in place

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Jean-Michel Jarre is perplexed at the creative industries’ luddite attitude to AI. Arguing that all technology is neutral until charged by human action, the electronic music pioneer claims AI is not a threat, or at least not only a threat.

“It can be one, especially regarding intellectual property, but above all, for me it’s the equivalent of a collaborator, a muse and an assistant,” he said at the World AI Film Festival (WAIFF) of which he is an ambassador. “AI can expand the boundaries of my imagination. That’s why I advocate so strongly for making people understand that we must not confuse the tool with its use. A paintbrush is neutral; it’s the person holding it who decides. And with AI, it’s exactly the same thing.”

The Rendez-Vous artist, now 77, has been using AI to create music and visuals for his concerts for a decade and prefers to think of AI as ‘augmented imagination’.

He expanded on this them at WAIFF in Cannes where his wife, the actor Gong Li, was president of the film festival.

“Ideas for a script or a film or music often appear mysteriously, from within us. But in reality our subconscious harvests from our analogue ‘big data,’ which is our memory, our culture, our environment, our family, even our children. All of that, gathered randomly, produces an idea. AI is not a category of creation in itself. It is simply an augmented way of using that source of inspiration.”

In which case, he acknowledged, all artists are thieves. “I steal everything I hear, everything I see, everything I watch. That’s what shapes an artist’s identity.”

Emotion in art comes from disobeying the rules he suggested. “Think of the greatest performers — Édith Piaf, David Bowie, Ray Charles. They often sing slightly out of tune or off the beat. That tiny deviation is what gives you goosebumps. It’s the creative power of disobedience.”

By extension he argued that creators can use AI to bend the rules. “Trying to extract something unexpected from it is our specificity. It allows us to give something back to [the machine] that is human and creative.”

The role of the creator becomes that of a curator of their own ideas, he contended. “Instead of choosing one path at a time, AI offers multiple possibilities simultaneously, which we can sort, combine, and prioritise. That fundamentally changes the creative process.”

Jarre claimed that music and cinema industries had grown conservative out of fear of innovation.

“Everyone stays in their lane and fears what might disturb them, which is paradoxical for creative work,” he said.

“When photography appeared, painters petitioned to have it banned, saying it would be the end of painting. When cinema appeared, it was seen as a threat to theatre.

“When I started in electronic music, I introduced it at the Paris Opera [in 1971], and the orchestra musicians unplugged the sound system in protest, saying electronic music would be the end of orchestras.

“I remember when people said synthesisers were cold and clinical and could never create music as well as acoustic instruments. But we forget the essential point that it’s not the orchestra or the tool that creates emotion. “It’s because we have invented the violin that Vivaldi existed. It’s because we invented electricity that we had Jimi Hendrix. And it’s because we are inventing a new learning AI model that new forms of art will be created in future.”

He was dismissive of the hyperbole around copyright theft saying that piracy has existed since the time of Rembrandt and Vermeer.

“We must not confuse the misuse of a tool with the tool itself. Fraudulent use of AI does not mean AI itself should be questioned.

“If you ask me whether the next Gainsbourg, or the next Tarantino is in danger, I would say no. What differentiates AI from an artist is that an artist transforms the past into something individual and unique. That cannot be replicated.”

On the other hand, Jarre - a former president of CISAC (the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers) - called for regulation and artist renumeration.

“The value of Generative AI companies today relies largely on human created content. So at some point, we must stop being treated merely as data suppliers and instead become full commercial partners,” he said.

The need to establish rules for AI is urgent, he added. “We need to bring together cinema, music, books, video games, literature, journalism and reach global agreements. I don’t believe we can apply traditional copyright philosophy anymore, simply because most algorithms can no longer identify the exact origin of their sources. It will be difficult to demand traditional copyright remuneration. We need a new model. That’s the challenge.”

Characterising AI’s current state as a “Wild West”, Jarre said rules would enable greater freedom not weaken it. “The difference between chaos and democracy is precisely rules.

“AI means democratisation. Just as music production became accessible from a bedroom twenty years ago, AI will allow people to make films at low cost. This will have a profound impact on emerging countries. Many young creators in Africa, Asia, and elsewhere struggle to produce work; soon they will be able to do so almost independently. That changes everything.

“And if tomorrow an AI‑generated work produces emotion, then perfect — that’s great. As long as intellectual property issues are resolved, there is no problem.”

Provocatively, WAIFF was held in Cannes and in the same Palais just a few weeks before the auteur-led 79th Cannes Film Festival. Jarre thinks one will soon outride the other.

“What we are witnessing here is the equivalent of the Lumière brothers’ The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. Cannes began modestly with just a handful of people 79 years ago. WAIFF will take far less time to become a major global reference.”

Redefining Cinematic Creation - DJI Advertorial

interview and copy written for DJI in Screen Daily P24 Screen Dailies 

Since pioneering the gimbal camera category in 2015 and introducing the world’s first pocket-sized gimbal camera in 2018, DJI has continuously redefined how creators capture motion and tell stories. DJI is making its most visible move yet into the professional cinema space as it brings its new Osmo Pocket 4P camera to the Cannes Film Festival.

The decision to launch at Cannes reflects DJI’s growing heritage in professional production. The company has spent more than a decade building a presence in the film industry, with its technologies contributing to Oscar‑ and Emmy‑winning productions including F1: The Movie, Dune, and limited series Shōgun. It has also been awarded a technical Emmy.

With the Pocket 4P, DJI is spearheading a new era of cinematic excellence in handheld gimbal systems, where professional-grade filmmaking capabilities meet true pocket-sized portability.

Pocket 4P builds on a growing movement in which compact cameras are reshaping how stories are created and shared. Its Cannes debut highlights its potential to influence the future of cinematic vlogging, inspire a new generation of mobile-first filmmakers, and lead global trends in portrait-driven visual storytelling.

The device represents the convergence of high-end film technology and extreme portability.  Featuring a 1-inch CMOS sensor and dual lenses for portraiture and zoom, Pocket 4P is capable of cinematically smooth slow motion at 240 fps in full 4K glory.

There are two headline specifications that DJI believes sets the camera apart from other compact systems.

The first is its 17 stops of dynamic range, a level typically associated with high‑end mirrorless or cinema cameras. DJI claims the Pocket 4P is the only compact zoom‑lens camera currently reaching that benchmark. At the event in Cannes, guests are invited to see how its advanced sensor technology and refined imaging algorithms ensure clear, detailed footage, making it possible to shoot confidently in challenging conditions from nighttime cityscapes to indoor scenes.

Dynamic range remains one of the most important indicators of image quality, and DJI is clearly aiming to position the Pocket 4P as a serious tool for cinematographers who need flexibility on set and in post.

Major colour‑science upgrade

The second major feature of the Osmo Pocket 4P is the introduction of 10-bit D‑Log 2, DJI’s professional colour science profile. This marks the first time the company has upgraded its log system since the launch of the Ronin 4D, which was used as the main camera on Alex Garland’s Civil War. DJI describes D‑Log 2 as a “huge leap” in grading flexibility, offering a richer colour‑space and more robust data for post‑production workflows.

Its enhanced portrait capabilities deliver natural skin tones and cinematic depth, enabling more emotionally engaging storytelling across interviews, vlogs, and narrative content. Improved zoom functionality expands creative possibilities, allowing creators to capture distant subjects while maintaining image integrity.

At Cannes, DJI will deepen its relationships with cinematographers. The company confirmed that several DPs attended the Pocket 4P showcase, including Christopher Blauvelt, who shot recent Cannes competition entry May December, and Rodney Charters, ASC (the lead DP on Fox series 24).

Its compact form, paired with cinematic imaging performance, positions the Pocket 4P as a compelling companion for independent filmmakers and a powerful storytelling device for documentary work - whether as a main camera or as a flexible companion device to augment coverage of any scene.

While drones remain its most recognisable product category, DJI says its imaging systems are now becoming the default choice in several Asian markets. In Japan and China, the company claims its Pocket 3 camera has effectively become the “camcorder of choice” surpassing traditional brands like Sony and Nikon.

The Pocket 4P is the next step in that evolution. It is designed to appeal to both Hollywood‑level cinematographers and ‘elite creators’ who want uncompromising image quality for personal projects. DJI frames this as part of its mission to democratise technology, making advanced imaging tools accessible to a wider audience.

By unveiling Osmo Pocket 4P at one of the most prestigious stages in global filmmaking, DJI reinforces the idea that cinematic storytelling is no longer confined to large-scale rigs, but can now exist in a device small enough to carry anywhere.

IBC Behind the Scenes: Eurovision Song Contest 2026

IBC

What began as a technical experiment in 1956 is now a global cultural institution reaching close to 170 million viewers on TV across three live shows and generating billions of views on digital platforms. IBC365 gets a tour back stage in Vienna.

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“This year we have several major innovations,” explains Michael Krön who is responsible for the Host Broadcast of Austrian broadcaster ORF and is Executive Producer of the ESC 2026. “This is especially important for a broadcaster like ORF in a year that has not been easy for the company, or for public service broadcasters globally. We want to show Austria, Europe, and the world what ORF can do. Ultimately, we want the Austrian public to feel proud that ORF, as their public service broadcaster, achieved something on this scale.”

That led to a decision that, for first time in Eurovision history, the host broadcaster would deploy a cinema‑grade camera system across nearly all acquisition points.

“We are working with ARRI cameras to create a highly cinematic look,” Krön said. “It’s the first time a show of this scale is using them as its main camera system. This allows us to capture faces and emotions with exceptional clarity which is something we always aimed for.”

The resulting hybridised broadcast‑cinema workflow, however, still operates inside a traditional HD 1080i and standard dynamic range production format.

Why 1080i still rules

Eurovision’s minimum requirement remains 1080i25, and while 1080p was evaluated, ORF’s Technical Production Lead Claudio Bortoli says the cost uplift across acquisition, routing, monitoring, and distribution made it impractical.

Instead of changing the format, ORF changed the image‑making tools.

The production is deploying 28 cameras in the Wiener Stadthalle concert venue with ARRI Alexa 35 Live as the primary source. This includes Alexa 35‑equipped rail, wire, crane and tracking systems augmented with Sony FR7 and FX6 models (four handheld and one gimbal).

“This is unprecedented for a live broadcast of this scale,” Bortoli says. “The Alexa 35’s dynamic range, colour science, and highlight handling offer a fundamentally different aesthetic from traditional broadcast cameras.”

There are some significant engineering implications. The broadcast trucks for example are optimised for system cameras (Sony, Grass Valley, Panasonic) where CCUs, RCPs, and shading workflows are tightly integrated. Cinema cameras break that model so to make integration easier conventional Canon broadcast lenses are being used (PL film lenses are used mainly in the Green Room area).

“The biggest early challenge was lens selection,” says Axel Engström, NEP’s lead technical project manager for Eurovision. “We made tests and found that cine lenses didn’t suit a large arena or the directors’ workflow. We switched to broadcast lenses for most positions to maintain zoom range and operational flexibility.”

NEP replaced or adapted CCUs to interface with Alexa systems in its trucks and ahis proved straightforward.

According to ARRI Managing Director, David Bermbach the first priority was proving reliability. “You need to deliver the baseline so people trust you. Now that we’ve done that, we can start adding new ideas.”

A major creative goal this year was giving each performance a distinct visual identity. Using profiles from ARRI (it has over 70 in its arsenal) the team created around 30 different LUTs (almost one per entry) which are applied at the camera head. One popular look was inspired by a music video by Justin Bieber.

In the weeks leading up to the broadcast, a colour grader fine‑tuned the camera looks for each performance before this was loaded into a LiveEdit automation system. During the show this software automatically sends commands, including cuts and moves, directly to the camera network.

Engström explains, “During the live show, the vision mixer is hands‑off since everything is pre‑programmed. If a camera fails, LiveEdit can automatically replace all shots from that camera with another although the vision mixer operator can also override manually.”

He explains that team delegations met with the show’s broadcast directors during the winter to present their creative ideas. “They submit staging scripts once songs are ready and then we rehearse with stand‑ins at first. We send those recordings back to delegations for feedback so by the time the artists arrive in Vienna the staging is already well‑developed.”

The final look was only locked shortly before rehearsals, in collaboration with the head vision shader, lighting designer, and directors.

Essential OB provision

Since 2015 which was also hosted by ORF in the same venue and with Bortoli playing a similar role, the broadcaster’s resources have been cut.

Bortoli says ORF now uses internal leads supported by a large freelance engineering pool. NEP provides the OB infrastructure, continuing a multi‑year partnership that gives both sides a shared operational vocabulary.

Eurovision traditionally deploys a main and backup truck but ORF is taking a more sophisticated approach in which both trucks will operate simultaneously.

Although both trucks are identically equipped, NEP’s UHD24 is covering interval acts, pre‑show, and non‑competitive elements like moderation directed by ORF’s Michael Kögler while the UHD24 in command of Swedish multi-cam director Robin Hofwander handles all the live acts.

“If one truck fails, the other can assume full control,” explains Bortoli. “All the camera feeds are available to both trucks and the routing matrices are mirrored. That means operators can switch roles with minimal disruption.”

It is what he calls a “live‑redundant architecture”, not a regular standby model.

The voting sequence is handled partly in the OB truck, with the EBU switch and distribution team operating from a dedicated cabin adjacent to the OB compound. All international routing, failover management, and signal integrity checks occur there.

Laser-based lighting

For the first time, an all LED and laser-based system is used, completely replacing traditional lighting and “significantly” reducing energy consumption and material usage, claim organisers. The lighting design is by Tim Routledge, a BAFTA winner for the lighting design of ESC 2023 in Liverpool who also worked on Basel last year.

He says the challenge was to create something that looks impressive, while at the same time being much less wasteful of energy.

“The fact that we are relying 100 percent on LED and laser technology on this scale shows that you can have both spectacular images and sustainable production.”

The overall visual concept includes more than 28,000 individually controllable LEDs. Eighty high-speed winches provide movable lighting effects—which is claimed as a first for Eurovision. Gear was supplied and rigged by Neg Earth Lighting and ACME Lighting.

The Stadthalle’s roof load limits forced the lighting team to redesign the rig multiple times. This included snow‑load modelling, since even 5–10 cm of snow could exceed structural tolerances.

“This amount of weight (from the lighting rig) has never been in the Stadthalle before,” Bortoli notes.

Video wall control

Creative Technology, part of NEP Group, is providing all LED screens and display solutions for the event.

The video wall is 2.50 sqm of ROE Graphite 2.6mm pixel pitch and the 2.68sqm LED floor is built from ROE Black Marble 4.6mm panels. Completing the wrap-around visual backdrop is a 12x8m curved infinity screen.

Video is processed through 16 Megapixel Helios 8K LED Controllers with ST2110 input with playout managed by eight Disguise servers capable of 32 x 4K feeds over ST2110.

Riedel provides the venue-wide signal distribution using MediorNet with around 25 nodes deployed across the venue. Timecode is distributed through MediorNet to sync lighting, cameras, and automation.

NEP uses its own TFC control platform in the TV compound to route signals, manage morte than 400 monitors, and to handle switching between the two OB trucks.

Audio mixing and RF density

Dietmar Tinhof is one of four audio engineers mixing the broadcast for stereo and 5.1 working out of two ORF supplied vans. “The acts are so different,” he says. “You switch from delicate acoustic folk to full‑force heavy metal. Some delegations say, ‘Make it sound like the record.’ Others send a several pages of technical notes. We try to follow them, but live situations have limitations, particularly around latency. For example, we can't use every plugin because they need a certain amount of processing time.”

They aim to have everything automated: “Ideally, during the live show we’d be sipping red wine because everything is programmed,” he added, but a recent Pro Tools bug changed that: “We can’t explain it. So we’re not as relaxed as before.”

Live performers also add unpredictability: “Sometimes they sing louder in the live show, so we counterbalance that. But we don’t do fine‑tuned automation live. There’s no reverb throws or EQ tweaks.”

Redundancy is extreme: “We have six layers of safety. Two identical Pro Tools systems monitor the MADI stream. If one sample drops, we’re already on the other machine. If there’s a deeper failure, the OB van is a complete mirror. If Pro Tools dies, we can still run on the MC²  Lawo. Six degrees of redundancy.”

The production format is stereo + 5.1 surround contributed from more than 70 Sennheiser RF mics and 40 open mics across the arena.

“The RF environment is one of the most congested in European live production,” Bortoli says.  “Our engineering team must coordinate frequency planning across dozens of delegations and use intermodulation avoidance.”

Redundant antenna distribution and failover paths for critical vocal mics are other considerations.

Eurovision by tech numbers

For those who like numbers:

The budget for the contest is estimated to be €36 million with local Viennese authorities paying €22m and the EBU contributing around €5m.

Over the course of the week at least 4,000 media files will be recorded and processed; 17,500+ camera cuts generated and executed; and 10,000+ review and validation comments logged by 80 operators tracking and annotating the show in real-time.

It requires 250 people to operate the Eurovision broadcast, among them; three multicam directors and 32 camera operators.

Nearly 200 SFX machines produce effects including flames, low fog, sparkulars, pyrotechnics, ECO2JET, and smoke.

It is calculated that 4.2TB of data will be sent every second of a live show over the 100GB network infrastructure.

Over the entire duration of ESC the total amount of data transported through this network is estimated between 5-6 Petabyte. To put that in context, 6PB equals approximately 101 years of continuously streamed HD video.

Postcards from Austria

Eurovision’s interstitial storytelling elements called ‘postcards’ were also shot on Alexa (by local production company Gebhardt Productions), giving them the same colour science as the live show.

Despite the rise of TikTok‑style formats and an astonishing 750 million views of ESC 2025 content on the platform, ORF is not generating a dedicated vertical feed. Social media teams will capture their own content using mobile and ENG devices.

That said, individual broadcasters are going social. Norway’s NRK is engaging audiences with an interactive ‘ESC 70’ online quiz alongside dedicated video content. Sweden’s SVT is expanding its digital offering with Eurovision Klubben on SVT Play. Ukraine’s Suspilne is delivering extensive multi-platform coverage, including three studio pre-shows on its YouTube channel.

For Bortoli, the biggest challenge is the timeline. “Time always moves very fast at Eurovision,” he says. “But everything looks good. The engineering fundamentals are solid.”