BBC goes hybrid for coverage of UEFA Women’s Euros

IBC

A hybrid remote and on-site production with Sunset+Vine, editorial about alpine bees and a deluxe Swiss chalet on the banks of Lake Lucerne. The BBC is ready for the Lionesses to defend their trophy.

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The 2025 UEFA Women’s European Championship kicks off on July 2, as reigning champions England defend their title and try to become just the second nation to win back-to-back Women’s Euros.

“England going in as defending Champions has really increased the attention on the women's team,” says BBC Sport executive producer Phil Bigwood. “It’s Wales’ first ever major tournament, so we've got strong focus there as well. The Euros is the centrepiece of the BBC’s women in sport season on top of the Rugby World Cup and Athletics.”

England’s win over Germany in Euro 2022 final pulled in a peak audience of 17.4 million on BBC One.

“We’re all aware of the growth in the women's game since England won last time. The way things have moved on are pretty unprecedented. Let's hope England can get out the group and we can we get close to those figures again.”

The BBC is exclusively showing three of the four quarter finals, as well as one of the semi-final fixtures and the final on Sunday 27 July, live on BBC One and iPlayer, as part of its 15 match allocation. ITV has another set of 15 and both share broadcast of the final.

Women’s Euro 2022 winner Jill Scott and Champions League winning manager Renee Slegers are joining the BBC’s line-up alongside seasoned presenters Gabby Logan, Alex Scott and Jeanette Kwakye.

Planning began in earnest about 10 months ago.

“First and foremost a lot of planning comes down to budgets,” says Bigwood. “Where can we get the biggest bang for our buck? Switzerland isn't the cheapest country in Europe so we've tried to prioritise where we can around covering the home nations.”

The approach is split between having a remote presentation from a virtual studio on the site of key group games involving England Wales in Switzerland (with plans for the quarterfinals onwards) and all other games to be produced from Quay House, Salford.

The host feed is being produced in 1080P with surround sound by Uefa which is using its established campus in Nyon, outside Geneva, rather than building a temporary IBC.

As luck would have it from a British broadcaster perspective, the majority of the match directors are English including the BBC’s own regular matchday director Andrew Swift and is Sarah Cheadle from Sky Sports.

Sunset+Vine won the tender to produce the TV output for the BBC at the end of 2024.  “We knew from day one we would want an indie to produce it. The fact that they are based with BBC Sports really helps us with all the multi-platform content with digital and the radio teams. There's a lot of crossover and sharing, which might not have been the case if we'd had a different setup.”

The BBC is taking in eight IP feeds from the host broadcast, via the Eurovision Services Content Hub, managed by S+V.

“Eurovision are used to distribute the Champions League which very conveniently the BBC have started taking as of last season, so that connectivity was already in place,” explains Mark Dennis, director of technical operations, Sunset Vine.

The feeds include a main and backup match feed, reporter cam, ISO cams and a clean backup. As part of belt and braces redundancy there’s a satellite backup too.

“There’s a dual fibre path and a satellite backup to bring in the main feed so that gives us access to a lot of feeds when we are not on site,” says Dennis.

Timeline TV is hired for the remote production travelling an OB truck between venues for on-site presentation. “Two data circuits have been booked from Eurovision from each of the venues that we may end up in, depending on how England and Wales progress through the group stages,” Dennis says. “These go to Telehouse North (data centre in London) and with help from BBC technology we have then piggybacked onto existing BBC connectivity up to Salford.”

A remote interface unit is installed in the Timeline truck which dovetails remotely with a Timeline rack at Salford. The presentation from the truck will be covered with six cameras.

“That also allow us do some ISOs ourselves, for example if our commentators or on-screen talent want to focus on a particular player, we've got our own big lens camera for close-ups of that player or particular area of the field,” says Stephen Booth, executive producer, Sunset Vine. “That gives a bit more flexibility in production.”

“From Sunset’s point's point of view we pitched in November midway through the Euro’s playoffs. It is actually a S+V Scotland production. We confidently told the BBC that Scotland were going to qualify. We got that wrong. But we're still here.”

Back in Salford, the post-production team will work from four Avid suites to clip and publish to various different platforms. This is done in conjunction with Picture Shop, the facility that provided a similar job to the BBC’s Paris Olympics efforts.

The main virtual studio, designed by Lightwell, is described by Booth as “a deluxe Swiss Chalet on the banks of Lake Lucerne. It features an exact replica of Lake Lucerne in the virtual environment behind it.

“That’s our main studio area. We also have a downstairs green room represented as well. We have virtual screens to conduct two-way interviews and analysis.”

We've got a lot of learnings ourselves at Sunset+Vine from designing a virtual setup at Ealing eating Broadcast Centre for the Amazon Prime Every Game Every Goal Premier League programme. This studio is next generation and has AR capability. We hope it’s going to be striking and impressive.”

Alongside cost, sustainability was at the forefront of planning. “It’s the reason to go with remote productions,” Bigwood says.

Crew are travelling to the country on Eurostar as much as possible. “There's a lot of logistics. And Switzerland's not the easiest places to get to sometimes,” says Tracy Van Ross, production executive.

ENG crews with LiveU packs will cover the Wales and English camps. A BBC Wales crew is covering the Welsh camp and also looking after S4C Welsh language coverage.

Sustainability is also a key theme for BBC editorial as well. “For example, we’ve got pieces planned about the stadium roof in Zurich (where England's group match versus the Netherlands takes place)
which has a wildflower meadow on it to aid the journey of bees coming from the mountainous areas in Switzerland,” says Booth. “One of the Welsh players is writing a thesis about sustainability and football which we're going to explore more deeply.”

In previous recent tournaments the technical resources have been shared with ITV but that’s not the case this time around. In part this is because there is no independent IBC

Bigwood says, “The majority of our sharing with ITV, whether it be feeds or space, is because there's been an IBC. In addition, while we’re in Salford they've got a different approach from us in London. So it’s not as straightforward to share, as we have done in the past, but there's been various conversations along the way.”

The broadcasters did however share access to time with the teams prior to kick-off at St George's Park in which squad players were filmed in their full kit for repurposing into TV graphics.

This is a much smaller event than the FIFA World Cup next summer which will host 78 matches. While there is little that can be taken into USA, Mexico and Canada from Switzerland as a template, the BBC will be taking note of tests by BBC R&D to reduce the delay that live matches take to reach iPlayer versus its broadcast channels.

“It's actually quite a big focus as we look ahead to the World Cup,” says Bigwood. “Because of the time differences and number of matches more people are going to be consuming matches on iPlayer. It's a big priority of the BBC to try and bring [delay] down.”

Bigwood suggests Switzerland’s work in time directive, which protects the hours people work, has been “something to contend with and plan for” but that it’s all been a smooth process. “We'll find out in a few weeks’ time,” he adds.