Live sport

When the pandemic hit BT Sport, they decided to accelerate remote production. ‘A football match, pre-pandemic, normally involved several outside broadcast vehicles,’ says Garber. ‘For example, one for the slow-motion replays, a second to manage the presentation and a third to cover the match: the director calling the cameras. In addition to these sizeable vehicles, there is a tender, which carries all the equipment, a dining bus, and another to manage onscreen graphics. They have to accommodate a very large TV crew. Because of technology enhancements, many of these people and their kit can now be somewhere else.

‘So, you send your camera team, presenters and commentators, but almost everybody else – replays, graphics, director, producer and assistant producers – can be hundreds of miles away in a production control room. We call them Remote Operations Centres (ROCs), like outside broadcast trucks, but with no wheels. You have an ROC in a central location which the crew go to match after match, instead of travelling all over the country. That’s remote production. In addition to our Stratford studio, we plan to build centres in Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow. So we can still use the people we want, but they have less distance to travel. Crew travel and kit movements have been much reduced: that’s been a very positive sustainability by-product of the pandemic.’

In a sign that the trend is spreading further into sport, Sky and Tottenham recently partnered for the world’s first major net zero carbon football game against Chelsea. Publicity for the Premier League match included the following: ‘#GameZero will demonstrate the green steps that the sporting world can take to work towards a zerocarbon future; #GameZero partners want the game to raise awareness of the threat of climate change and inspire fans to make simple changes that will help reduce their carbon footprint.'