How the BBC produced Euro 2024 from Salford & Berlin

Millions tuned into the BBC’s Euro 2024 coverage over the past month, watching as England came agonisingly close to winning the competition for the first time.

Viewers watched the studio presentation at Brandenburg Gate, which was created with assistance from AE Live. It included two presentation areas, both of which were designed following the central theme of a football museum, inspired by Berlin’s very own Neues Museum. The physical set was then augmented with AR and VR technology, extending it by 56,000 cubic feet.

Stype provided camera tracking and Unreal Engine integration technology, with Stype RedSpy used to track three cameras in the internal studio, and Stype Follower used to track two cameras on the Terrace. The StypeLand plugin for Unreal Engine integrated with these tracking products, as well as provided sophisticated calibration tools to guarantee the XR and AR set extensions blend together. A total of seven virtual engines were utilised, handling 56 video feeds, nine of which were 12G UHD. Roe supplied the floor-to-ceiling LEDs that combined with the physical window showing the gate. Another LED screen was used as a “floor” in the terrace studio, showing the football museum below. 

The virtual set designs were created by Paul Kavanagh Studio Ltd, and realised by AE Live’s Virtual Art Department. AE Live also produced a suite of AR templates in Unreal, that could be delivered both in the traditional sense, next to and in front of the presenter or guests or within the XR space via the LED screens. AE Live’s CUE application (Control for Unreal) debuted for Euro 2024 on this project and was specifically designed to provide its AR graphics operators with a control application for the build and playout of Unreal AR graphics, regardless of whether they needed to appear in the AR or XR space within the studio environment. CUE also integrated with AE Live’s data management system, Aether, allowing match stats, tables and team line-up data to directly populate templates. Live commentary was onsite a the various stadiums in Germany.

Meanwhile, this was all produced remotely from dock10’s facility in Salford. dock10 studio manager Adam Broadhurst explained how this was done: “Behind the scenes, the bulk of the Euro 2024 coverage was produced far away from Germany – at dock10 in Salford. dock10 was the remote production base for the BBC’s coverage. Everything from Germany that UK viewers saw on their screens passed through our Salford facility before airing on the BBC. The Euro 2024 host feeds, alongside BBC Sport’s own unilateral sources; came into a dedicated operations centre build in dock10 for this tournament. These feeds were  distributed to various BBC outlets such as news, nations, radio and social teams across their organisation. Additionally, the Salford Operations Centre provided the sources and connectivity to the two production galleries producing their network transmissions. To deliver each match, there was a large team working in Salford, from direction through to vision mixing, graphics, sound, production, editing, archive and engineering. On any one day, there were around 100 people focused on Euros 2024 coverage.

“The Euro 2024 coverage built on dock10’s experience of serving as a remote production base for major events such as the FIFA World Cup 2022, the Tokyo Summer Olympics and Euro 2020. Each year, the benefits of remote producing are becoming more apparent. Major events such as Euro 2024 can be produced in a more environmentally sustainable and cost-efficient manner reducing the amount of equipment and staff required on-location.

“The remote production for the Euro 2024 tournament has evolved rather than radically changed since the World Cup in Qatar. BBC Sport will always look to push forward technical boundaries for each tournament it covers to ensure its presentation remains best-in-class – and that is certainly the case for Euro 2024. It means that planning and delivery of the Euro 2024 remote production was more complex and challenging than ever, from accommodating the BBC’s impressive virtual studios to its expanded digital output and its delivery of matches in HDR. Throughout we worked closely with multiple partners to help deliver the tournament, from Timeline Television for outside broadcast, to BT for connectivity and AE Live for the virtual studio design and control.

“Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how broadcasters continue to develop remote productions as pressure continues to stress production budgets. As it is now possible to create an immersive experience within a studio facility that can rival a temporary on-location presentation base, could we see the remote production model expanded still further for the next World Cup?”