BBC Sport design director John Murphy speaks to Broadcast Sport about the space its coverage will use
The BBC begins its Champions League coverage today, 18 September, showing highlights of every match from the competition.
Available as clips on iPlayer and the BBC Sport website, the content will also be shown in the new MOTD: UEFA Champions League show hosted by Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan - as well as Jason Mohammed for the for the first week. Pundits will include former Manchester City players Joe Hart and Steph Houghton, ex-Arsenal forward Theo Walcott, and former Aston Villa, Everton, and Bayern Munich midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger.
A new studio has been designed for the programme, which will air at 10:40pm on Wednesdays, and the same time on Thursdays on matchweeks with games then. It uses the same green screen studio at dock10 as Match Of The Day and other weekly BBC football content, but with a new design for the European competition. Five cameras, including a jib and reverse-hung rail cam are used in the 150sqm space.
Head of football at BBC Sport, Stephen Lyle, explained in a BBC Sport blog post: “The studio itself takes inspiration from the Champions League star ball and there’ll be an interactive analysis area and floor map of Europe to highlight match locations to audiences. It is a real feast for the eyes. This will be the place to go for a more in depth look at the action, stories and the tactics. We want this 80 minutes to really educate, inform and entertain.
“Our rights package consists of a 26-hour window where the BBC can show match highlights from every Champions League fixture across its platforms, and we’re squeezing out every last drop of footballing action so that audiences can watch the biggest players in Europe go head-to-head.”
BBC Sport design director John Murphy explained to Broadcast Sport, “The design is very much centred around the UEFA Champions League brand and assets. As many know the ‘star ball’ and the music of the Champions League is a very strong identity and as this is the Champions league for the first time on BBC TV and digital we wanted to reflect that in the design of the VR studio. This means that we are very much centred within the ‘starball’ and everything else falls within that.”
The new league format of the Champions League, which involves each team only playing a selection of others, will need some explaining, and a space has been dedicated for that and other analysis. Murphy revealed: “We have a stand-up area where the talent can utilise large VR screens for both analysis and larger graphics such as the new format graphic. It is obviously a lot of information to fit on to a standard 16:9 TV template so here we have the luxury of being able to show the new format table whilst the presenters can explain it.
“The interactive analysis which will be driven initially by an iPad utilising Ross Video’s Piero. We have also created a large VR floor space so that we can enter into match edits using a map of Europe on the floor and highlighting where that match is coming from for specific games.”
Overall, Murphy summed up, “We know that the beauty of the VR space gives us the options and flexibility to develop and enhance throughout the Champions League season if we feel we need to.”
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