How the Track Champions League wants to bring innovation to cycling

The UCI Track Champions League has returned for season two, with the first event taking place in Mallorca last week (12 November).

Next up it heads to Berlin on 19 November, continuing to show off a number of broadcast and fan engagement innovations that have been brought in to try and bring more viewers to the sport that attracts eyeballs every Olympics.

SVP of content and production at Warner Bros. Discovery Europe Scott Young and UCI Track Champions League series director Florian Pavia spoke to Broadcast Sport about what will be new for the second season.

This starts off with the riders themselves, Young explained on the tech side: “Each rider is equipped with monitors that provides live biometric data such as heartrate, power, cadence and speed. Working with our partners at AWS, 20 sensors placed around the track will suck this data in real time so we can display it on the 360-degree LED screens in each venue as well as to the UCI Track Champions League app. This is unique for the sport of cycling and provides fans with even greater access and engagement with the sport.”

There will also be first person perspectives given by cameras on training zones, the floor manager, referees, and athletes.

There will also be more focus on telling the riders’ stories, with Pavia revealing that the events have actually been lengthened to give more time for storytelling: “With the TV production, we’re gonna focus much more on telling the stories rather than just, bang, bang, bang, races, races, races.

“Now that we know what to expect we can work on storytelling, and really educate people about the attraction of the Track Champions League. What’s going on and the real stakes at play.”

He added: “We are having 15 extra minutes in the overall rundown, to give more time to the TV producer to explain stories and to push some videos. Really setting the foundation before each race, reminding people of the league classification, who needs what? Last year, the concept was great. The idea was to have something super fast, super dynamic, but we found out that except from filming races we couldn’t tell any other stories.”

In addition to the first person cameras, there will be 23 cameras used in total for the world feed, with control rooms in London and Paris to distribute this. Eventually, Warner Bros. Discovery aims to make the production fully remote, Young added: “Remote production is a key area of focus for us with a team of well over 100 people working on each race. Working with our partner AWS, our intention in future is to move to a 100% remote production model to benefit the health of both our staff and the environment. The key to this is having good connectivity at the velodromes, which will support our global production of the event.”

In addition to getting closer to the riders through cameras and extra storytelling, data plays a key role in the Track Champions League broadcasts. Currently 24 data pieces are collected from riders using 20 sensors around the track, with the aim to get to 45 within a few years - adding ground-breaking information on the drafting effect and other aspects of track cycling. 

This year the production will be putting this data on to LED screens around the perimeter, as well as harnessing 3D mapping to display graphics, visuals and stats on the track itself for viewers at home - and showing it in the competition’s app. Pavia said: “In road cycling you’re starting to already see some data on screens, but it wasn’t the case for track cycling.

“Unfortunately on TV, you don’t really realise how fast they go, how deep they go into the effort. So we want to bring that data to help people realise what’s happening on the track.”

Finally, Warner Bros. Discovery has partnered with Infinite Reality to bring the metaverse to cycling - with the London event on 2-3 December seeing all feeds created (over 10) being broadcast in the metaverse. Young claimed: “Our metaverse partnership with Infinite Reality is one of the most exciting new innovations we will unveil this year, which will deepen the storytelling around the London rounds in December. Fans will be able to watch every live race feed in the metaverse as part of an exclusive preview that will eventually allow communities to interact with each other, additional UCI Track Champions League content and the riders themselves as part of truly immersive experience.”

Speaking at a media event held ahead of the season, head of Discovery Sports Events Francois Ribeiro said: “We are going to create a metaverse experience for the Track Champions League and throw everything we have into it. On TV you see one thing, which is the decision of the director in the OB van selecting which camera goes on air. In the metaverse you will find 15 feeds, so you can follow the TV feed, or the onboard camera, or select the data of a particular rider, the referee, or the floor manager.”

He added: “At the moment fans have no access to the riders, so we could have live chats with the riders before or after… The only aim we have is to create something super cool, so teenagers, who maybe don’t know Track Champions League, will find this and say to their mates ‘I’ll invite you’. It will be visually amazing.”

This year it will not include an option for VR goggles, but from next year this is expected to be included. 

Overall, even with these added features, Pavia summed up that the aim is still the sport: “We really want to focus the attention on, ’this is pure sport, this is an official race’. You have money to win, you have points to win, and you really need to be focused on the performances. This is how your attract the fans in the end.”