Tour de France Femmes

from SVG Europe, SportTech Journal 2022

World Snooker Championship

Specially designed electric scooters can reach speeds of over 60mph

Getting the balance right: The inside track on the eSkootr Championship

BY GEORGE BEVIR

FIRST PUBLISHED 13 MAY 2022 T he first stage of the new eSkootr Championship (eSC) takes place in London on Saturday (14 May), which is a fitting location given that co-founder Khalil Beschir came up with the concept while in the city. “Someone arrived at a meeting in London and said they just saw two people on scooters racing each other, and something in my head just clicked,” he says. “I was sitting next to my partner [eSC co-founder and chief executive] Hrag Sarkissian, and I said, ‘why don’t we do a racing scooter?’ He thought I was joking, but it grew from there.”

That idea has now evolved to a six-stage championship, with races in London, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain and the US. In each location, 30 riders from 10 teams backed by the likes of F1 driver Nico Hulkenberg and former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua will race against each other in a series of short heats.

The riders, who are from a variety of sporting disciplines such as speed skating, BMX biking and snowboarding, will race specially designed electric scooters that can reach speeds of over 60mph, on inner-city circuits.

Sharon Fuller, ex-global head of central content creation for Red Bull and a former BBC Sport exec, is responsible for the creation of all eSC content. Her remit also includes overseeing distribution, media partnerships and production partners, including outside broadcast and production services provider NEP and production firm Boombox.

Fuller says that one of the things she has most enjoyed about her role at eSC is the “joint vision” of the organisation. “What can happen [when you work on sporting events], is that as a content person you are asked, ‘here is an event, can you cover it?’ But with eSC, I have been involved in much wider conversations from a very early stage.”

Being involved in the start has allowed Fuller to ensure that content and broadcast plans were considered from the start and as the sport was developed. The placement of cameras on the scooters is a prime example of this, with the fittings and cabling integrated into the design of the scooters rather than retrofitted.

“We have a fully integrated content and sport plan,” says Fuller. “We’re as much of a tech business as we are a sport, and we have the unique opportunity to consider the tech, sport and the content all together. I’m not sure that anyone else has done that in the same way as us.”

NEP was selected to provide broadcast and technical services, and Fuller says eSC has pushed them to do things they haven’t done before, for example with regards to the onboard cameras. “That’s why they’re such a great partner, because we know we can do that,” she says.

Using the BSI miniTX UHD for onboard coverage, up to six scooters at one time will have up to three live pictures each during each race, including a forward, rear and rider-facing HD Marshall Minicam. An onboard mic will provide feedback from the riders, plus noise from the scooters.

With Fuller opting for a “belt and braces” approach for the first event in London and a lack of fibre at the venue of the second stage in Switzerland, the first two races won’t be remotely produced.

That means in London, NEP’s Caspian and Mercury trucks will support the outside broadcast, with NEP Connect sending a dual dish truck transmitting five feeds, four in a MUX. These will be received by the Media City UK operations centre and passed on via the Anylive network to NEP Oslo for Mediabank and to NEP’s London production centre at Gray’s Inn Road.

There will be a shift to remote production for the rest of the season, in keeping with eSC’s commitment to sustainability and the constraints of racing in city centre locations.

Electrik City

Boombox has created content across several Olympic Sports and X Games, as well as with esport leagues and Red Bull. It was selected following a tender process, but despite its list of credits the choice of the Canada-based company for production of live coverage and highlights may have surprised some, says Fuller.

“We wanted to look at production from a completely different perspective. What we didn’t want was another slightly different version of motorsport. We had to start with a totally blank sheet of paper, and that’s where the idea for the Electrik City came from.”

Onboard cameras and mics ensure viewers are fully immersed in the coverage

“We wanted to look at production from a completely different perspective. What we didn’t want was another slightly different version of motorsport”

SHARON FULLER, ESC

Electrik City is the name given to the Unreal Enginegenerated environment that provides a setting for presenters and guests. However, it is intended to be more than just a recreation of a regular studio setting. Fuller describes it as “a cross between gaming and a virtual environment”.

For Boombox lead producer Andy Fox, Electrik City is arguably eSC’s biggest innovation and “an imagination of what a futuristic, sustainable and micro-mobilitydriven city may look like that we can utilise as a broadcast environment”.

He says: “We can use this virtual environment in the same way as a regular studio if we need, but it is also so much more than that. Not only can we add in presenters from anywhere in the world, but it also provides opportunities for branding and exposure and will help us to blur the boundaries between real life racing and esports. It’s really breaking new ground.”

Establishing the narrative

With responsibility for live race coverage as well as highlights packages for broadcasters such as the BBC, Fox Sports Australia and MBC Action, Fox’s task is to get viewers up to speed on the eSC values, the racing format and the scooters. But they also need to “create heroes”, he says.

“All of the racers come from different sporting backgrounds, and part of my job is to get these personalities across and follow them through into the racing. A lot of our content for the first race is an eSC 101 lesson, but we also need to make sure that we establish the racer’s backgrounds and stories with viewers.”

Fuller says that eSC has adopted a strategic approach to the types of content Boombox is producing, with Little Dot Studios also selected to produce content specifically for social media.

“What we’ve tried to do is create differentiated editorial products that give us the opportunity to reach a wider audience,” says Fuller.

“We will produce a live feed on a Saturday, which is intended to be an interactive live stream for streaming platforms. We’re also producing a 90-minute show, which is specifically designed for more traditional broadcasters who aren’t necessarily interested in the live race. And we have a 52-minute highlight show which is also a ‘follow doc’, with highlights in.”

ESC will be also be piloting a 9:16 live stream. “We’re in the world of TikTok, and if the live stream works in the same way as other content people engage with on those platforms, they are more likely to stick with it,” says Fuller. To support this, at NEP’s Gray’s Inn Road facility, there will be a live pan and scan production, changing 16:9 content into a 9:16 aspect ratio.

“When viewers turn their phones around, they will get the full broadcast feed in landscape, but we’re going to have a bespoke 9:16 feed, and we will have somebody directing the window to make sure that it matches the action,” says Fuller.

A raft of broadcasters has been announced by eSC over the past few weeks, with races to be shown live by the likes of BBC via its iPlayer service, DAZN and MBC Action to homes across the Middle East and North Africa region.

A live stream will also be available via eSC’s own OTT platform, which has been built by Ostmodern. Live Like is powering a chatbot in the OTT platform for polls and quizzes. “There’s a lot of integrated stuff that we’re doing with all the data that we have in the back end,” Fuller adds. “Ultimately, it’s Al Kamel race data that other series or championships might have, but we’ve put in F1 levels of data into the scooters, plus biometric data from the riders, and we’ve thought about the potential applications through the whole system.”

Inclusive approach

ESC has adopted a sustainable and inclusive approach, not only in terms of its coverage but also the structure of the championship. A minimum wage combined with a salary cap for riders is intended to make the sport both accessible for riders and sustainable for teams, while the scooters – apart from a carbon fibre chassis – are built from natural materials. And races will not be split according to gender, with male and female riders instead racing together.

However, Fuller is candid in her assessment that such a balance has been tricky to replicate across the entire production team.

“Our team needs to represent the audience that we want to attract,” says Fuller. “Our riders come from a variety of different backgrounds, and they see them reflected in the team behind the scenes at eSC. Having said that, probably the one area which is not living up to that is our broadcast engineering team because there just isn’t enough diversity in that area. We will proactively do something about that, together with NEP.”

All ticket sales to the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame ceremony directly support the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity. For more information about the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund visit https://svgsportsbroadcastingfund.org

Tour de France Femmes

Next Article

World Snooker Championship

Getting the balance right: The inside track on the eSkootr Championship

Electrik City

Establishing the narrative

Inclusive approach

All ticket sales to the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame ceremony directly support the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charity. For more information about the SVG Sports Broadcasting Fund visit https://svgsportsbroadcastingfund.org

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SVG Europe, SportTech Journal 2022