From sports study to the most immersive election coverage: the case of Sky News

Studio 4 of Sky Studios, 360 degrees and frequently used for 'Monday Night Football' (MNF), Formula 1 or NFL content, has been used by Sky News to broadcast the British election night taking advantage of all the advantages that immersive technology provides in informative contexts.

The 360° nature of the set has allowed the production team of Sky News Divide the space into different areas that take advantage of technology for content. In this way, the large curved LED panel served as the main space forming a “window to the world” with a broadcast mosaic live from 102 constituency counts; the central zone, known as “the disco track”, has hosted a giant virtual map of the united kingdom with real-time results from exit polls; in the area of ​​“totems”, where the tactics of sporting events are frequently analyzed, individual result forecasts have been shown, and the fourth wall of the studio, just on the opposite side of the main analysis table, featured a recreation of Downing Street with augmented reality built in Unreal Engine.

The election coverage on set, designed more than six months ago, was completed with other interesting additions such as models of augmented reality real size of Rish Sunak y Keir Starmer, or the use of automated galleries, built on the Overdrive system of Ross Video.

Beyond on-set coverage, Sky News' ambition was represented in its ambition to be present in all possible electoral centers to offer the always timely feeling of presence that accompanies this type of formats. To do this, and given the impossibility of having cameras in the 650 constituencies of the United Kingdom, the British broadcaster settled for the not inconsiderable number of 102 connections from different locations. To achieve this large figure, Sky relied on nearly 30 ENG cameras and between 60 and 80 students equipped with a camera and a backpack LiveU, whose signal was sent to the network Sky Studios via cloud.

The success of the electoral coverage has led Sky News to rethink the use of this space, so it is expected that in the short and medium term, sport will coexist with informative content.

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