Working in freezing cold and wet conditions is never easy, and if you’re trying to deliver live sport to millions of viewers across Europe, it’s even harder. From fogged-up lenses to satellite links being impacted by snow, broadcasters need to plan for every eventuality, ensuring that audiences can watch the latest action.
During the 2025-26 season, Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) will bring audiences around 300 hours of live winter sports action across its various platforms, including every Alpine Ski World Cup race; the Ski Jumping World Cup, Cross Country World Cup, Nordic Combined World Cup, and men’s and women’s Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Cup events. It also holds the International Ski Mountaineering Federation rights, which will be included in the Winter Olympics for the first time at Milano Cortina, plus International Skating Union rights (figure skating, short track and speed skating) as well as curling and, for the first time, luge.
Matteo Pacor has spent 20+ years working right at the heart of the action, first with Sky Italia, where he was involved in the broadcaster’s coverage of football, Formula One and the Olympics, and since 2016 with WBD. He joined the broadcaster as part of the team working on the PyeongChang Olympics and then, in 2023, took on the responsibility of winter sports activities all around Europe. Currently, he’s overseeing the Italian production for the 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, as well as various winter sports.
Production has changed a lot over those 20 years, not least with the impact of the pandemic, when almost all broadcasters and sports federations had to find a new way to bring audiences content.
“We learned a lot in terms of how to be more, let’s say, selective, and how to be more prudent with the coverage,” says Pacor. “Some of the host broadcasters are now providing even more content, and also some of the organisations have developed platforms where they can share content in advance with the right holders. This was driven by some of the Federations during the pandemic when they were trying to avoid too much contact with their athletes.
“The shared platforms allowed the different nations to upload their content. This was very beneficial for some of our sports, because we broadcast in many different languages, and it’s good to have different content from different nations, so we have a lot of content coming from them.”
The biggest change brought about by the pandemic has been the rise in remote production, and WBD has worked with host broadcasters to ensure what they’re providing meets its expectations. “For example, in the pre-feed before the events, the quantity and quality of content have changed, which gives us more freedom in the storytelling,” Pacor explains.
Battling the weather
That freedom can be easily hampered by the weather. Although it doesn’t produce the live action itself, WBD will likely be on site with presenters based in the Mix Zone, providing pre-coverage, course inspection, race inspection, and background information.
With the ongoing impact of climate change, broadcasters need to be prepared for whatever challenges Mother Nature may bring. “The weather is changing dramatically and now everything is more extreme,” states Pacor. “Sometimes we have very dry winters or very cold periods or very wet. We have rain, we have wind, we have fog and everything. They all make producing content tricky. If you take ski jumping, for example, they don’t want wind or fog.”
WBD has an experienced group of freelancers, camerapeople and producers who are well versed in how difficult and tricky the environments they’ll be working in can be.”Our camera teams are experts in knowing that when it’s very cold or humid, they have to be very careful to avoid any patch of fog inside the lenses.
“Sometimes we have to take more batteries, because when it’s very cold, they don’t last as long, and we can have power failures in the Mix Zone because of the wet conditions. We are normally prepared for all these kinds of things. We’ve never had anything dramatic that’s taken us off air.”
5G and drones
There are new technologies that are helping host broadcasters and their clients bring viewers coverage from previously inaccessible locations, namely 5G and Starlink. But even that can be tricky when working on winter sports, says Pacor. “In some of the mountain areas, when you have trees, when you have peaks around, you might not be completely under Starlink’s coverage. That’s why we often pay to have better connectivity.
“We’ve also held talks with the international federations to encourage them to select places where they can offer proper connectivity. Some of the host broadcasters are still relying on satellites, others are using fibre to transfer their feeds. In some of the valleys, if there’s a nice village full of tourists, they’re sucking a lot of the network, so the 5G or even the 4G can be overloaded.”
Other new technological developments are also helping broadcasters get viewers closer to the action, particularly drones, which are offering a different angle and additional action to the footage and flow of winter sports events. “I think that there’s still a lot of room for improvement, because sometimes it can be overused,” states Pacor. “I’m not completely convinced about the sound of the drones and how they move, because sometimes they’re inclining in different ways but in general, I think that this is something that is really giving a different angle that was not used in the past.”
Another new development is the use of small cameras that can be mounted onto the goggles or helmets of the athletes to really make the viewer feel they are part of the action. “I know that the host broadcasters are trying to understand how they can transfer the pictures immediately, because they cannot use big antennas. It’s not a Formula One circuit where you have space to mount extra antennas on the vehicle.
“With winter sports, sometimes you have three kilometres in the mountains with bumps, woods, forest and everything. It’s something that has been tested and there has been some delay in the pictures, so the host broadcasters were not happy, but I think we’ll see this technology start to be used very soon, especially for events like ski cross or snowboard cross, where you have multiple athletes racing at the same time. An onboard camera where you can pick the action of your favourite athlete is something that will give more personalisation to the viewers and let them see what the athletes are seeing. It’s very interesting.”
Going for gold at the Olympics
Whether those new ideas will be part of the coverage of Milano Cortina in March 2026 remains to be seen, but Pacor says he’s getting very excited about the event, not least because it’ll be in the European time zone. “A lot of our storytelling will be around how the athletes are feeling about the return of the Olympics to the Alps and how they’re preparing,” he adds. “We will have huge amounts of coverage, as we have in the past. We are quite well prepared, and we will focus on the Olympics from the end of October with the beginning of the Alpine World Cup.”
With WBD operating in multiple countries across Europe, each market will have its own plans for how it will cover the event. Pacor is overseeing the Italian coverage and expects to have presenters on the ground in both locations. “I prefer to see people with the snow on their hats instead of in the studio. Other markets prefer to have a virtual studio or physical studio where they can have everything under control. But I feel that someone watching television should be transported to the outdoors.
“For Milano Cortina, we will also have a virtual studio, but we are going to combine it with being out in the Mix Zone and in the different areas in Milano, in the Italian team’s base, which will be one of the main spots for us, and then we will close each day with the virtual studio.”
- This article originally appeared in TVBEurope’s winter sports ebook, Inside Edge, available here.
