Live sports broadcasting has historically been the preserve of big broadcasters with the infrastructure, the clout and the resources to match. It still is, but it’s no longer the only game in town.

Armed with a combination of more agile connectivity paths and software-based production systems, nimble production teams are serving audiences that traditional broadcasters have historically struggled to serve. The same efficiencies that are enabling tier one broadcasters to do more with less are helping rights holders get their message out to millions of fans who are hungry for content.

These workflows have been accelerated by advances in technology and connectivity, with shifts to more efficient transport protocols like SRT and RIST opening the door to more flexible workflows. But the nimble production story starts long before these technologies were commercially available, and the shift is as much about the culture as it is about the tech. We speak to three companies who have placed nimble production at the core of their content workflows. 

What Is It?

One thing is clear; nimble is not just a response to budget pressure or pandemic disruption; it is a foundational philosophy. It’s not just about being reactive enough to deploy systems that can adapt quickly to different requirements, and it’s not just about being able to deliver a broader range of content. It’s not even about utilizing the most appropriate tools to get the job done.

It’s about all of the above, and each one is a complementary facet of the same shift. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, Vivid Broadcast has built a solid reputation for top tier coverage and continues to deliver large scale, multi-camera outside broadcasts to a range of international clients. But its enthusiastic embrace of more agile nimble production techniques has enabled it to expand its services to provide the same high-end levels of production to a much broader range of clients.

”Nimble production is about being able to offer a range of facilities and offerings to our clients,” says Danielle Scivill, Head of Outside Broadcasts at Vivid Broadcast. “It means they can choose from a variety of broadcast solutions – ensuring a high quality and premium product across all different sizes of operation.”

The growing popularity of women’s sports, and in particular the rise of women’s football, is a good example of this, and it’s a dynamic in which Vivid has played an active role with its coverage of Women’s Super League (WSL). As its audiences have grown, WSL’s position as a niche sport has become less clearly defined, although it still exhibits key differences in the audience demographics that drive the more established male football leagues.

“The Women’s Super League (WSL) is a great example,” continues Scivill (Vivid Broadcast). “Matches are covered at different levels, for different broadcasters and all with slightly different requirements. We can offer anything from an outside broadcast truck with a 20 camera capability, to a single cellular bonded camera, and it can all come back into our remote center or be broadcast direct from the venue.”

Meanwhile, Scottish production specialist QTV has built nimble production into its DNA from the outset, taking a holistic view that is as much about the approach as it is about the technology.

“It’s the ability to be reactive,” says QTV COO Gareth Gordon. “Part of it is having technology you can deploy quickly, but it’s also about having staff who are able to adapt, and at high levels within the broadcast sector that can be quite hard to do. Part of our challenge to clients is to work out whether it needs to be as big as they think it needs to be. What can we achieve if we do it smaller?”

Unlike Vivid and QTV, World Archery has arrived at nimble production through necessity, developing its in-house workflows to meet the needs of its expanding global footprint with a structured approach to deliver coverage at every level.

“The flexibility and modular nature of the production stack is what makes it nimble,” says World Archery’s Head of Communications Chris Wells. “We used to be handcuffed by one part of the chain; the transportation of signals from one place to the other was always the anchor, because there was only satellite, or fiber if you could afford it. When wide-scale adoption of IP transmission boxes became the norm we got greater interoperability between different systems, and the ability to choose between physical and cloud devices made us much more flexible.

“With the flexibility we have now, it’s okay to prioritize one thing in one location and know it will be reliable elsewhere. The production approach always varies depending on the territory or location, and how we’re working will prioritize different parts of the production.”

Foundations

World Archery’s evolution is tied in with QTV; the company supported them with global coverage prior to World Archery taking production in-house, and it still provides services at its lower tier events. 

Both Vivid and QTV have worked the nimble principle from day one, pre-dating its rise to prominence post-Covid.

In fact, Glasgow’s QTV has never been about serving the sports at the top table.

“That’s always been the foundation of QTV,” says Gordon (QTV). “While other companies in the Scottish market have targeted repeat RFP broadcast rights deals, that has never been the driver for us, and we’ve always worked directly with federations to organically create volume and build a sustainable company.”

History bears this out: established in 2011, the company won an early contract to cover an event for the Ice Climbing Federation in China. The project resulted in QTV co-founder Jack McGill approaching the University of West Scotland to loan the fledging company some cameras; and it also provided an opportunity to provide paid work experience for three students to accompany them.

“Jack agreed a contra deal with the university for the staff and the cameras, and pushed the coverage to make it look like they were using eight or nine, using camcorders rather than broadcast cameras and wringing every bit of capability out of the kit,” says Gordon (QTV). “It speaks to Jack’s production background and passion for sports coverage – he knew what he wanted it to look like and drove the team to deliver beyond their means.”

It’s probably no coincidence that those students – Seth Edwards, Mark Feechan and Stephen Wilcox – are still at QTV as Head of Technical Production, Head of Production and Client Services, and Operations Manager respectively. Fast forward 15 years, and this concept still drives QTV’s approach, only now it’s a lot easier to achieve.

“Pre-2019, remote production was the buzzword, but connectivity was too far off what we needed, and the budgets didn’t stack up,” says Wells (World Archery).  “During the pandemic we started doing lower-end remote production with isolated groups, running full streaming setups to keep things going. Connectivity will never be as bad as it was a minute ago, and one thing I quickly realized was that connectivity had been an overstated issue.

“Coming out of the pandemic we looked at how to apply what we’d learned and we developed a hybrid model with the main mix done on site and additional content handled through an external MCR. We’d been worrying about high-end or uncompressed video, but as a niche sport there isn’t the demand for that so we invested more in full IP compressed workflows. We found we could sacrifice live uncompressed footage as a core basis or our workflow. It’s opened up so much more.”

Underserved Audiences

Utilizing compressed transport methods is a trade-off that has strengthened the case for nimble production across the entire industry and has moved the argument beyond just being a commercial opportunity, to delivering live content to an underserved audience just waiting for a platform.

Vivid Broadcast, who has also spent the last two decades steadily scaling into the technology, has its roots in music, brand work, fashion, and entertainment, and has gradually moved more into sport to develop growth with new and growing audiences - both across mainstream sports and outside of the top tier events. And it is still on that path.

“Early in 2026, we supported Chess.com on an Esport world chess tournament,” says Vivid’s Head of Innovation Francis Cousins. “I was blown away by the strength of the fan base and it’s an example of being able to televise a production that historically hasn’t been able to reach such a widespread audience at Tier 1 quality. It was delivered to Twitch but it has the potential to find its way onto other platforms; the audiences are there. The question is whether the distributors will follow.”

The audiences are definitely there and Gordon says QTV has served more than 40 sports federations, from ice climbing and pickleball to kabaddi. It’s a leap of faith for many rights holders, and QTV’s coverage of international jump rope is a good example of what this looks like in practice; a sport that QTV took from single-camera coverage to a ten-person production team in Kawasaki with ten times the original budget - and one now vying for Olympic status

“Jump rope is a perfect example of a client who understands the journey,” says Gordon (QTV). “The transition to leaner production models is fundamentally about servicing people who don’t have large budgets but do have an audience, and if you consistently make the product better it becomes more saleable. The International Jump Rope Union understood who their audience was, where to target, and what it needed to look like.

“World Archery is another example of that. They knew what they wanted to do and how to drive it, its audiences have grown astronomically.”

Now gaining even more ground following the creation of its in-house MCR in Switzerland in 2025, Wells says its burgeoning relationships with international broadcasters is a direct result of that consistency of output.

“Consistency that has been built through digital-first distribution definitely develops the audiences that broadcasters value,” says Wells (World Archery). “Each of our top-tier events now has 16 to 20 broadcasters taking content for linear and digital. We have an owned OTT platform, we’re about to launch a FAST channel, and there’s a digital workflow running alongside all of that. All of it, top to bottom, runs through the same compressed workflow and the methodology we’ve followed is about being reliable, consistent and available, whether that’s direct to consumer or to broadcasters.

“The broadcasters who support us are important because they’re reaching audiences we’re not, and the relationship we have with our dedicated group of existing fans is also one that broadcasters value. I don’t think the dynamics are all that different from larger sports in terms of that split, but what is different is that it simply wasn’t viable for us to do any of this before. Now it is.”

Proven Growth

Returning to WSL again, its development illustrates how much growth is possible when fans have better access to content. Fan research conducted by YouGov in January 2026 reveals that there are 103m followers of WSL Football globally. That’s partly thanks to the surge in women’s football, but it’s also about accessibility – and Vivid’s scalable infrastructure enables it to deliver coverage that is applicable across a much wider range of channels.

“Delivering a three or four camera spec is no longer considered a low-value product; we can deliver very high-quality shows with few cameras, but remotely that can be made into a very polished production,” Scivill (Vivid Broadcast) says. “People are much more in tune with absorbing sport at different levels, because the requirement from viewers is to have volume and a choice of what they watch. The sport can be delivered to YouTube and a linear broadcast channel simultaneously; it can be on Sky Sports but also their multi-viewer platform.”

In fact, viewer expectations across different platforms are constantly shaping the way content is produced.

The Creator Economy As Direction Of Travel

“We do some projects that distribute on Twitch and working on these projects is always interesting,” says Cousins (Vivid Broadcast). “There’s a huge amount of interaction; with every production there’s a consideration on how to interact with

‘Chat’ at a deeper level and the interacting audience is considered as a core part of the coverage. It’s definitely a move into that creator economy, but I think there’s a lot further that linear broadcast could go in building up that relationship with audiences, and I think the demand is there!”

“It’s very platform-dependent,” adds Scivill (Vivid Broadcast). “Twitch is very innovative but a BBC viewer may expect something more traditional. With mainstream boxing for example, we know viewers are expecting a certain number of cameras positioned in certain places. If you go too far outside the box on certain platforms, there’s always going to be comeback. Knowing what any particular demographic is looking for, and how willing they are to engage with new ideas, is how you can open up new technology and innovation.”

An appreciation of that viewer dynamic is critical, and knowing when something is good enough is another new discipline to master.  World Archery adopts three tiers of production: it owns the full production at the top tier; it coordinates the production and manages signal acquisition from the venue at tier two; and it receives a signal from an external party at the bottom tier: “We’ve set our format, we’ve set our compression standard, and then how we reach those formats is the nimble side of it,” says Wells (World Archery).

Before distribution changed everything, good enough was never a term that broadcasters valued, and the broadcast workflow itself imposed its own constraints. But traditional approaches don’t work in this new taxonomy – they are too structured, too rigid, and above all, they are too expensive.

Is nimble production as much a cultural shift as a technical one?

“Essentially yes, but it’s also about knowing when to take risks, when to push things a bit further and when to lock things down,” says Wells (World Archery). “Something we’ve struggled with is knowing when something is good enough and moving on.

“There’s a small but telling example: as a small federation trying to save costs, we used to put our satellite links up 15 minutes before going to air, once we’d done our checks. With our owned SRT paths, broadcasters can connect whenever they like, and there’s a lot more familiarity with the process now. But in the first year we were still trying to open SRTs 15 minutes before and that’s just not viable in this model.”

Managing Compromise

The widespread adoption of SRT and other compressed formats like RIST (Reliable Internet Stream Transport) are a good examples of how the industry has become more accepting of new ways of working.

“QTV was an early adopter of SRT, and in the last few years it has become de facto and is used ubiquitously throughout the industry,” says Gordon (QTV). “People trust it and are not fearful of it, and if budget is limited I can use a LAN and stick a Starlink up with a bonded SIM and achieve more resilience than a SAT truck.

“There are clear savings, and for things like netball and rugby super league, a lot is SRT contribution. Once we have it in the building, we can push that out on private fiber networks. It’s a mixed bag of what we use and where we put it.”

In an industry that is so focused on reliable connectivity, this shift is significant. But there’s always a middle ground, and it’s a measured approach that QTV has been keen to take.

“When I joined in 2020 I remember walking in on my first day and there was a 20 year old sitting on a PC with a software-based live production package, directing four-camera coverage and doing his own replays, his own graphics, and the sound mix,” says Gordon (QTV).  “The potential was clear, so I took all their knowledge and experience of live streaming and started layering broadcast discipline onto it. 

“We made decisions to run entirely on Dante audio so we’re not pulling multicore cables, and using camera tie lines to run commentary feeds through the same infrastructure. Yes, you take a risk – if that camera goes down you might lose the feed to the commentary monitors – but I can count on one hand the number of times that’s happened in seven years. It’s a risk worth taking because it brings the cost down so much.”

Serving New Audiences

World Archery’s decision to launch its own FAST channel plays into all of this, applying a creator economy approach to curated sports content to give athletes the tools to build their own audiences. It is an approach that is culturally aligned with how younger audiences consume content.

“Alongside our FAST channel we’re thinking about how people can provide content to us, and how we can use athletes as creators within our infrastructure, and in a niche sport like archery there aren’t as many personalities to draw from to push things forward,” says Wells (World Archery). “I think we have a responsibility to give them a platform to build on.”

Ultimately, nimble production isn’t just about finding new efficiencies as much as it is about feeding new audiences and developing ways for them to connect to the sports they love. In doing so, it is reshaping the relationship between sports content and its fans.

“There’s a tendency in this industry to say, “You’re taking people’s jobs.” I don’t think actually true,” says Gordon (QTV). “We’re servicing a part of sports coverage that has always been underserved. It’s always been about the audience and we’re showing that there’s value in places that weren’t previously possible. That has been the driver behind leaner production models.”

For Vivid, who are able to deliver a range of services for any level of coverage the client needs, there is a similarly flexible mix of production workflows, but Cousins says that it is neither a transitional moment nor a permanent structural shift in what live sports coverage is.

“Vivid’s teams are one and the same – we’re using the same people, the same staff, the same freelancers, so there’s no demarcation between nimble and traditional production,” says Cousins (Vivid Broadcast). “I don’t necessarily think any way of working is better. We’re all in the same industry, we’re just doing things slightly differently on different days – with the same dedication to high quality content, alongside reliable engineering solutions.”