Alex Kay-Jelski Explains Itv World Cup Studio Plan In Salford
The will base its itv world cup studio at Media City Studios in Salford, with director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski calling the move the sensible choice for the tournament. He said the plan avoids sending everyone to Dallas and is designed to cut costs, emissions and duplicated work across TV and digital coverage.
Media City Studios in Salford
Roughly 200 people will work on the ’s World Cup coverage from Media City Studios and the Sport offices next door. The studio sits inside HQ3, a 4,700 sq ft space built for live presentation work.
The set is built around a 5mx3m LED screen showing the host cities where matches are being covered from, along with the local time of day and weather on screen. An LED screen in the floor will be used for analysis, with three main broadcast cameras and a jib camera covering the presentations.
Alex Kay-Jelski’s cost case
Kay-Jelski said the would save millions in costs and expects a 19% cut in carbon emissions compared with the last World Cup in Qatar. He also said the organisation would not send everyone to Dallas because that would be hard to justify from a spend perspective.
“If I was standing here saying everything is going to be done from a studio in Dallas, you would rightly be saying to me, ‘How can we justify that spend?’” he said. He added: “I don’t think the answer from a financial or sustainability point of view is to go, ‘everyone can go’. I don’t think that’s a clever way of spending licence fee money.”
Gabby Logan at the desk
Gabby Logan will host the ’s first game presentation on Friday 12 June, when Canada play Bosnia-Herzegovina, with Micah Richards, Wayne Rooney and Olivier Giroud alongside her. Logan, Richards and Rooney are also scheduled for the final on 19 July, with the last pundit for that match still to be decided by who reaches the showpiece fixture.
The is also leaning on the same campus for digital output. Pundits in the studio will be able to film for YouTube and TikTok on site, while highlights and analysis edits completed in the VT gallery will be reused for other outlets.
Kay-Jelski said the approach is built around reach as much as savings: “We have to find people where they are and talk their language,” he said, pointing to live streams of the first 10 minutes of fixtures as part of that plan. The studio design will also feed into a new Match of the Day studio next season, and the HDR delivery of every game will be used again in future football and wider sport coverage.
