Inside Sky Sport’s Super Round rugby broadcast: How a vast team brings the action into your lounge

Now he’s helping to reimagine the way his pay-TV network covers our national game.

“New Zealanders rely on us to deliver rugby; 99.9% of the country watch rugby through Sky. So, it has to look great, right?”

No matter how great it looks, what you see from the comfort of your lounge cannot do justice to the incredible teamwork that’s frenetically playing out behind the scenes. A team of highly skilled broadcasters is preparing to tell a story that’s yet to be written – such is the beauty of live sport.

The nerve centre of Sky Sport’s all-singing, all-dancing production is an outside broadcast (OB) truck that resembles a very large motorhome on the outside and Doctor Who’s Tardis on the inside.

The truck houses an audio suite, control room, editing suite and colour correction facilities. A team of more than 20 people works shoulder to shoulder without a single ray of daylight, while presenting a compelling depiction of everything they can see only second hand. If the cameras don’t capture it, nobody in the truck will know it happened. There are 28 cameras feeding pictures back to ensure nothing goes unseen.

In the hot seat is the director, who has eight screens in front of him with up to nine separate frames fed into each. Next to him is his assistant, meticulously keeping track of time. Behind him, communications are going out to presenter Kirstie Stanway and larrikin roving reporter Joey Wheeler.

In the replay suite, a team of five editors scours every frame that comes in to add another chapter to the story that’s now being written in real time. Every slow-motion replay, every montage of varying angles of the same action has been created by this eagle-eyed team. Speed is crucial with replays – the viewer wants it now, and the director wants it faster than that.

Every person in the truck is working to their limit to present the best possible coverage for you at home – even more so for One NZ Stadium’s long-awaited debut. Burchett says Sky Sport’s coverage of Super Round was super-sized.

“This has an international flavour. In fact, you could argue that it’s bigger than what we’ve done for the All Blacks because we’ve introduced Raptor Cam.

“With the Christchurch stadium and its sentiment and its meaning and significance, we just felt that this particular event needed a lot of showbiz,” says Burchett, clearly very proud of his team’s enormous effort.

Five matches over three days is a serious undertaking that produced an eye-watering 16 hours of action-packed live television.

The impressive numbers surrounded one focal point.

“The stadium itself was very much a central sort of theme of how we approached this production. I think last night [Crusaders v Waratahs] it was the story,” he adds.

Burchett, by his own description, is a broadcast executive and a “storyteller”.

“I couldn’t help but be struck by the emotion of what, you know, this sporting cathedral means to the locals, because it helps spur identity. And a sense of purpose and place.”

Storytelling in television is the difference between hooking a viewer or losing them to the next channel. It’s a one-two punch. Pictures followed closely by sound.

“It just looks box office,” says Burchett as the powerful winch controlling the overhead raptor cam purrs behind him.

The 4k four-wire camera is suspended above the ground at One NZ Stadium and can cover every inch of the playing surface to provide a bird’s eye view.

“It just takes you places that other cameras can’t. It gives you a very intimate view of the way that the game is played, and I think the more we can tell stories about how rugby is played and the strategy, the more people understand it,” says Burchett.

A team of two is responsible for driving and focusing the camera, while a third person produces the supporting augmented reality graphics.

Hamish Trott, Raptor Cam’s managing director, says the new venue was a challenge to rig.

“We had to use a 43m boom lift,” says Trott as he describes the heavy-duty install of four winches attached to the large stadium trusses.

Not only does Raptor Cam give viewers a perspective that no other camera can, it can move faster than any camera operator. Or winger.

“10 metres a second. It’s a quick little beast,” says Trott.

Burchett is a big fan.

“The four-wire camera – the Raptor – it’s the most dynamic camera in world sport.”

Its presence in Christchurch for the Super Round is strategic.

“This is all about making a statement, championing rugby, getting people to fall back in love with rugby again, and, importantly for me, the casual watcher who comes in.

“I’ve said this to my team, the narrative of this weekend should not be for the rugby purists. Rugby needs to grow new fans, so if we can build a coverage that oozes showbiz, that feels big, that I think might increase someone’s viewing enjoyment,” says Burchett.

The commentary team working the Hurricanes v Brumbies game was a collaboration between Sky Sport and the Australian network Stan Sport. It included former All Black Justin Marshall, former Wallaby Morgan Turinui and experienced Australian caller Sean Maloney.

In-match commentators are heard but not seen – so getting into the commentary suite while they were in full cry felt like the sort of access that only they themselves get. It shouldn’t be. Maloney’s mannerisms alone are pure entertainment.

The broadly built broadcaster has a unique delivery that uses every level of his equally broad vocal range. At times, it sounds like he’s riding a rollercoaster with an unfiltered passage from his eyes to his consciousness and then his mouth. His excitement, disbelief and bewilderment are all as evident in his tone as they are in his vocabulary.

What the viewer doesn’t see is that with every vocal rise and fall, Maloney seems to have a physical action to match. He stands in his socks with his shoes kicked off as Marshall and Turinui sit beside him. The former international players are still on their stools while Maloney fidgets. Unable to stand still, he shuffles from side to side and crouches like he’s defending his goal line from the next pick and go.

The stadium was undoubtedly a central figure in the Super Round story – but it also facilitated Sky’s telling of that story.

The roof meant conditions were predictable – and light quality was consistent.

“We don’t have those glares that you do in daytime broadcasts, so picture quality is exceptional, and we’re in sparkling 4k ultra high definition.”

The fact that the stadium caters well to broadcasters is not by accident.

“We have a very strong relationship with stadium management. They consulted us right throughout the process on broadcasting positions, operations, cabling drop points, studio facilities, so very much a partnership about how to maximise the most out of broadcast.”

Burchett describes the $683 million venue as “state of the art”.

“I felt that this could have been a stadium in Munich, [or] Paris. It just has that sort of modern football feel about it.”

Add to that a capacity crowd and a roof that reverberates every roar they make. And every decibel is picked up by eight ambient microphones and put to use on Sky Sport’s broadcast.

“I’m very big on audio. TV’s all about the visuals, but it’s the audio that accentuates the drama,” says Burchett.

Sporting theatre is not contrived. It is most often born out of a meaningful contest.

“We’re only as good as what happens in the middle. I can put on the best production in the world, but if it’s a 56-0 blowout, people aren’t remembering the high-quality production; they’re remembering one team being decimated.

“I want every match that we produce to go down to the last minute. I want a 79th-minute winner or someone to equalise. Maybe it goes to super point, or a golden point, because that sustains viewership, right?”

Burchett says his team’s job is to bring it to life.

At one stage during our tour, Burchett is approached by former All Black Jeff Wilson (now a Sky commentator) with an idea that came from former Wallaby and Stan Sport commentator Tim Horan about featuring key players before kick-off. It’s a subtle tweak, but it’s attention to detail that Burchett likes, and he suggests they try it in the following match between the Blues and the Reds. That’s how fast and directly changes can be made in a structured programme with a broadcast team adept in playing with “eyes up”.

Burchett trusts experts like Wilson to identify the stories within the story.

“They played the game at the highest level. I know how to pull a production together, but the minutiae of what excellence looks like, that’s their responsibility.

“You can’t have a producer telling Jeff Wilson what to say, right? That’s almost disrespectful. So, they need to drive and lead the narratives.”

Super Round was super in many ways. Three days, three sell-outs across five matches and a team of 96 tireless broadcasters who put you deep inside One NZ Stadium for an event that Super Rugby will never forget – even if the scorelines are already a bit hazy.

Mike Thorpe is a senior multimedia journalist for the Herald, based in Christchurch. He has been a broadcast journalist across television and radio for 20 years and joined the Herald in August 2024.