SportBusiness.com

PRODUCER SIGNS UP TO OCEAN RACE

Independent sports producer Sunset+Vine has signed a deal with UK commercial station ITV to provide coverage of the Volvo Ocean Race.

The producer, part of The Television Corporation, will put together 32 weekly half-hour programmes for ITV4 and eight one-hour long programmes for ITV1.

John Leach, managing director of Sunset+Vine, said: "State-of-the-art equipment will record the crews' adventures, relationships with each other in the confined space aboard the boats, and their battles to overcome the extreme conditions.

"We want to make the sport much more accessible to a wider viewing public in the same way that we transformed the way cricket has been covered."

Starting in Galicia, Spain in November, the crews spend seven months racing, taking in Cape Town, Melbourne, Rio de Janeiro and New York before finishing next June in Gothenburg.

There will be 10 cameras onboard each boat, linked by satellite to a purpose-built studio and editing facility at race headquarters just outside Portsmouth in the UK.

Eurovision, the operational department of the EBU, will be using its global network of satellites and working alongside Sunset+Vine to distribute the programming.