Building the View: Reflecting on ITV Sport's FIFA World Cup 2026 Studio

As the article describes, Paul McNamara, executive director and producer at ITV Sport Production, didn't hold back his enthusiasm for the location. He put it memorably:

"I often said to people, 'if Carlsberg made spaces to build on, this was it!' But then we had to make sure that we made the most of it and got the best out of it, and I think with all the planning that the team did and the brilliant set design that Toby Kalitowski and Jim Mann came up with, we can actually say, 'yes, we've got this exactly the way we wanted it and hoped it would be'."

Reading that, I'll admit, it's gratifying. Toby and I were handed an extraordinary site, but a great site is only the starting point. The real work was turning a warehouse rooftop into a studio that could hold its own against one of broadcasting's biggest stages, a five-week, 52-programme run covering the FIFA World Cup, live from New York.

What I think the SVG Europe piece captures so well is how that set came together, not just what it looks like on screen. As the article explains, I developed the virtual set, while Toby was responsible for the overall design and the complex physical set. On paper that sounds like a clean division of labour. In practice, it's rarely worked that way for us, and McNamara puts his finger on exactly why it matters:

"They worked in tandem the whole time, the idea being that any join or blend was seamless. With AE Live as well, the group have been working for over a year together. It wasn't the unreal person delivering and then the real world designer delivering and finding, 'oh, this isn't syncing up'. This has evolved from total synchronicity from the beginning."

Tony Cahalane, ITV Sport's technical director, adds some useful context on how deliberate that pairing was, recalling an early breakfast meeting with Chris Hollier and McNamara where, as he puts it, "it was quite clear that that pairing (Jim Mann and Toby Kalitowski) was paramount." It's a nice reminder that the strongest creative partnerships are usually the result of a decision made early, not something that just happens by chance.

Toby and I have reached double figures for major tournament studios together, including UEFA Euro 2024 at Timeline TV, and that continuity shows. When you're blending a real Manhattan skyline with a virtual loft apartment interior, switching between an inside and an outside environment on a live broadcast, there's no room for the join to show. Every camera move, every lighting cue, every virtual screen has to assume the other half of the set is already accounted for.

That's the part of this job I find most satisfying: not the spectacle of the finished studio, but the invisible discipline behind it. The SVG Europe article does a great job of pulling back the curtain on that process, from the permitting headaches of raising a studio floor three metres above a rooftop, to the sound design that lets viewers hear Brooklyn's fire engines and helicopters as part of the broadcast.

It's been a privilege to be part of a team this good. Have a read of the full piece for the detail on how it all came together.

Jim

You can read the SVG article here: SVG ITV

And you can read our case study here: ITV World Cup Studio

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