BBC Football Virtual Sets – Part 3 of 4, Match Of The Day

Opening wide shot of Match of the Day showing presenter Gary Lineker seated to the left, and guests Alan Shearer and Micah Richards on the right of the circular desk and rostra. The scene is predominantly blue with red accents. In the background is a night time skyline of an undisclosed city.

After starting with each Saturday with the lunchtime magazine programme Football Focus followed into the early evening by Final Score, the studio is reset for the BBC’s flagship Premier League highlights programme, Match of the Day. Match of the day has now been running for 60 years, and is still the U.K.’s most watched sports programme with regular viewing figures over 3 million*1.

Photograph of the greenscreen studio used for Match of the Day. Everything is painted green apart from the desk, cameras, ceiling and lights.

To transform the studio, the shroud that conceals the match monitors for Final Score is removed, and the physical lighting colour scheme is changed. A relit version of the virtual set is then activated, which features a red and blue palette complemented by softer lighting and a nighttime exterior scene.

Mid shot of Match of the Day showing presenter Gary Lineker seated to the left, and guests Alan Shearer and Micah Richards on the right of the circular desk and rostra. The scene is predominantly blue with red accents. In the background is a night time skyline of an undisclosed city.
Reverse wide shot of Match of the Day showing presenter Gary Lineker and guests Alan Shearer and Micah Richards. The scene is predominantly blue with red accents. In the background is a night time skyline of an undisclosed city.

The set design incorporates a frame structure into the floor design, that acts as a track for AR screen panels to operate. The screens are all comprised of a glass panels of varying size and proportions, with an embedded canvas that can be a landscape or portrait screen, or a graphic asset such as a club badge or a player portrait.

The design was a collaboration with Toby Kalitowski of BK Design Projects and broadcast by the BBC from the studios at Dock 10, Media City, Salford, U.K. The Virtual Set was built entirely by Jim Mann at Lightwell using the Zero Density packaged version of Unreal Engine 4.27.

Details for this virtual set, along with our other creations can be found on the Lightwell Website

  1. https://www.barb.co.uk/viewing-data/most-viewed-programmes/ Match of the day appears at 42 in the list of most viewed in the sample from December 2-8, 2024 ↩︎

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.