SMT Provides Real-Time Broadcast Graphics, Production Support for NBC Sports’ Tour de France Coverage

SMT (SportsMEDIA Technology) is providing real-time broadcast graphics and production support for NBC Sports’ broadcast of the Tour de France. This is the eighth year SMT has supported cycling’s most grueling race.

SMT’s on-screen graphics are depicting real-time speeds for both individual riders and the peloton for all 21 stages of the race. The graphics display the ever-changing road gradients and the speeds of multiple riders at one time or a single rider.

This year, SMT has added some new features for the time trial stages, including predicted finish times, the time each rider must finish to take the yellow jersey, and a comparison of two riders to determine who is fastest on specific sections of the course.

SMT continues to provide its ISO Track System that allows viewers to easily follow the cyclists in the tightly packed peloton. Broadcasters can identify and track key riders with an on-screen pointer graphic that interfaces and displays names, rankings, headshots, real-time speeds, and gradients.

SMT’s live race crawl provides a wide range of information and statistics, including live data tracking and the position of the leaders, peloton, and other groups during each stage. Competitors’ bios and quotes also scroll across the ticker, as well as social media that is interfaced via SMT’s social media publisher. The crawl also showcases stage winners, the standings of top American cyclists and other notable riders, and jersey standings.

Other broadcast features from SMT include full-screen, data-rich graphics with race stage profiles showing the layout of the current stage and rider progression; lower-thirds with riders’ names, headshots, team logos and other race statistics; leaderboard graphics; a production telestrator; and onscreen clocks and time trial graphics.

For the NBC talent commentating the 23-day event, SMT provides prompters with a leaderboard display that features climb winners, sprint winners, and tracks riders for each group based on the stage profile of that given day in the race.