UCI Mountain Bike World Series: Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Ramps Up Audio
Story Highlights
Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, host broadcaster for the UCI Mountain Bike World Series, worked hard to make this season’s production better than ever for fans watching at home. In advance of the series’ lone U.S. stop in Lake Placid, NY, this weekend, Warner Bros. Discovery Sports’ VP, Cycling Events, Chris Ball, told SVG Europe that audio has been strong area of investment for the 2025 UCI Mountain Bike World Series.
“We invested a lot into audio and really put a lot of effort into that because you can have the image, but you also need the sound. So even on the first person view (FPV) drones, how the bike sounds and how the crowd sounds was something we really pushed into,” he notes, referring to the development stage of the drones for this season from Aeroplayfilms and Dutch Drone Gods.
From heavy snow in mountainous regions to wild wind and rain that grounds the production’s drones, everything has a knock-on effect for the broadcast, which must always remain consistently good
Major audio update
Warner Bros. Discovery Sports has invested heavily into refreshing the images and sounds that fans of mountain biking are used to, giving the sport a major broadcast update. Says Ball: “It’s an outdoor sport and we’ve brought mountain biking now to the level of some of the larger winter sport productions we’ve taken.
“It’s a sport that’s over 30 years old. It’s been growing globally relatively slowly, maybe plateaued a little in the last decade or so, but we brought it right into the limelight onto our platforms and investment,” he notes.
“This production is an outdoor broadcast of one of the highest levels, and it’s one of the most technically challenging,” continues Ball. “We’ve got weather issues. We’ve got a course that’s both in the open, but also in tree cover, which really restricts how much you can cover with certain cameras. So it’s a huge production now. But how do we capture the sound?
“You’ve got wind, you’ve got crowd, our fans love chainsaws, which are great, but they’re very, very loud. How do we bring that feeling when you’re at mountain bike event into the broadcast? So we’ve used a lot of technology to enrich the audio, with many more microphones on the course. In future, we’ll see if we can bring audio from the athletes in as well. That’ll be the next step.”
The UCI Mountain Bike World Series key numbers for 2025 so far for Warner Bros. Discovery Sports
Next steps for sound
That next step comes with challenges, says Ball. “In a car with a full face helmet, it may be quite easy [to capture athlete audio], but in a very lightweight outfit on a mountain, how do you get that audio off the rider into the broadcast? But we’ve brought that fan sound – the sound of the tyres and the dirt, and really getting that sense of speed, which the drone shows visually – in with the audio now.”
Guy Voisin, vice president of cycling at Warner Bros. Discovery Sports, says that although the microphone technology being used it not cutting edge, the strategy within mountain biking broadcasts is.
Voisin says: “Our audio delivery is created to deliver the best and closest experience for the viewer. We base our microphone placement and mixing concept around the “be on the side of the track” experience. Though not revolutionary, it is the base line that we have adhered to deliver the broadcast.”
Given a giant pot of money and no restrictions, Ball contemplates what he would like to do for this production going forwards into the 2026 season. “I think we need to really continue to bring the rider and the team more into the broadcast,” he says. “Really bring the fan in, and make that performer or athlete front and centre.
“And how do we do that? I think audio is a huge part,” he concludes. “How do we get either team comms or riders into the broadcast in these outdoor environments? I think that’s an interesting one.”
Haute-Savoie, France, is hosting the UCI Mountain Bike World Series from 22 to 31 August, spanning two back-to-back weekends. The action begins in Morillon from 22 to 24 August, as the venue hosts its first-ever UCI Enduro World Cup, followed by the ski and mountain bike resort of Les Gets delivering Endurance and Gravity formats, featuring Cross-country Short Track (XCC), Cross-country Olympic (XCO), and Downhill (DHI) UCI World Cup events from 28 to 31 August
