SVG Sit-Down: E1’s Laurence Boyd Shares the Tech Challenges of the 2025 Race Season

Saturday’s UIM E1 World Championship presented by PIF wrapped its 2025 Season

As Chief Content and Product Officer for the E1 Series — the world’s first all-electric raceboat Championship — Laurence Boyd stands at the intersection of sport, technology, and sustainability. With more than 25 years of experience in sports broadcasting, he has helped shape how E1 presents its high-octane, environmentally conscious brand of racing to audiences around the globe.

SVG sat down with Boyd in Miami, site of the E1 Miami GP and season-concluding Series finale, to discuss what went into E1’s production of the 2025 season, what he sees in the future of the sport, and what makes him the most proud of being a part of this team.

E1 stages races in coastal cities around the world, with a mission to minimize its environmental footprint while showcasing the beauty of each location. From a broadcast perspective, what have been the biggest production and logistical challenges in bringing these events to life?
Every location that we bring E1 races to presents different challenges. Because we are a remote production, we don’t hire a local truck in each space. We bring our equipment with us, which means that we have the same technology backbone for every event, and that allows us to keep consistency and reliability.

Yet each location can provide different access for cameras and technology. For example, we were based in Venice last year, and Camera 1, the wide shot that captures all the action, had to be floated on a barge on the sea. We have a 50-meter hoist, which was floated on the barge for  our Augmented Reality enhanced shots . That allows us to add branding to the shots but also allows us to show the entire racetrack.

Other challenges are unique to each location. In Lago Maggiore,Italy, this year, the challenge was about fiber connectivity. We are a fully remote production with 25 people working in the UK, two people working in Barcelona, three people working on the south coast of England. For Lago Maggiore, because there’s no fiber internet there, we had to bring support  onsite, and  had to completely change the broadcast infrastructure for that race., Although we try to be as consistent with our broadcast-tech solutions every race, there are distinct challenges everywhere we go.

Walk us through how E1 has transitioned to a more remote production workflow and what that has meant for your onsite footprint, staffing, and sustainability goals.
We reduced the onsite footprint through Season 1. Since then, there has been a move to more and more remote production, and just an overall more sustainable production. Currently, there are Aurora Media and Timeline production teams in West London, where the show is mixed and the producer, director, and commentary team are. The Alkamel Systems graphics operators are located in Barcelona, and the remote camera operation for Cross-Shore Media is in Weymouth on the south coast of England. There are around 25 people working remotely.

In terms of new technologies, you mention the camera used for AR branding as well as showing the racetrack. What other new technologies were deployed this season to elevate the game?
I think that one of the most interesting tech advances we have is the use of agile cameras, which are gyro-stabilized cameras sitting on the top of each boat. Those are provided by one of our broadcast-facility partners, Cross Shore Media, who specializes in camera positions in difficult locations. They have basically reworked a cinematic camera to become stabilized on the boats, which gives us amazing low-angle tracking shots.

Last season, we had those cameras available on five boats simultaneously. This year, we’ve added chase boats, which gives us the opportunity to get more-dynamic low-angle tracking shots from different angles, not just from within the race course but outside the race course. Each boat has four onboard cameras on it. What we’re looking to do is create the most dynamic content we can since fast-moving boats require fast-moving cameras to capture the drama of the action.

[Here in Miami,] we have two drones and four onboard cameras per boat, with five boats per race, so that’s another 20. Then we have a super-slow-motion camera with a big lens; we also have three handheld cameras to capture the action on the shore. Those cameras will be covering the teams talking to one another, the celebrity team owners, the glamour of the ocean club, as well as the usual typical reaction shots that you would get from any sports event.

How are you balancing partnerships with traditional broadcast versus streamers? How are smaller, more-niche platforms getting access to E1?
Our contribution and distribution is managed by Timeline TV, our broadcast-facilities partner. We produce SRT feeds for most broadcasters, which is useful for both streaming and traditional broadcast. But we also distribute through BT Tower [in London] in the traditional way if required. Most of our broadcasters are now taking SRT feeds.

What do you enjoy most about being part of a broadcast like E1, one that combines cutting-edge technology, sustainability, and global storytelling? On a personal level, what was it about this sport and this production that first drew you in?
My background was being a producer, and a producer’s job is to solve problems, right? That’s what we do. The unique problems that we have to solve at each venue are exciting. It’s also great to work with an engaged and creative group, from both an engineering and an editorial perspective. I’m proud that they love working on the job. It can be quite hard, you know. We’ve been on four continents, so there are long flights and long days. But absolutely everybody who works on it loves to do the job. It is something I’m really proud of: having such an amazing and willing team every day.

Looking back at the work that has gone into bringing E1 to audiences around the world, what are you most proud of when it comes to how your team has captured and delivered such a fast-paced, high-intensity sport on-air?
From day one, E1 was conceived as a global broadcast property. We wanted to come in with very high production values. Those high production values are critical if we want to attract the type of broadcasters we have at E1. Whether CBS Sports Network in the U.S. or ITV in the UK or the DAZN in many territories, they require high production values, excellent storytelling, and robust engineering. That has been built into the plan from day one. The next thing is, our team owners are global icons from sport and entertainment. They expect high production values. When you have people like Will Smith and Mark Anthony involved, you can’t be producing low-quality content.

Another thing I’m proud of is, this year we joined the XR Sports Alliance. The XRSA’s founding members are HBS, Accedo, and Qualcomm. We were the first sport to deploy the XRSA [technology] and to test immersive content gathering. We believe at E1 that immersive content is going to be part of the mix for sports rightsholders very, very soon and will be a  critical part of the mix.

We were able to deploy this technology over the summer, with the goal to build it out for future races. What we realized is that, although it’s probably a while away from immersive content in live sports to be part of people’s viewing experience, creating and capturing immersive content as postproduced immersive content is already accessible, and the tech is moving fast.

We feel that, as a new sport Championship , we need to be making technological advances, and we allow ourselves to take risks in doing things that other, more established properties might not be able to. It has been great to have a collaborative attitude around the team to help with this exciting immersive-content project.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.