Uefa Women’s Euro 2025

Women’s football hasn’t always been popular. For starters, there is the ongoing yet erroneous belief that sport is for men; women football players have also faced disputes over equal pay, dress codes and sexual abuse. While these issues are, in many ways, persistent, the sport has been steadily growing its following, with viewing figures for major tournaments now in the ten-millions.

The Uefa Women’s Euro 2025, also known as the Euros, is one such event. First held in 1984, the tournament sees 16 Uefa (Union of European Football Associations) teams battle for a championship trophy. This year’s Euros – the 14th edition, held in Switzerland – saw England, the defending champions, retain their title, defeating Spain 3-1 in a riveting penalty shoot-out.

To satisfy the growing interest in women’s football, the BBC and ITV split the bill on broadcasting Euro 2025, raking in a combined 16 million viewers during the final match. We caught up with both teams, going behind the broadcast on the biggest Women’s Euros to date.

From Salford to Switzerland

A longtime supporter of the sport, the BBC again handled the UK broadcast of the Women’s Euros, this time splitting coverage with ITV. The BBC broadcast 16 matches in total, including England’s second group game against the Netherlands, three of the quarter-finals, one of the semi-finals and final (also broadcast by ITV), held on 27 July. With a small team of reporters on the ground in Switzerland, most of the tournament – bar four games – was broadcast from the BBC’s virtual studio in Salford’s Media City.

“What we decided to do, with it being in Switzerland and us in the UK, is create a virtual Swiss lodge cabin on the lake, with the mountains in the backdrop,” begins John Murphy, creative director, motion at BBC Sport. With Vizrt acting as the graphics supplier and Lightwell the creative studio, “that’s all coming from an 84-metre, square green box in our office space,” he says.

Vizrt and Lightwell collaborated on the virtual set-up, creating a serene backdrop of Lake Lucerne, with sunlight that shifted to mimic the time of day.

Powered by Vizrt’s Viz Engine and Unreal Engine, “we were able to have an upstairs and a downstairs where the downstairs is more of a stand-up analysis area,” Murphy says. “You’ve got various virtual screens that the presenters can put graphics on and do analysis from, and we’ve also got an outside linking position back at the studio.”

The BBC has plenty of experience broadcasting international sporting competitions – it’s been responsible for the World Cup and the Olympics, for instance. “We’ve done numerous other sporting events – big athletic events – and we create a virtual studio to supplement what the event is and what the sport is,” Murphy says. The BBC built on the same XR infrastructure it used during the 2024 Olympics coverage, adapting the studio for Euro 2025 – and requiring an editorial overhaul.

“We build our presentation around the match feed that’s coming in; we’re not directing the match coverage,” Murphy clarifies. “We’re doing our presentation for UK viewers – the build-up to the game, player profiles, analysis, highlights.”

Lightwell handled the studio’s creative direction, and worked closely with Toby Kalitowski, creative director at BK Design Projects, and BBC Sport to design the Swiss-themed set.

“Technology-wise, it’s a gaming engine,” Murphy continues. “We’ve got Mo-Sys tracking systems on the cameras in the studio. All of that is in place already; it’s not something we’ve brought in specifically for this event. It’s all there. It’s ready to go.”

With any virtual design, Murphy suggests, “you have to spend a fair bit of time on it and testing, rehearsals to make sure that what you’ve done visually works for the actual programme itself. There was a lot of back and forth on that, but everything went well on air.”

By the numbers

The BBC called in Sunset+Vine, an external production company, to help with its Euro 2025 coverage. “It’s the first time we’ve done the Euros in a while,” admits Stephen Booth, executive producer at Sunset+Vine – that’s 12 years, to be exact. “We’ve been part of the growth of women’s football. The contrast between 2013 and now is an astonishing difference,” he continues. The BBC used to broadcast its women’s football on BBC Two and Three; now, it’s on BBC One. “The crowds and audiences are in a different realm.”

Sunset+Vine entered a tender process, competing for a contract with the BBC. “A load of different independent companies in the UK bid for it,” says Booth. “The BBC liked our ideas and our approach to it.”

Part of this approach was to work ‘as sustainably as possible’, according to Booth. “People travelled there and back by train. One of the challenges we faced was the time and the expense of that,” he admits. “Another challenge was the Swiss Working Time Directive, which places a restriction on the number of hours people work and the number of continuous days people work,” he explains. “It’s a very good idea in principle; it’s quite difficult to operate during a major football tournament.”

Working under this directive meant outsourcing work to the team in Salford. “There’s no such thing as a Salford Working Time Directive,” Booth jokes. Remote production went smoothly for Sunset+Vine, as it was one of the first companies to do live remote broadcasts during Covid-19. “In comparison to that, it’s quite solid now. Once you get that genie out the bottle, it’s difficult to put it back in.”

Besides broadcasting matches on BBC One, the BBC also shared its Women’s Euros content across its digital channels, including BBC iPlayer, the BBC Sport website and app, BBC Sounds and social media. “Twelve million people watched the final on the BBC,” Booth details. “That 12 million is the biggest UK TV audience of the year so far, and it will probably stay that way.”

Booth is citing the BBC’s peak live audience of 12.2 million viewers across all platforms. At one point, 11.6 million fans tuned in to BBC One, while an additional 4.2 million streamed the match on BBC iPlayer and the BBC Sport website and app.

Besides the sheer numbers, “we were pleased with how the virtual studio looked. Virtual studios have made leaps and bounds in just the last three or four years. They are looking more and more real,” Booth says. “One thing that we were very keen on was to make it a real environment, meaning guests could walk to the screen and back. The challenge is still where the feet connect to the floor – that’s always the hardest bit to get right.”

Vizrt’s Reality Connect tool rose to the occasion, using AI to generate accurate reflections, shadows and lighting, thus boosting the overall sense of immersion. According to Murphy, the BBC received ‘lots of great feedback’ on its virtual studio. “It’s all gone really well,” he says.

Team effort

For the ‘first time in a long time’, ITV broadcast the Women’s Euros alongside the BBC, according to Katie Reed, head of production at ITV Sport. “Before we got the rights,” she recalls, “we looked at the tournament and how we thought we could approach it from a budget perspective. We decided to do the group stage from the UK and then fly out for the semi-final and final.”

Like the BBC, ITV created a virtual set ‘not long after Covid-19’, according to Reed. “That makes us quite versatile in terms of all the different productions we do.”

Using Unreal Engine, ITV can adapt its studio to any given event. “It’s designed so that we can ‘skin it’, we call it,” begins Tony Cahalane, technical director at ITV Sport.
“Once we had the graphics, we gave it to Timeline – the suppliers of the VR set-up – and they were able to reskin it.”

As well as adding the Women’s Euros branding, ITV incorporated AR and video elements such as ‘meet the team’ content. “We didn’t do the normal AR ‘meet theteams’,” adds Cahalane. “We actually did videos in their home environments. That was a departure.”

ITV worked out of its UK production hub for most of the tournament, travelling to Switzerland for England’s final pair of matches. “We have tons of media coming in, and that needs to be filed, stored and made available for all of the edits that we have constantly running,” Cahalane explains, noting media management is handled in the UK.

This feature was first published in the Autumn 2025 issue of FEED.