Virtual graphics

The Final Eight, the 2025 Italian Basketball Cup, took place in Turin at the Inalpi Arena from 12 to 16 February 2025, with the semi-finals on Saturday, 15 February, and the final on Sunday, 16 February. Won by Dolomiti Energia Trentino, who defeated EA7 Emporio Armani Milano in the final, the Final Eight once again proved to be an event of great spectacle and competition, with an outstanding response from the audience and a record of 46,000 spectators over five days of competition.

Once again this year, all phases of the competition were covered thanks to the well-established TV production by EMG / Gravity Media Italy. However, this edition introduced several innovations, particularly in indoor graphics, as explained by Alessandro Curti, Head of Graphics.

“We have certainly introduced an innovative service,” confirmed Alessandro Curti, “introducing for the first time graphic contributions and statistics on the LED walls inside the arena, for the benefit of the audience and fans present. The content was displayed across three different platforms: the side columns, the central cube—usually reserved for match data—and the LED walls around the court. The generated graphics were not broadcast simultaneously on all platforms but were strategically distributed using a system we specifically developed. Most of the information was displayed on the new large vertical screens at the sides of the arena, almost like visual columns, providing constant updates on team statistics, individual player performances, and comparisons, enhancing the entire dataset we manage.”

These data, collected directly by Boost Graphics through proprietary systems, were provided to LBA (Lega Basket Serie A) as part of a season-long agreement. Additionally, during three key moments defined by the LBA as “dominance”, all graphics were displayed simultaneously on all platforms: side columns, central cube, and LED walls around the court, creating an integrated and dynamic visual experience.

These three key moments were:

Instant replay, the basketball equivalent of VAR in football, used for controversial referee decisions.
Crunch time, the final two minutes of the game.
Time-out calls, during which dedicated graphic effects and team logos of the requesting team were displayed.

“The launch of this new service,” continued Alessandro Curti, “was an absolute first, allowing us to enhance our in-house data management expertise. Thanks to this knowledge, we were able to distribute graphics in real time across multiple platforms—a specialisation that LBA acknowledges and entrusts to us as a highly qualified operator, not only in the management of live broadcast graphics but also in understanding the narrative dynamics and specific characteristics of this sport.”

The project was developed to meet the specific needs of LBA, with EMG / Gravity Media Italy working intensively to achieve the desired results, to the great satisfaction of the client. The public responded positively to this new set of information, further enhanced by the collaboration with the official event speaker, who highlighted key stats.

Particularly in the pre-match phase, curiosities and statistics were shared, enriching the spectator experience and engagement. This collaborative approach between Lega, the graphics content provider, and the live speaker led to excellent results, as during the dominance moments, the entire arena reacted in an immersive atmosphere, amplifying the mood of the situation and enhancing both the graphics and the game environment. For home viewers, the match was enriched with 2D graphics, augmented reality elements, and large screens visible in the broadcast footage.

Following its debut in the previous edition of the Final Eight, the decision was made to continue developing and implementing 3D graphics live, created by the Boost Graphics team. Real elements, such as the trophy or player photos, were integrated into the official LBA look & feel, enhancing statistical data through individual player cards, numerical comparisons, and leaderboards for the top three scorers and rebounders.

The selection and placement of these contents were agreed upon with the LBA, both in editorial and graphic terms, in full coordination with the production team, which further enhanced the 3D elements through carefully planned camera movements. EMG / Gravity Media Italy also utilised the Robycam, a highly manoeuvrable cable camera system capable of executing three-dimensional movements in space.

This system enabled the capture of dynamic aerial shots, perfectly integrated with 3D virtual graphics, delivering a visually striking impact throughout the Final Eight matches. Among the most appreciated graphic elements was the 3D model of the trophy, based on the actual cup won by the victorious team. Great attention was also dedicated to the scoreboard and the award ceremony, which celebrated the values of the winning team.

Additionally, the starting five lineup presentation was enhanced with 3D elements, featuring player photos and individual cards with real-time statistical data and detailed information on the key players, constantly updated. During half-time, the statistical collection of shooting percentages was represented using scenic 3D shot maps.

These maps, structured as three-dimensional steps, recreated the court layout, highlighting each team’s shooting efficiency in different zones: the higher the column, the better the shooting percentage from that area. Some of these aesthetic solutions had already been introduced in the previous edition, but this year, they were expanded with player-to-player comparisons, top three scorer and rebounder leaderboards, and an updated graphic layout in line with this edition’s style.

A Step Forward in On-Site Fan Engagement

“This year,” concluded Alessandro Curti, “the focus was particularly on fan engagement, thanks to the introduction of the described LED screens, where we brought statistics to life with visible and functional elements, going beyond the mere spectacle of the game. The real contribution of Boost Graphics lies precisely in this: transforming data into an accessible experience, offering an innovative visualisation of technical content. These are insights often reserved for TV audiences, but now we have made them available inside the arena as well, with highly positive feedback from both LBA and the fans.”

Once again this year the Serie A basketball championship ended with the playoffs between the strongest teams of the season and with the best-of-seven championship final formula. The final clash, between Olimpia Milano and Virtus Bologna, saw the Milan team triumph only in the last match, held at the Assago Forum on 23 June in a very spectacular way, both from a sporting point of view and from a tv filming point of view .

EMG Italy, which has been collaborating with the LBA for broadcast services for about 6 years, in the last season took care of the TV production of the major basketball championship, with particular attention to the filming of the Playoff matches, broadcast free to air on channel Nove, on pay-TV on Eurosport and, in streaming, on the Eleven Sports and Dazn platforms.

Production methods

“For EMG Italy I follow basketball, Serie C, volleyball and youth football and coordinate a series of producers who deal directly with the various championships”, says Paolo Sassano, Sports Production Coordinator of EMG Italy. “I can say that the whole LBA basketball championship this year was exciting and the final was “very tight” and decisive, also because it went all the way to the last match, with a “3 to 3” on game 7, the race that was supposed to award the title”.

This season was managed in a hybrid mode, partly with mobile vehicles on site in the various arenas and partly in remote production for a certain number of matches.

Paolo Sassano says: “This season we have redesigned the basketball production set-up, trying to standardize the final product as much as possible for the user and, in agreement with the LBA, we have chosen to produce two or three games remotely out of the eight played every weekend”.

The EMG Italy Broadcast Center in Cologno Monzese, unique of its kind in terms of reception and distribution capacity, has already had an operational and technical structure for the remote production of many sports for some time and from this year, thanks to new investments, it was also expanded into basketball.

An Instant Replay Center dedicated to the LBA has also been created here, with 8 stations connected to the pitches, which allows the instant replay service to be centralized: upon request, the referees can review dubious game actions from different angles, at reduced speed, frame by frame or zoom.

Regular Season and Finals

EMG Italy has also created the host feed of all matches, eight rounds for thirty rounds in the Regular Season, for a total of 240 matches. To these were added another thirty play-off matches, to reach 270 games this season alone.

For the finals, which were all produced on site, some innovations were introduced to make the game on the pitch even more spectacular. The most important change concerned the refereeing, since for the first time the referees allowed to broadcast their audio commentary of the instant replay analyses.

The audio of these particular moments was recorded by a dedicated sound engineer, equipped with a microphone boom who accompanied the operator with a shoulder camera during the game. In the event of an instant replay call, the sound engineer was therefore able to hear the audio of the two referees on the pitch, their arguments and requests to the instant replay operator.

The same sound engineer-operator pair was also busy capturing the images and audio of the coaches during the time out.

Ten cameras

The camera plan of the finals was particularly accurate, as the EMG director Max Ceriani supervised the positioning, together with LBA, with new proposals based on a higher number of cameras, precisely to improve the spectacularity of the images. The layout was therefore composed of ten cameras: the main one which followed the game with a total from the terraces of the stands above, flanked by camera 2 which covered the details and narrow pitches of the game.

The setup also included three shoulder cameras, one central and two positioned under the basket as well as 2 remote micro-cameras high up on the basket backboards. A 13-metre jimmi-jib positioned behind one of the baskets (based on the available space and escape routes) created new and dynamic shots, following the entire match and creating horizontal and vertical movements.

A reverse camera filmed the benches, close-ups of the referees and close-ups of the VIPs in the opposite grandstand. Finally, a further handheld camera with cinematic optics, mounted on a gimbal support with an RF system was free to move around the court and in the stands to capture filler shots and as many details as possible.

The TV Compound

All television production was entrusted to EMG Italy, whileand Infront, a partner of Lega Basket Serie A, was responsible for distributing the signals abroad by adding a commentary in English created in the production center in via Deruta in Milan.

The main direction of EMG Italy equipped with 4K HDR cameras created, in this case, an HD feed. In addition to the host signal, an integration was also produced for the Warner Bros. Discovery group channels (Eurosport and Nove). The TV compound also included another truck as a support means, a generator set and the integration mobile van for Warner Bros. Discovery. The graphics, created by EMG BOOST Graphics division, provided for a station located on the long side of the field, and developed a new presentation of the starting quintet of the players before the start of the game with the line-up on the field.

“The personnel of these productions”, continues Paolo Sassano, “usually are engaged in the setup from the day before the match. However, we often find ourselves creating a setup that would require eight hours of work less than four, because the arenas are always busy. On average, we usually need at least six hours of setup with a 25-person crew.”

Anna Pasculli Sales Manager of EMG Italy: “It was certainly a year of great success and great changes for basketball TV production, where we introduced several important variations. For the first time in Italy, on a sport other than football, we launched the centralized and remote service with the Instant Replay Center in Cologno Monzese. It is extraordinary, because from a centralized location it is possible to supervise everything that is managed by the on-site referees. Just as the main international broadcasters around the world are exploiting cloud-based remote production every day for high-value content – centralized and in real time – also EMG Italy, thanks to our remote production hub in Cologno, is today a consolidated reality.

We started with the “remi” from the lower standard to then extend it to basketball in standard A and we are confident that we will continue to carry out this project which will allow us to control and manage all the productions from the courts. The idea of the “remote” for EMG Italy is precisely this, to have centralized control and a much greater fluidity of the processes. These are tangible advantages that translate into greater uniformity of productions, greater standardization and therefore a less artisanal and more complete product possible, usable for the passionate television audience.

In this way it is possible to create a “running order” which is respected on all lots: there is a global vision and the customer, being comfortable in the production center, is able to see all the fields and if necessary can make changes, when and where necessary, while we can supervise the product and meet continuity expectations”.