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Tech, talent, and transformation: QTV’s hat-trick of broadcast innovation

Fast growing scale-up company QTV has transformed the coverage of sport in Scotland and has a pathway to dominate remote production on the world stage. Find out how it’s grown from passion project to production powerhouse with our help.

28 November 2024 | 8 minute read

In 2011, two former BBC Scotland employees set out to solve a problem close to their hearts: Scotland’s international cricket matches weren’t attracting enough broadcast coverage.

Drawing on their industry experience and a love of cricket and emerging technology, Mike Stanger and Jack McGill launched QTV. What began as a personal mission would grow into Scotland’s leading outside broadcast provider.

A major player in the sports broadcasting sector

When it comes to sports on TV, the ones that spring to mind for most are either major events like the World Cup or the Olympics, or the nation’s sport of weekly league football.

But the world of competitive sport spans many disciplines and tiers. From fencing to archery, junior championships to elite performance, there are many thousands of sporting competitions that have not historically received enough air time from broadcasters.

Traditionally produced, high quality TV coverage of live sports requires considerable resources and expensive equipment. Outside Broadcast (OB) trucks are mobile studios, providing a production environment for teams of directors, replay operators, vision/audio technicians and broadcast engineers. The considerable investment required has been a barrier to entry for any sport seeking to produce its own direct to consumer coverage.

As a result, these niche but nevertheless fan-filled sports often go without TV coverage. It was QTV’s ambition to deliver these sports to the screens of their fans, with cost effective, sustainable business models whilst maintaining high quality production values, and that’s exactly what it did.

Steady growth and survival

Over the next decade, QTV would establish itself in Scotland as an innovative, capable, and passionate production company and facilities provider for second and third tier sports. It created and distributed broadcast television and digital content direct-to-consumers, giving those underserved audiences the coverage they wanted. 

QTV built a reputation for quality, setting a new standard for digital coverage. This caught the attention of major sport associations, clubs and broadcasters, including the SPFL, who liked QTV’s end-to-end approach offering remote production and content distribution.

Then, in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic hit and pressed pause on QTV’s trading. As a global shutdown of sport came into effect, there was no events coverage  produce and QTV was severely impacted. After steady, continuous growth since its inception, almost all revenue halted and, like many businesses, QTV needed support to continue. 

We knew the company was innovative, ambitious, and had huge growth potential, it just needed to get through the lockdowns. So, Scottish Enterprise awarded QTV a Pivotal Enterprise Resilience Fund (PERF) grant of £100,000 in June 2020. The company described it as a ‘lifeline’ at the height of the interruption to trading, which enabled it to come out the other side of the pandemic ready to resume its work. 

Best-in-class broadcast facilities at Clydesdale House

Once the world was up and running again, QTV would go on to experience its most rapid growth yet. In 2021, it became the first Scottish media company to introduce remote integration model (REMI) to outside broadcasting in Scotland. To help facilitate this, it established its state-of-the-art remote production and broadcast facility at Clydesdale House in Glasgow in 2022. With support from a Scottish Enterprise RSA Grant Award of £500,000, the site became the physical embodiment of the company’s track record of innovation. 

During this time, QTV secured a contract with the Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL) to produce more than 180 Premiership matches per season and manage its post-production, international broadcast, and streaming distribution. This was a pivotal moment for the company. Recognition from a major sports rights owner solidified QTV’s reputation as the Scottish leader in the provision of end-to-end broadcast, production, and distribution services. 

In summer 2023, QTV undertook a further multi-million-pound investment into its space at Clydesdale House, with a £196,000 contribution from a small capital grant from Scottish Enterprise. The increased production capacity and step-up in the core technical infrastructure was yet another example of the company’s commitment to leading the market through innovation.

This commitment, along with the advanced facilities at Clydesdale House, were the basis for the company winning its first contract with Sky Sports, to produce Rugby Super League matches for three seasons (2024-26). Winning a competitive tender with a tier one broadcaster against incumbent and larger rivals was another pivotal moment for QTV, putting it in the arena alongside the major UK and global facilities providers.

Media innovation and mission accomplished

QTV was founded with the ethos to disrupt the content production and facilities space using innovation, and it’s continued to do this throughout its growth.

Having introduced the first remote production workflow to Scottish broadcasting in 2020, QTV was at the forefront of the introduction of video assisted referee (VAR) operations for the Scottish Football Association. It was the integral partner in the design of the technical workflow and model for the implementation of VAR in Scottish football from a remote centralised operations centre. 

In recent years the company has been at the forefront of adapting its remote production and cloud production technologies to create further competitive advantages in its offering.

REMI and Cloud-based media production allow operational functions like directing and mixing to be performed at a centralised studio facility instead of an OB vehicle on location. This reduces costs and carbon footprint, whilst boosting productivity. The benefits of this can be felt by clients and the public alike, as they enable cost-effective quality coverage for a far broader and more inclusive range of live sport and events – the very ambition that sparked QTV’s existence. 

A commitment to Scottish talent

While QTV has international ambitions – the Clydesdale House model is one that it hopes to replicate in multiple locations – Scotland is its home, and it’s committed to the people here.

The company has always been passionate about local talent, and it’s made a recognisable impact on Scotland’s OB industry. It’s a major employer of freelance broadcast and media professionals in Scotland. 78% of the 250-plus highly paid freelancers it works with are based here, along with almost all its 50 full-time staff.

QTV also has a proud culture of growing its own talent, offering events, traineeships and skills development programmes for passionate people locally. One of its earliest trainees was recognised this year with a nomination for the Broadcast Sport Young Technical Talent of the Year Award in recognition of their work, commitment, and impact.

Beyond just fostering a vibrant community of media professionals, QTV is also committed to providing a better work life balance for its people. Historically, working in outside broadcasting meant a lot of being away from home for the people that worked in it. QTV’s remote production capabilities offer an alternative, with fewer staff having to travel so frequently. 

QTV’s plans for the future

Alongside its innovation roadmap, QTV has a detailed sustainability strategy which looks to further reduce the carbon emissions associated with outside broadcasting. 

The remote production workflow already reduces the number of crew travelling to locations by up to 40%, but QTV knows there are more improvements that can be made. To aid in the discovery and integration of these, it has taken part in multiple sustainability programmes and initiatives, including the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce’s ‘Step up to Net Zero’ programme and the SME Climate Hub.

Ensuring its operations are more sustainable is just one of QTV’s many plans for its future. In 2025, it will launch its next three-year growth plan. This will see the company further scaling the production facilities and studios at Clydesdale House and working to establish a network of global broadcast production facilities that follow its model. The goal is for each centre having synchronous interoperability, so content and live output can be produced collaboratively across countries or even continents. 

How we’ve supported QTV

Supporting Scottish companies with big ambition is what we do at Scottish Enterprise. Over the last few years, we’ve provided QTV with almost £1 million funding across workplace innovation, capital, R&D and innovation grants. But we don’t just offer funding, we support the companies we work with to target investment, develop their leadership, and much more.

Our relationship with QTV is a prime example of our holistic approach to business support. With such rapid growth, QTV needed to upskill the capabilities and effectiveness of its leadership team. We supported the company’s senior leadership development through a £22,000 grant from our Leadership Development Programme.

QTV have also accessed our Workplace Transformation Fund for 2024/25, which will allow the organisation to meet opportunities and challenges in the market with foresight and ambition through its leadership team. 

This kind of targeted support will have a direct impact on increasing capacity for the ‘advanced growth’ stage of QTV’s development, and it’s just one example of how we tailor our solutions, advice, and support to the companies which we work with.

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