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"The headline of our World Cup preview story was: ‘The football world
meets for a tournament of excess’. Did we manage to ensure that our
own coverage of this global event was not ‘excessive’?"
The headline of our World Cup preview
story was: ‘The football world meets for a
tournament of excess’. Did we manage to
ensure that our own coverage of this global
event was not ‘excessive’?
There is no doubt that the Qatari hosts were excessive in
terms of the budget, stadium construction, and infrastruc-
ture.
As for us, we deployed the right level of resources. We had
the same number of people as for previous World Cups,
with a few adjustments here and there due to the special
feature of this tournament: it all happened in the same
place. In text, we had 57 journalists working in six lan-
guages, including 14 in French, 14 in English, 14 in German
(via our German subsidiary SID), 8 in Spanish, 6 in Arabic
and one in Portuguese. We had around 50 people covering
for photo, including 15 editors, plus 15 VJs coordinated by
two editors. These teams were being constantly rotated
and we started to draw down our staff after the last-16
matches. Journalists covering a certain team went home if
that country was knocked out.
So in fact our organisation was a bit unusual it was more
like an Olympic Games where everything basically takes
place in the same location Covering a World Cup is nor
mally a complex operation with teams deployed in several
cities You have to travel by plane book hotel rooms just
about everywhere often at the very last minute depending
on the result of a match But in Qatar everything was simple
and convenient We were able to be extremely flexible We
were all in the same place in a block of 30 or so fourroom
apartments To get somewhere we just had to jump in a car
or a shuttle bus This allowed us a high degree of editorial
flexibility Covering a team was easy even after a shock re
sult for example when Saudi Arabia beat Argentina The
same was true for the press conferences with every teams
manager and captain These took place in the main media
centre and we were only about 30 metres away
All this meant that apart from an Internet crash that was
down to the organisers everything passed off without the
slightest hitch.
In terms of innovation, we invested a lot in our robot came-
ras. These have moved on considerably and now have a
tracking function. This enables our robots installed in the
stadium roof to automatically follow the best players. The
idea is to give us original photo production and the maxi-
mum possible number of angles on the crucial or contro-
versial moments of the match. The groundwork has now
been laid and the technology can be rolled out for several
events in 2023.
Was politics a big factor during this World
Cup?
It’s not the first time that politics played a part in a World
Cup. It happened in Argentina (1978) or Russia (2018).
One notable thing about this World Cup was that the po-
litics did not stop when the sport started. We saw politics
burst onto the pitch several times, for example when the
Iranians refused to sing their national anthem in support of
women’s rights in their country, or when the Germans co-
vered their mouths to draw attention to the human rights
situation in Qatar Some politicians mainly European dis
played LGBTQ symbols
It was also the first time that an Arab country has hosted
a World Cup People were waiting for them to trip up and
there was plenty of acerbic criticism from several Western
countries But it was well organised and everything passed
off very smoothly
This political background again highlighted the impor
tance of our global network which was very attuned and
reactive on these topics including in Qatar itself We saw
this in the stories from all around the network that en
riched our coverage ahead of and during the tournament
Of course we covered the issue of climate change and
immigrant workers well ahead of the tournament via the
Doha bureau the Middle East region and the Chief Sports
Editors in Paris We should not forget that the Middle East
region was also dealing with the COP climate summit
that took place in Egypt between 620 November A lot of
RICHARD CARTER
DEPUTY GLOBAL
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
QATAR WORLD CUP
3 QUESTIONS TO
EMMANUEL PIONNIER
HEAD OF SPORTS DEPARTMENT
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