How Edit123 delivers same-day sports coverage with LucidLink

Meet Edit123

Edit123 is a full-service post-production house based in Glasgow, Scotland. Known for its creative polish and technical rigor, the team regularly collaborates with the BBC and other leading broadcasters to deliver high-quality, fast-turnaround content.

Introduction

In sports coverage, every second counts. For Edit123, getting game-day content to the edit suite used to involve couriers, delays and a whole lot of stress. That changed with LucidLink.

LucidLink’s storage collaboration platform gave Edit123 a new way to work: one where footage shot in the streets of Munich could be cut and delivered in Glasgow the very same day.

We spoke to Lewis Holleran, Technical Operations Manager at Edit123, to understand how they use LucidLink to power their workflow for live sports coverage.

The challenge: fast-turnaround editing for live sports coverage

When BBC Scotland asked Edit123 to take its topical sports talk-show, Late Night at the Euros, on the road during UEFA's Euro 2024 Championships, the brief sounded straightforward:

Record in Munich at noon, air in Scotland the very same night.

The reality? Hundreds of gigabytes of footage shot across Germany, studio crews in Munich, editors split between Glasgow and Munich, last-minute fan interviews, graphics, dub-mixing — and zero time (or budget) for shipping drives or overnight hotel suites full of gear.

“We were recording at 2pm. It was airing at 10. There just wasn’t time to move media the old way,” says Lewis.

The old way: drives, couriers & headaches

Before LucidLink, the team juggled:

• Shipping drives across Europe: expensive, risky and slow

• Ad-hoc FTP or MediaShuttle transfers: fiddly interfaces, expensive, difficult for non-technical users

• Duplicate storage in both Munich and Glasgow to keep edits moving — or relocating staff to Munich entirely

The result: lost hours, growing travel costs and a risk the tapes wouldn’t arrive before transmission.

The solution: live ingest, instant access, remote collaboration

With LucidLink, Edit123 created a seamless edit-from-anywhere workflow. Across Germany, a roving reporter captured interviews and match-day fan moments, streaming them straight into LucidLink via LiveU 5G.

Editors back in Glasgow immediately picked up the footage, cut highlight packages and sent them back to Munich for the afternoon rehearsal — all in time for the same-day broadcast.

“It’s basically like we’re all working off the same server, even though we were in Munich and the rest of the staff were in Glasgow,” says Lewis.

Edit123’s live sports workflow relies on a number of tools, including:

Directors, editors, graphics teams and dubbing mixers all collaborated via the same LucidLink shared filespace. And with real-time access, the team could make last-minute edits or review changes without skipping a beat.

The results: rapid turnaround, higher engagement, lower costs

With LucidLink powering their workflow, Edit123 flawlessly aired nine episodes of Late Night at the Euros over 13 days, plus a five day set up.

They also pushed near-live clips to social within minutes, boosting fan engagement by three to five times.

The business impact was immediate: 

• Edit123 saved over £20k on couriers and duplicate storage setups 

• Fresh fan segments made it on-air every show, driving higher ratings and more sponsor value

• Most staff could stay in Glasgow and still work on other productions

Why it changes the game for live sports & events

LucidLink has fundamentally changed how Edit123 approaches fast-turnaround sports shows:

• Real-time collaboration: from mixed-zone interviews to studio playout without a single file copy

• Gear-light road shows: field teams carry cameras and LiveU, all heavy-lifting happens back at HQ

• Scalable for any event: simply add another city or editor to the same cloud workspace

• Staff stay local: fewer people travel, freeing teams for other productions and cutting costs

The bottom line? Edit123 delivered every episode on time, under budget and with zero technical drama.

“LucidLink just works. Our creatives aren’t technical, so they don't want to have to log in to several different systems," says Lewis. 

“We can get them set up with LucidLink and it's just there. It's just another workspace, another drive. That accessibility makes a big difference.” 

Want to transform your sports broadcasting workflow? Try LucidLink free today.