Award winning Middlesbrough TV production company XCel Broadcast, who are based at Boho Five are popping the champaign corks after securing a $2.5 million, two-year motor racing contract that will see the Teesside outfit produce live TV coverage of over forty prestigious motor races across four Asia supercar racing series.

Starting this weekend at the Shanghai F1 Grand Prix in China, XCel will produce full TV coverage of the 2025 and 2026, GT World Challenge Asia, GT Cup, Japan Cup and Intercontinental GT Challenge series for world leading motor sports operation SRO Motorsports.

The productions will be done in three languages, English, Japanese and Mandarin Chinese and beamed via satellite to TV networks around the world. As well as the TV coverage, all races will also be live streamed globally to multiple digital platforms, including into China. In 2020, XCel was awarded the Northern Powerhouse Most Entrepreneurial Exporter Award for its innovative live streaming solution into the media restricted country.

XCel will supply full outside broadcast TV facilities, such as cameras, control rooms and satellite trucks, as well as fully staffing the productions with cameramen, producers, on-air talent and engineers as the series visit some of motor racing’s most iconic racing circuits, including Japan’s Suzuka and Fuji F1 racing circuits as well as Sepang in Malaysia and China’s Shanghai F1 venue.

Utilising a 50 strong team of technical and production staff for each race, XCel will broadcast the action around the world providing everything that will be seen and heard on TV and internet screens, from TV pictures, to race commentary to the race graphics and timing clock.

XCel’s Managing Director Dave Roberts said: “This is another huge coup for Teesside. All four motor racing series are very high-profile events on the FIA motorsports calendar and to think Teesside will be responsible for producing the live TV pictures from such iconic F1 circuits, watched by over a hundred million people around the world is just amazing.

“As a region we may be thousands of miles away from where the action is happening, but securing such an important contract like this, just proves the superb talent we have on our patch. I hope other Teesside operations can look at this to see what is possible for us globally.”

Mike Scott, Head of Television for SRO Motorsports Group who own the competition said: “XCel has carried out a great job in recent years producing our motor racing series so  naturally we were delighted to be able to agree that they’ll continue the work across the next two years, across four of our race series.  We are delighted to have them on board again.”

SRO’s GT World Challenge Asia, GT Cup, Japan Cup and Intercontinental GT Challenge series are all sanctioned by world motor sports governing body, the FIA. They feature GT3 and GT4 supercars.

Producing live TV in Asia can present unique challenges, language barriers, local customs and the weather can throw up real-life problems, Roberts adds, “Operating in Asia can be a real challenge. In 2015 in Malaysia, a camera just 20 metres from me was struck by lightning while we were on air. The lightning strike took out half of our track cameras so we had to work through the storm just to get a few of them working again.”

However, XCel is hoping it will be plain sailing across the next two years.