Austria – One of the UK’s most beloved television formats made a triumphant return in 2025, and this time, it was live on stage. For the first time, Gladiators Live brought the iconic BBC series to arenas across Britain, putting real contenders head-to-head against the show’s legendary cast in a two-hour spectacle of physical competition and high-octane entertainment. Underpinning the tour’s video infrastructure were two AV Stumpfl PIXERA two RS media servers, deployed by The Problem Solving Collective (The PSC) as part of a complex, broadcast-grade production system.
Liteup Events, a UK-based production company specialising in video, lighting and rigging, brought The PSC onboard for the tour. “We were asked to support Liteup with this project as their video control department,” says Andrew Newport, company director of The PSC. “We provided video playback, cameras, instant replay and comms. My personal roles on the tour were head of video and racks engineer.”
The PSC’s system had to serve a wide range of functions simultaneously. “The heart of the system was a pair of PIXERA two RS media servers,” says Newport. “They provided playback for the projection on the climbing wall, as well as for the wing walls. Plus, PIXERA provided a 16:9 pre-recorded video feed that went through our portable production unit, which was built around a Blackmagic Design ATEM Constellation HD switcher. This dealt with the majority of the video signals, including the VT feed sent via SDI from the PIXERA.” Nine cameras and a comms rig of 25 Bolero and 15 PunQtum packs completed the setup.
What made the production particularly demanding was its inherent unpredictability. With four shows staged per weekend, each featuring a different combination of Gladiators and Contenders, and with additional cast changes possible at short notice due to injury, the system needed to be both precisely programmed and highly adaptable.
The PSC built a QLab-based trigger system, developed by server programmer Daniel Renne, that gave show caller/creative director/commentator Alex Baker a clean, intuitive view of each performance, while allowing the team to update lineups quickly in the time between shows. “It took a lot of work to make that happen,” Newport states. “Daniel spent a lot of time developing the right workflow. And in between shows, we could change the QLab triggers to change the lineup of Gladiators and Contenders, which meant we only had to spend minimal time on reprogramming.”
Live scoring presented its own challenge. Working with Dan Bunn, operations director at Liteup, The PSC developed a system using a text layer within PIXERA to receive values from Bitfocus Companion. Custom variables in Companion, controlled via Stream Deck, allowed the team to update scores for the four Contenders throughout each show. “With the rest of the show looking so good, we needed the scores to be on par with the rest of the content,” says Newport. “We were given all of the assets to keep the scoreboard on brand, so we just had to come up with a system to get the scores on screen.”
The project’s scope also evolved considerably after the initial brief. An EVS system was introduced during pre-production to handle instant replays and ultimately took on the post-show highlights reel too. Through those changes, the PIXERA two RS units proved their worth. “We chose PIXERA due to all the versatility and performance we could get out of a media server in such a compact form factor,” says Newport. The team also drew on strong manufacturer support throughout, with Newport adding, “We appreciated the general helpfulness of UK managing director Craig Harrower from AV Stumpfl and the help from the support team at the company as well.”
For The PSC, Gladiators Live represented a meaningful step into large-scale touring production. “This is the first tour of this scale that The PSC has been asked to work on, and it’s quite different to the normal corporate events we do,” Newport reflects. “It was a fun challenge to approach it all, learn through the process of doing and to execute on bringing a really great experience to the fans.” With the tour delivering on every front, the confidence runs both ways.
“Everyone was really happy with the end product and workflow, and they were really impressed with how much we were able to accomplish with such a small team,” says Newport. “It gives them the confidence to trust guys like us in the future, and it gives us the confidence to tackle projects like this down the line too.”
