As you watch the Winter Games next month, you’ll notice the sharp high-definition footage of skiing, the clear sound of skates on ice, and instant replays from all sorts of angles.

The Control Room Leaves the Parking Lot

But what you won’t see is the large parking lot once filled with broadcast trucks, all running their engines to make these broadcasts possible.

For years, broadcasting the Olympics required sending tons of equipment and large crews to the host city. This created huge logistical challenges and a big carbon footprint. Now, with Milano Cortina 2026, things are changing as broadcast trucks go virtual.

Thanks to partners like Alibaba Cloud and Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), the production control room now operates in the cloud.

Now, editors no longer need to fly from London to Milan to put together highlight reels; they can stay in London. Live camera feeds from the Italian slopes go straight to the cloud, where remote teams can access them almost instantly. This change has greatly cut down on international flights and shipping needed to bring the Games to viewers.

360° Replays at Cloud Speed

This shift isn’t just about making things more efficient; it also makes the show more impressive. The cloud provides the computing power needed for AI features. Now, you’ll see instant replays from multiple cameras that combine to create 360-degree ‘bullet time’ freeze frames, an effect that once took hours but now appears in seconds.

Milano Cortina 2026 demonstrates that the most significant production innovations enable us to achieve more with fewer people and less equipment on site.