Arbutus Media Technologies

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HDR graphics in live sport

What has been done, the good practice, and how to approach it

Live sport has gone HDR. Its graphics mostly haven't. This page sums up what has been done with HDR graphics, what the guidance says, a blind test you can run on your phone, and how we would approach HDR graphics from here.

HDR so far

Live sport has been made in HDR for years. Fox produced Super Bowl LIV in 1080p HLG in 2020 (SVG). Olympic Broadcasting Services has made its main feed in UHD HDR since Tokyo 2020 (SVG), and NBCU published the conversion tables it used for the Olympics so that anyone can use them (GitHub). Sky Sports has been live in HDR since August 2021 and now produces over 6,000 hours of live HDR sport a year (SMPTE).

In almost all of it, the graphics are designed in SDR and lifted into HDR by a conversion table. CBS said so for Super Bowl LVIII: "Graphics and pre-produced pieces have been created in SDR" (SVG). Native HDR authoring exists as well. Chyron PRIME has offered it since 2019 (TV Technology), and Viz Engine and Pixotope render in HLG (Vizrt, Pixotope). The vendors' published material is about rendering into HDR at the right white level. We found no public example of live graphics designed to use HDR's wider colour, and only passing mentions of graphics going brighter than graphics white.

After Euro 2020, BBC R&D wrote that the graphics overlays were "limited in saturation and brightness", while the players' shirts "often fluoresce" (SVG Europe). At Tokyo, the OBS head of engineering pointed at flags: "With things like country flags in graphics the colorimetry is important" (SVG).

Why graphics stay in SDR

Designing in SDR and converting is not neglect. Most viewers watch the SDR version, and SDR graphics placed at graphics white come back out of the HDR master almost unchanged. With the pair of conversions the BBC recommends for graphics, SDR white returns at 90 to 95 per cent, which its guide calls a "small round-trip loss" (BBC R&D), and CBS called its Super Bowl LVIII graphics "a round-trip workflow that was essentially transparent" (SVG). Brand colours and sponsor logos arrive in sRGB, and a package designed once can go to air in HDR without a redesign. The result is safe and consistent. It also means HDR viewers get graphics that gain nothing from HDR, beside a picture that uses its full range.

HDR good practice

The guidance agrees on one number. Text and flat whites sit at graphics white, 203 cd/m², which is 75% of the HLG signal (ITU-R BT.2408). Brighter graphics make the match look dull beside them. Around that number:

• Make one HDR master and derive SDR from it with a display-light conversion, matched to what the broadcasters downstream use, so a score or a flag looks the same in both. The tables differ: graphics white lands at 95 per cent of SDR with the BBC table Sky uses, 94 with NBC's and 90 with OBS's (Sky Sports, SMPTE).
• Lift SDR graphics with display-light mapping to keep brand colours. Scene-light mapping is for matching signage in the shot. The BBC's conversion tables, open source since September 2026, include both (GitHub).
• Check HDR and SDR side by side, and send every graphic through the round trip before air (EBU TR 070).
• Tag files with their colour signalling, which PNG has carried since 2025, so nobody downstream reads an HDR still as SDR.

What the guidance leaves open: how much light above graphics white a graphic should use, how to key in HDR (BT.2408 calls it "work currently underway"), and what to do with brand colours that are defined only in sRGB.

HDR or SDR? Test it yourself

Open this on an HDR phone or laptop at full brightness, and watch it full screen. Each scene shows the same graphic twice. One is authored natively in HDR. The other is the same design made in SDR and converted into HDR at graphics white, which is how most live HDR sport handles graphics today. Which is which?

HDR video (HLG). Best on an iPhone, a recent Android flagship or a Mac with an HDR display. On an SDR screen the two look almost the same. Background pictures are AI-generated.

Show the answers

1, rugby: A is native HDR. 2, ice hockey: B. 3, curling: A.

Native HDR keeps text at graphics white (203 cd/m², per ITU-R BT.2408), so nothing glares. What changes is colour beyond what SDR can show, like the pink plate of the rugby try and the house rings of the shot rock, and light above graphics white for a moment, like the goal lamp and the light that runs round the house.

In our tests, colour over a large area held for a second or more shows far more than a short flash of light.

HDR from here

Converting will stay right for much of what goes to air. For the rest, the aim is to use HDR sparingly. The eye goes to the brightest and most saturated thing on screen, and in sport that should be the play. Graphics that use HDR everywhere pull attention away from the match and tire the viewer. A little HDR, in the right place, is what makes the difference. Here is how we would approach it:

• Start from an HDR master and set graphics white before anything else.
• Convert what you cannot redesign: older packages, archive and sponsor-supplied files.
• Author new packages natively in HDR. Choose a wide-gamut palette for kits, flags and sponsor marks, ask brand owners for colour references beyond sRGB, and decide what each colour becomes in SDR instead of leaving it to the conversion.
• Keep light above white for moments that earn it, like a goal or a record, and only for a second or two. Never use it on a score bug or a ticker that stays on screen.
• Use wide-gamut colour where it carries meaning, like a kit, a flag or a sponsor's colour, not as decoration.
• Check every graphic on a phone and a TV, in HDR and in the SDR version made from the same master. Phones show HDR brighter than their own interface, so check legibility inside YouTube and Instagram too.
• Expect the round trip to be close, not identical: even SDR graphics lose a little on every pass. What matters is that it is predictable, so check the SDR version of every element through the same conversion the broadcasters use.

That is what the engine we're building supports: graphics packages designed natively in HDR, with the SDR versions made from the same master. It does the same for languages, sponsors and social shapes: graphics for every screen.