The ITV presenting and punditry team were forced to abandon their swanky New York World Cup studio on Thursday due to storms in the area.
Laura Woods and Co have received plaudits for their set-up in the United States for the summer tournament, particularly after the BBC opted to host coverage from Manchester.
But they have, at times, had to abandon the studio, which has a backdrop of New York’s stunning skyline, to move to an inside studio as the country has battled storms throughout the World Cup.
And conditions on Thursday evening during coverage of France’s quarter-final clash with Morocco meant the team were rushed inside to take cover for the broadcast.
Presenter Marc Pougatch welcomed viewers to the broadcast initially from the outside studio, but the anchor, alongside pundits Roy Keane, Ian Wright and Patrick Vieira were swiftly moved inside.
ITV showed pictures of the storm closing in, with heavy rain on show in Brooklyn. Matches, meanwhile, are delayed by half an hour as soon as a strike of lightning is recorded within an eight-mile radius of a stadium.
ITV were forced to abandon their swanky New York studio due to storms in the United States
The likes of Ian Wright (right) and Roy Keane (second left) were ushered inside for coverage of France vs Morocco
Fortunately, the crew returned to the outside studio at half-time and remained there for the full-time analysis after the storm passed.
Those tuning in to ITV’s coverage have been greeted to a stunning view of the New York skyline. ‘Welcome to our New York loft apartment, home for six weeks of coverage of the World Cup,’ said Pougatch, ITV anchor, ahead of the first game of the competition. ‘It is to be ITV’s home for the duration of the tournament.
Roy Keane and Wright both praised the location, with the latter lauding ITV’s decision to invest in a grand studio to fit the occasion of the World Cup.
‘Amazing, fantastic,’ Keane said.
Wright added: ‘It’s amazing, unbelievable set. It’s the World Cup, it should be this, it should be grand, massive.’
In contrast to ITV, the BBC’s coverage has been led from a state-of-the-art studio in Salford, with the corporation taking the decision to save millions of licence fee money.
‘Right now, I’m incredibly happy with it,’ the BBC’s director of sport Alex Kay-Jelski told Daily Mail Sport. ‘To have what would probably be an extra couple of hundred people out there – and that’s before you build a studio – you’re talking millions.
‘If I was standing here saying everything is going to be done from a studio in Dallas, you would rightly be saying to me, ‘How can you justify that expense?’.
‘I don’t think the answer from a financial sustainable point of view is to say everyone can go. I don’t think that is a very clever way of me to spend licence fee money.’
The BBC had floated the idea of jetting out for the quarter-finals, but have again opted to stay home.
