The broadcast trucks pull away. The temporary studios get dismantled. The freelancers move to their next gig.
What remains when the event ends?
For decades, the answer has been: not much. But that’s changing.
SVG Europe Women Scotland’s fifth annual event on March 10, 2026, at The Exchange in Glasgow, brings together leaders from Commonwealth Games Glasgow 2026, HBS, Cricket Scotland, Screen Scotland, and Rise Mentoring to examine how to build legacy programs that outlast the event.
Major sporting events are no longer just temporary production challenges. There are opportunities to build permanent infrastructure, develop talent pipelines, and create economic value that persists after the final broadcast.
Legacy Doesn’t Happen by Accident
Glasgow 2026 is delivering over £100 million of inward investment and is projected to support over £150 million of economic value added for the region. This streamlined Commonwealth Games uses only 10 sports across four venues in an eight-mile corridor, deliberately designed to maximize social impact while minimizing costs.
Legacy must be planned, not hoped for.
Nearly 120 people from across Glasgow, Scotland, and the UK participated in Glasgow 2026 legacy workshops based on the “Five Commonwealth Wealths” framework: sporting, cultural, diplomatic, economic, and social benefits. The co-creation approach brought together 56 different organizations to build partnerships and frameworks for real community impact.
Effective legacy building requires coordination across event organizers, broadcasters, freelancers, suppliers, funding agencies, sports governing bodies, and mentoring organizations.
The Gender Gap in Technical Broadcasting
Only 16.5% of sports broadcasters in the U.S. are female, and just 20.9% of sports reporters are women. Technical roles in sports broadcasting remain predominantly male-dominated.
The disparity won’t correct itself.
The Olympic Broadcasting Services nearly doubled female commentator representation from Tokyo 2020 to Paris 2024, reaching nearly 40% female commentators—a nearly 80% increase. This transformation demonstrates that intentional talent development programs can rapidly shift industry demographics when properly structured and resourced.
Commentators represent only one visible layer. The technical roles behind the cameras—camera operators, audio engineers, vision mixers, graphics coordinators, broadcast engineers—remain even more male-dominated.
Creating sustainable career pathways for women in these technical positions demands more than temporary employment during major events. It requires skills training programs, mentoring relationships, clear progression pathways, and economic planning that converts short-term opportunities into permanent industry capabilities.
What Effective Legacy Programs Actually Look Like
The HBS Broadcast Academy has trained more than 3,000 TV professionals across 20+ countries since 2007. Their 18th Asian Games Jakarta-Palembang 2018 legacy program involved 500 student interns.
But raw numbers don’t tell the full story. What separates programs that create lasting change from those that fade after the closing ceremony?
Effective legacy programs share four characteristics:
Integration with existing operations. Legacy initiatives that operate as separate, temporary projects rarely survive beyond the event. Programs that embed within normal business operations demonstrate staying power.
Multi-year planning. Training someone to operate a camera differs from developing a broadcast engineer who can troubleshoot complex technical systems. Real skill development requires sustained investment over years.
Economic sustainability. Passion fades when funding disappears. Programs that identify clear economic value secure the resources needed for long-term operation.
Measurement that extends beyond the event. Counting participants during an event is easy. Tracking career progression, salary growth, and industry retention over subsequent years requires different systems. Without measurement, programs can’t justify continued investment.
Rise Mentoring, one of the partners in the Glasgow event, demonstrates this approach. Their mentoring programs connect women in technical broadcasting roles with experienced professionals, creating support networks that persist across multiple events and career transitions. The relationships built through these programs often matter more than formal training sessions.
Scotland’s Strategic Approach to Broadcast Infrastructure
Scotland’s screen sector is on course to contribute £1 billion to the Scottish economy by 2030/31. Screen Scotland’s strategy specifically targets a 55% increase in full-time equivalent workers to 17,000 by 2030.
These aren’t aspirational. They represent deliberate economic planning that positions legacy programs as human capital investments, not social initiatives.
The distinction matters. Social initiatives compete for limited philanthropic resources. Human capital investments compete for economic development funding and strategic priority.
Scotland treats skills training infrastructure, mentoring systems, and career pathways as foundational—comparable to physical equipment and facilities. This shift influences how broadcast investment and economic impact are measured across the industry.
Commonwealth Games Glasgow 2026 features 47 Para sport medal events, the largest integrated Para sport program in Commonwealth Games history. This doubling of parasports events from 4 to 8 builds sustainable, accessible sports programming.
Accessibility infrastructure doesn’t end when the event concludes. The broadcast systems, trained personnel, and operational knowledge persist—creating capability for Cricket Scotland and other organizations hosting events that require accessible coverage.
The Post-Event Sustainability Challenge
The biggest test arrives after the spotlight fades.
Major sporting events create natural urgency. Deadlines force decisions. Visibility attracts resources. Media attention generates momentum.
Then the event ends.
Maintaining engagement without an imminent deadline requires different organizational muscles. The networking-intensive format of the SVG Europe Women Scotland event—with doors opening at 6 pm for networking, panels from 7 pm, and networking continuing until 11 pm—recognizes that legacy building depends on personal connections and collaborative networks.
These relationships outlast formal programs. They create informal support systems, information channels, and opportunity pathways that operate independently of official initiatives.
When funding gets tight or priorities shift, these personal networks keep legacy programs alive.
What This Means for the Industry
The emphasis on legacy programs signals an industry that recognizes responsibility beyond immediate event coverage. This shifts from transactional event production to strategic industry development.
Regional competition for event-driven development will intensify. As more regions recognize the long-term value of hosting major events, bidding processes will require clear legacy commitments. Event organizers will face pressure to demonstrate concrete plans for lasting impact.
Gender diversity becomes an economic strategy. By focusing on women in technical roles, the industry positions gender diversity as a competitive advantage. Untapped talent pools represent economic opportunity for regions willing to invest in inclusive pathways.
New standards for measuring success. Traditional metrics focus on viewership, production quality, and immediate economic impact. Emerging standards will incorporate workforce development, skill transfer, and capability building. This expanded view of success changes how organizations allocate resources and evaluate outcomes.
Structural integration requirements. Organizations will need to embed legacy thinking into normal operations rather than treating it as a separate initiative. This affects budget allocation, performance metrics, and strategic planning across the broadcast ecosystem.
The Real Question
Legacy programs in sports broadcasting face a fundamental tension: they require long-term commitment in an industry built around short-term projects.
Broadcasters move from event to event. Freelancers chase the next contract. Suppliers follow the work. This mobility creates flexibility but undermines the sustained engagement that legacy programs require.
The SVG Europe Women Scotland event tackles this tension by bringing together stakeholders with different time horizons and incentives. Event organizers think in multi-year cycles. Funding agencies operate on policy timelines. Mentoring organizations focus on individual career development. Sports governing bodies balance immediate competition needs with long-term participation goals.
Aligning these perspectives doesn’t happen through a single panel discussion or networking event. It requires ongoing dialogue, shared measurement frameworks, and mechanisms that make collaboration more valuable than independent action.
The real question isn’t whether legacy programs matter.
The question is whether organizations will commit the resources, coordination, and sustained attention required to make these programs work.
The answer will determine whether sports broadcasting builds genuine capability or creates temporary employment that disappears when the cameras stop rolling.
What Happens Next
The SVG Europe Women Scotland event on March 10, 2026, offers a snapshot of where the industry stands. The organizations represented—from international broadcast authorities to regional development agencies to grassroots mentoring programs—form the ecosystem required for effective legacy building.
The real work begins after the panels conclude. It shows up in budget decisions, hiring practices, training investments, and partnership agreements that extend beyond single events.
Legacy programs succeed when organizations treat them as infrastructure investments that compound over time.
When the Commonwealth Games conclude, the broadcast trucks will pull away from Glasgow. The temporary studios will be dismantled. The freelancers will move to their next gig.
What remains will depend on decisions made now—in budget meetings, hiring practices, and partnership agreements. The infrastructure that matters most isn’t equipment. It’s the trained professionals, the mentoring relationships, and the career pathways that turn temporary opportunities into permanent capabilities.
That’s the real measure of legacy.