Stories

Hola! My name is Maria Aloy and I’m an Edit Producer at Aurora. 

I’m from Barcelona and moved to the UK 10 years ago after graduating from university and getting an overseas grant. Along the way up to here, I did a 6-month internship in a music magazine; work experience at BBC Proms in 2016; runner at post-production house Directors Cut Films; and 5 years at production company 1080 Media, where I started working in sports and traveling the world as a video editor, as well as developing my skills of camera, live director and motion graphics designer. 

I joined Aurora in May 2022 as a Senior Video Editor and I have now been promoted to Edit Producer, across the projects of Extreme E and SailGP, and on this occasion - the new Hexagon Cup.

We are in Madrid for the first ever Hexagon Cup 2024. It’s a brand-new global Padel tournament for private teams that has attracted investors including tennis players Rafa Nadal and Andy Murray, footballer Robert Lewandowski and actress Eva Longoria.

It has a revolutionary format with many of the World's best players competing in six teams, made up of three couples, male, female, and 'Next Gen' stars of the future, to secure a share of 1 million Euros; the largest prize purse ever offered in a padel competition.

For padel fans, and players, this is very exciting because most matches will be featuring players against their regular tour partners. And we have already seen some world No. 1 ranked players being defeated.

I’m the Highlights Producer, so by the end of the tournament we will have produced a 1-hour highlights show of the event, delivered in English and Spanish, which will be distributed on many channels around the world. I have been doing some interviews with players and celebrities to feature in the show.

This is a brand-new event that comes with all the challenges and a long learning curve that any inaugural event in sport would face. It’s new for the players, for the fans, and for all of us in the production and post-production side of it, so everyone has very high expectations to make this an incredible event.

Language is not an obstacle, and everyone is doing a great job and it’s looking great on TV. However, for myself, it’s a double effort to cover the same event simultaneously in the two languages and manage to create a good product in a professional and efficient way in the period of a week.

I’ll have to say two: my laptop and my ColaCao (Spanish chocolate powder, which it’s very easy to find in here of course!).

Hexagon Cup has partnered with Nagami, a 3D design company, bringing sustainability to this event in an innovative way by using recycled plastic to manufacture trophies, team benches, totems, and other event furniture elements, as well as the sustainability of robotic printing.