Toblerone. Roger Federer. Banking. An incredible dedication to political neutrality.
None of these icons of Swiss culture would really have made an appropriate theme for a TV channel’s opening sequence for their coverage of a major tournament held in Switzerland – and so ITV perhaps inevitably turned to the next item on the list, the humble cuckoo clock.
And yeah, alright, we’ve seen that episode of QI as well and know that cuckoo clocks are actually originally German; specifically, from the Black Forest. But why let factual accuracy stand in the way of popular myth?
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ITV’s Euro 2025 theme music is an original composition inspired by Swiss music
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Like the BBC’s own opening graphics, ITV have gone for a charming animation – though the light channel’s own effort is computer rendered, where the BBC’s was made through actual claymation.
The graphics start with a pair of wooden models of players popping out of a striking chalet-style cuckoo clock and shaking hands. As a nice little touch, the kits and features of the players change on a game-by-game basis to reflect the teams that are actually going to be in action.
We are then taken inside the clock, where players from all 16 teams can be seen standing on the spinning clockwork, practicing their skills, celebrating goals, or going through their warm-up routines.
Paper figures of fans cheer them on from the sides of the clock, and then are shown travelling around a mountain in cable cars and on board a train, which runs through a tunnel and into a stadium.
There, Alexia Putellas takes a frankly absurd penalty that swerves this way and that before beating the unidentified and unbadged goalkeeper and knocking over the entire goal structure, which appears not to have been properly checked by a little wooden referee.
The sequence was put together by creative agency Ignite and is set to an original composition by Jim Copperthwaite, inspired by Swiss music.
Creative producer David Snowdon told SVG Europe: “I gave him lots of examples of Swiss music and lots of instruments that I wanted to use, how I saw the structure of the sequence, how I wanted it to start, how at the halfway stage I wanted a certain feeling, and then as it built up at the end, and then a big ending.
“I got really lucky. I think it was one of his first versions that he sent me, and it was perfect.
“It needed tweaking here or there, but it was great, so I sent it to ITV and they loved it.
“The track marries with the visuals, and it hopefully puts the viewer in Switzerland, and has this kind of magical, fun, fun feeling to it.”
