Match Ball: Bringing the PSA German Open 2024 to Global Viewers When On-Site Connectivity Failed to Deliver

Match ball: Bringing the PSA German Open 2024 to global viewers when on-site connectivity failed to deliver By Heather McLean

Friday, July 19, 2024 - 10:16

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The German Open 2024 held in Hamburg was the first event in the country for the PSA, and the first time it turned up to find no broadcast connectivity available

The German Open 2024 held in Hamburg by the Professional Squash Association (PSA) was between a rock and a hard place on getting its broadcast out to viewers from The Sportwerk Centre when the team arrived on site to find that sufficient connectivity was not available. That was until its transmission and distribution partner, Auriga Networks, delivered a kill shot with the Open Broadcast Systems' 5G Flyaway.

The Open [3 to 7 April] was the first event the PSA has ever held in Germany, and as such the venue was an unknown to organisers of the event, the PSA's Andy Malley, head of operations and Dan Dobby, production manager for SquashTV.

Dobby comments on what happened at the German Open 2024: Most of the production side is definitely developed weeks in advance, but it's only when we get on site that we actually understand what is available to us. Dealing with the internet company or the person on site who manages the network [in advance], to then actually [getting to site and] just unravelling the things that haven't been mentioned. The majority of the events we return to, we know they'll work, but the events that are new, like the German Open, we weren't sure.

The PSA's transmission and distribution partner, Auriga Networks, delivered a kill shot for the lack of connectivity at the German Open 2024 with the OBE 5G Flyaway from Open Broadcast Systems

Challenging transmissions

The PSA operates Tournaments around the world, everywhere from Europe, the US, Asia down to New Zealand, in a number of iconic locations, from the base of the pyramids in Egypt, to Grand Central Station in New York.

All of these events are broadcast both to the internet on SquashTV and to terrestrial broadcasters, TNT Sport. Amazon Prime, and other global rights holders via BT Tower in London.

Says Stephen Flood, manager director at Auriga Networks, the PSA's video distribution partner: When running multiple courts for a tournament, there are around 40 or so live feeds to be delivered. The general workflow is to land a broadcast quality HD SDI feed in London for subsequent distribution and re-encoding off to the broadcast partners in multiple formats, so regardless of event location, the broadcast distribution point is always from London.

The contribution feed from event site to London is principally over IP with conventional satellite being used in a few territories working in conjunction with local broadcasters, IP being the principle for cost reasons.

However, Flood adds: There are a number of challenges both organisational and technical. Squash is a very fast game, ball speeds are as fast as tennis but over a much smaller screen area, so encoding quality and bandwidth are paramount for ball visibility. Tournaments are around a week long and long 12 hour days, so maintaining consistent connectivity is challenging, compared to news which can be a three minute package, or football which is four hours.

Crowds watch the PSA German Open 2024 unfold

No connectivity

Network availability on site is often challenging for the PSA team, but over the years, revisiting sites for competitions means most issues become manageable. Says Flood: We can deal with diversity and redundant routes even using internet bearers - Auriga is a specialist ISP so can select peers and backbones for each event - so selective use of the internet is the approach.

However, the German Open was at risk of not being able to broadcast when the team arrived on site and realised there was no sufficient connectivity that would enable them to broadcast.

Flood notes: Redundant dual connectivity from site is a real issue. Most event buildings only have a single viable connection or provider and this is where 5G comes in, and at times you discover you have nothing as we did in Hamburg.

We have experimented with 4G in the past, but there are too many issues configuring local sim cards and usually discovering that the promised unlimited data consumption is capped and the whole thing becomes impractical, continues Flood. Low cost satellite, Leo's, Starlink etc on its own is not a solution; there are too many drop outs when a satellite is missing from the constellation and it is not available or legal in all territories, nor is line of site or roof access always practical (Grand Central Station would be fun!). Crew demands increase as well in dealing with these solutions. However, this is where the Open Broadcast Systems bonded solution and global roaming SIMs on pay as you go become a game changer.

The PSA German Open 2024 took place in Hamburg from 3 to 7 April

Bonded 5G

Open Broadcast Systems launched its 5G Flyaway at NAB earlier this year. Built in collaboration with Zixi, the 5G bonding solution lets sports broadcasters reach fibre and satellite picture quality over cellular networks and deliver them as standard Constant Bitrate MPEG Transport Streams.

Flood comments: In Hamburg we looked at various options, like could we put a sat truck in and things like that, but they were cost prohibitive; Hamburg wasn't an exceptionally large event with a full on broadcast budget.

But we'd been talking to Kieran [Kieran Kunhya, founder and CEO at Open Broadcast Systems] and he said, I've got this thing, it's really good, we've got no idea if it works, come and use it . So we went, yeah, all right then . And we did and it worked. He came over to support it because the event was close to the airport so he literally flew in, put in two boxes and r

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