
Live From FIFA World Cup: Kevin Callahan of Fox Sports on the IP Transition and Return of Match-Day Control Rooms Matches are composited into programs at Fox's facilities in Doha and sent to Tempe and L.A. By Ken Kerschbaumer, Editorial Director
Monday, December 5, 2022 - 10:11 am
Print This Story
The 2022 FIFA World Cup has shifted from the grind of the Group Stage, with four matches a day, to the Knockout Stage. For the Fox Sports production team, getting to this point has taken years of planning and months of onsite activity to ensure that new workflows and old workflows mesh and help deliver a top-level product for fans back home. And Fox Sports VP, Field Operations and Engineering, Kevin Callahan is the first to acknowledge that knowing that fans are tuning in at a record pace makes a difference.
The Fox Sports crew at the IBC gets a welcome break later this week.
It helps, and it's one reason we like to let everybody know the figures and viewership that we're getting, says Callahan. It's great to see the work is being appreciated back home and is being consumed. Being 8,000 miles away, it would be more difficult if we weren't getting that feedback from friends and family. It helps give you that extra energy on Day 20.
The IBC facility is 30 x 38 meters and houses the central operations for all Fox Qatar operations. All match feeds from HBS and all unilateral feeds from the venues or studios and stages hit this plant before heading to the U.S. and the Fox facilities in Tempe, AZ, and Los Angeles.
The biggest change for this World Cup compared with the previous few is that all matches are being put together in one of two match-control rooms, each comprising an audio room and a video-mixing room.
We insert the clock and score as well as do transitions to and from the studio show, says Callahan. The audio is here as well, taking our announcers from the stadium and incorporating them with the effects that come from HBS. We haven't had those match-control rooms in-country since 2015, when we did the Women's World Cup in Canada.
The reason for the change? There is an additional commercial break between the national anthems and kickoff.
Because of the tightness of that break and some elements we are required to get in as a condition of that, says Callahan, we wanted to have the match-control rooms here in-country to give us the most flexibility to work with the studio show. Ross Carbonite production switchers and Calrec audio consoles are key components in those rooms.
Fox Sports Kevin Callahan: We've always talked about converged networks and things coming together, and we truly are there now with a singular network.
The advantages of having match control onsite is that it reduces the number of signals Fox needs to send between facilities.
We're able to deliver our final composited program from here in Doha; that cuts down latency with return feeds back to the venue and it makes for a smoother integration with the studio, he says. The downside is, we need to travel more people and it's taking up real estate in the IBC.
The IBC is also where Fox Sports drives its media-management and central-ingest operations.
The Google IAS MAM system makes our content instantly available wherever somebody needs it, Callahan says. We are writing that content to storage located here at the IBC and sending the growing files up to the cloud. We're also doing some live streaming to our storage in Los Angeles direct from here. The latter is for post and quick-turnaround stuff.
In terms of innovations, the biggest advance has been the use of the EVS Strata media-infrastructure products.
That's the core behind everything we're doing here, he says. Their Neuron Compress, Neuron Convert, and Neuron Bridge are at the core of our signal management and routing. They're extremely flexible: [for example,] Convert allows for up-, down-, cross-, and tone-mapping natively in the ST 2110 environment. We don't have to go through a gateway.
Callahan notes that it has flexibility in terms of LUTs (Look Up Tables) that can be loaded in for the UHD/HDR side of things.
The FIFA LUT is slightly different from the ones we've used in our other broadcasts, he adds. And the Neuron Shuffle gives us greater flexibility with audio and having different group sizes. With that, we can take in what comes from the host, use it in our own production, but then archive something different, and create the different versions that are needed throughout Fox.
FIFA and HBS are offering a choice of feed formats, and Fox is taking both the 12-Gbps 4K HDR feed and then the 3G HDR feed with the latter being the base level.
Everything in this facility is operating at a minimum of 1080p50 HDR, says Callahan. The studio operations are limited to 1080p50, primarily because of the current limitations of augmented-reality graphics to be fully 4K HDR-capable. The 4K HDR feed is being sent to a control center in Tempe, AZ, where ad insertion is completed and the signal distributed to MVPDs and the FOX Sports App.
It's the same source material the linear broadcast would have, he says.
More than 100 feeds are being sent to the U.S., and latency is only 128 ms one way. That does open up the type of remote workflows that signal a future where everything can be done at home. But there is still very much a need to be close to where the signals originate because problem solving and triage is much easier when they can be done onsite.
That's one of the reasons we do all our frame-rate conversion here, says Callahan. We are sending product back that is ready for air, and we can compare it to the original and say, Okay, we need to change the setting on the Alchemist or we need to do this or do that.
That said, there is plenty of reliance
North America Stories
21/05/2026
Game Creek Video Columbia and Celtic, NEP Supershooter 8 will house onsite produ...
21/05/2026
Freshly graduated, this upstart producer, director, and camera operator is already working as an AP on videoboard shows for the Philadelphia Phillies
In the li...
21/05/2026
Media Links has announced a channel partnership with Clearcast Asia, a broadcast...
21/05/2026
SiriusXM and NASCAR have announced a multi-year renewal of their broadcasting agreement. SiriusXM will continue to carry live broadcasts of every NASCAR Cup Ser...
21/05/2026
Audio-Technica held a demonstration event at its Technica House location in New ...
21/05/2026
Ateme has announced that RTL Deutschland has selected Ateme's software-based...
21/05/2026
LiveU has announced that BCC Live deployed the LU900Q intelligent production unit for the first time during the 2026 Memorial Hermann IRONMAN Texas North Americ...
21/05/2026
ATSC has announced that Mark Aitken, President of ONE Media and Senior VP of Advanced Technology at Sinclair Broadcast Group, will receive the 2026 Mark Richer ...
21/05/2026
BBright has published a technical analysis of the Media eXchange Layer (MXL), de...
21/05/2026
The Esports Foundation has announced that the 2026 Esports World Cup (EWC) will be hosted in Paris, France, from July 6 through August 23. The event marks the f...
21/05/2026
Chyron has announced PRIME Scorebug, a scorebug solution built on the PRIME Platform for on-premises sports production, and has expanded Chyron LIVE with purpos...
21/05/2026
Media Links has announced the integration of its Xscend IP transport platform with Skyline Communications' DataMiner xOps platform. The integration will be ...
21/05/2026
As live sports productions continue to demand more flexible, scalable, and cost-...
21/05/2026
In advance of this year's Sports Emmy Awards, SVG is taking a deep dive into...
21/05/2026
Hey Miami & Atlanta post-production folks!
Shade is hosting a free private suite at a Braves game (6/2) and Marlins game (6/5) and have about a dozen extra tic...
21/05/2026
The Suns and Mercury become the first NBA and WNBA teams to make games available under a single broadcast partner across both over-the-air and streaming....
21/05/2026
iPhones are part of the the regular production rotation for Friday Night Baseba...
21/05/2026
In advance of this year's Sports Emmy Awards, SVG is taking a deep dive into...
21/05/2026
Heather Matarazzo as Dawn Wiener in Todd Solondz's Welcome to the Dollhouse...
21/05/2026
SKY RAIDER II INTERNATIONAL's modular open systems architecture delivers expanded operational reach and mission flexibility....
21/05/2026
ASO-enabled WESCAM MX-10 systems conduct systematic wide-area maritime search patterns, autonomously managing sensor scan operations to expand coverage, reduce ...
21/05/2026
HBO Max, a new addition to Gracenote Data Hub, is home to the most sports programming among major streamers
NEW YORK May 21, 2026 New analysis by Gracenote...
21/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/05/2026
The UK's leading event for the creative industries united thousands of professionals for two days of networking, debate, industry insight and getting hands-...
21/05/2026
Recreating Doug Trumbull's Slitscan VFX - After Effects Mastery
Graham Quince May 21, 2026
0 Comments
In this After Effects tutorial, I'm divi...
21/05/2026
Cavalry: An Array of Fun Stuff
Simon Ubsdell May 21, 2026
0 Comments
Arrays are a really powerful feature of Cavalry and here we'll go over some o...
21/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/05/2026
Bitmovin, a leading provider of video streaming solutions, has announced that streaming service provider, Watch Brasil, has replaced its legacy systems with Bit...
21/05/2026
OWC Launches Dads and Grads Promotion with Exclusive Savings
Brie Clayton May 21, 2026
0 Comments
The gifts they'll actually use - save on cutting...
21/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
21/05/2026
For cinematographer Ashley Barron ACS ( Rivals , Dangerous Liaisons , Disney's Doctor Who ), setting the look of Netflix's How to Get to Heaven from ...
21/05/2026
Jean-Fran ois Hensgens, AFC, SBC, (Tueurs, Six Days in Spring, Le Fil) brings his signature visual approach to Cannes 2026 premiering biopic L'Affaire Marie...
21/05/2026
Beeble launches Canvas, a node-based AI compositor for VFX and Virtual Productio...
21/05/2026
Shelly Johnson Elected President of American Society of Cinematographers
Brie Clayton May 20, 2026
0 Comments
The American Society of Cinematographers...
21/05/2026
ARRI expands Management Board to accelerate next phase of growth and innovation
Brie Clayton May 20, 2026
0 Comments
ARRI expands its Management Board...
21/05/2026
May 21st, 2026 Press Assets Available Here
25TH TRIBECA FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES 202...
21/05/2026
Back to All News
In a Broken System, How Far Will You Bend? Netflix Releases Ma...
21/05/2026
Back to All News
RHYTHM FLOW ITALY: The Trailer Is Out Now For the Third Seas...
21/05/2026
Back to All News
Our Latest Steps to Make Content More Accessible
Product
21 May 2026
Global
Link copied to clipboard
Download all assets
Listen to the a...
21/05/2026
The mission begins now.
GeForce NOW is dialing up the action with a blockbuster...
20/05/2026
True to the Music City theme, the Tennessee Titans plan to make live music a prominent fixture on game days at the new venue
Reflecting the continuing converge...
20/05/2026
The long-term goal is innovation for the next generation of hockey rinks at both the professional and the community level
The National Hockey League (NHL) toda...
20/05/2026
End-users and vendors alike work toward cost-effective yet high-quality solution...
20/05/2026
The National Football League has announced that Nashville will host Super Bowl LXIV in 2030 at the new Nissan Stadium. The announcement was made at the NFL Spri...
20/05/2026
The NFL has announced that the 2028 NFL Draft presented by Bud Light will take place in Minnesota, uniting fans from around the world to celebrate one of the mo...
20/05/2026
As professional AV workflows continue to evolve, expectations around audio, video, networking, and control are rising rapidly. At InfoComm 2026 in Las Vegas, La...
20/05/2026
Haivision will showcase its latest innovations at InfoComm 2026, taking place fr...
20/05/2026
A Rotating Detonation Engine being hot fire tested at Purdue University's Zu...
20/05/2026
A U.S. Army VAMPIRE system, assigned to Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 51st Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 7th Infantry Division/Multi-Domain Command - Pacific ...