
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
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
23/06/2026
When we began planning our transition from an SDI-based infrastructure to a new ...
23/06/2026
Imagine Communications has announced the appointment of Greg Garmon as Senior Vice President, Americas Video Sales. Garmon will oversee account growth and busin...
23/06/2026
Snap has promoted Emma Wakely to Head of Sports and Media Partnerships, Americas, succeeding Anmol Malhotra, who has been elevated to Global Head of Content and...
23/06/2026
YES Network and The Gotham Sports App will air MI New York's Major League Cr...
23/06/2026
The Universal Talent Identifier (HAND) has issued HAND IDs to 34 top projected prospects in the 2026 NBA Draft class, including AJ Dybantsa, Cameron Boozer, and...
23/06/2026
World Boxing has announced the launch of World Boxing TV, a subscription-based streaming platform built on the Joymo platform, offering live events, on-demand c...
23/06/2026
FloSports will stream 32 off-road motorcycle racing events on FloRacing, includi...
23/06/2026
SES has announced the expansion of its ASTRA TV platform in Spain with the addition of 14 regional channels in HD and UHD quality and the launch of new hybrid s...
23/06/2026
Appear ASA has announced its role in Rede Legislativa de R dio e TV's contri...
23/06/2026
LTN has announced that PBS has selected it as its IP video partner to modernize content distribution and contribution across more than 330 public television sta...
23/06/2026
Ease Live has announced that its graphics overlay platform is powering an interactive fan experience on Rally.TV, the official streaming platform of the FIA Wor...
23/06/2026
Chyron has announced updates to Chyron LIVE, its cloud-native live production pl...
23/06/2026
ESPN has announced ESPN Fan House, a fan engagement hub powered by Flowcode, launching in August ahead of the 2026 college football season. Publicis Sports will...
23/06/2026
The city's solid position in broadcast, entertainment, and sports attracted the major microphone manufacturer
Sennheiser Group is moving its Americas Regio...
23/06/2026
128 channels of signal routing & DSP
Announced just before the NAMM Show 2026, Violet Audio's latest digital audio matrix offers 128 channels of signal ...
23/06/2026
Latest Current expansion created by EPROM
Minimal Audio have just launched the latest Current Expansion, Memory Rites. Designed in collaboration with renown...
23/06/2026
Popular hardware EQ gets official plug-in emulation
Undertone Audio have just launched a new plug-in that brings one of their most popular hardware designs ...
23/06/2026
December 7, 2022
Colorfront (colorfront.com) - the multi-award-winning develope...
23/06/2026
April 23, 2026
NAB 2026, Las Vegas - the Academy and Emmy Award-winning develop...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
PlayBox Neo appoints Besco as Channel Reseller to establish a firm foothold in Asia Pacific's thriving high-tech export-driven economic boom
PlayBox Neo, t...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
LTN, a global leader in IP-based video transport and network services, today announced that PBS has selected LTN as its IP video partner to modernize and future...
23/06/2026
LiveU will introduce its Q Era to Australia and New Zealand for the first time at ABE2026 on Stand No. 25, (July 30 31). Leading the showcase is the LU900Q, a n...
23/06/2026
Miri Technologies Inc. has begun shipping its highly anticipated V410 live 4K video encoder/decoder for streaming, IP-based production workflows and AV-over-IP ...
23/06/2026
DHD audio reports the completion of an upgrade to the audio production facilities at the Galilee headquarters of Radio Tzafon. The station broadcasts two progra...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
23/06/2026
Multifaceted Growth Executive Brings 20+ Years of Experience Leading Organizations Across Tech and M&E
Imagine Communications today announced the appointment ...
23/06/2026
Australians in Film and Screen Australia's talent development initiative UNT...
23/06/2026
Visual Productions Unveils RdmRelay2 Four-channel Relay Control at InfoComm 2026
Brie Clayton June 22, 2026
0 Comments
New Relay Solution Combines DMX, ...
23/06/2026
SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible, Opening Standards Library to the Gl...
23/06/2026
23rd June 2026, London: UKTV and BBC Entertainment have unveiled a joint co-comm...
23/06/2026
Also starring Jonny Lee Miller, Sheldon Shepherd and Bel Powley, the ambitious f...
23/06/2026
The priority now is a clear and credible plan
June 23, 2026, Winchester, UK - Arqiva, the UK's leading communications infrastructure provider, welcomes tod...
23/06/2026
The RT Toy Show Appeal has raised over 31 million since its inception in 2020 ...
23/06/2026
News Highlights:
NVIDIA technology runs 81% of the TOP500 and 90% of the systems new to the list.
26 systems on the TOP500 adopted the NVIDIA Grace CPU, up ei...
23/06/2026
Companies are asking how to build specialized AI that fits with the way their workflows actually run.
The first wave of enterprise AI was about access. Compan...
23/06/2026
Newly identified molecule strengthens the eye's response to damage in retinal disease Scripps Research discovery finds that restoring the naturally occurrin...
22/06/2026
Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...
22/06/2026
Cosm has announced the appointment of David Ho as Chief Legal Officer, a newly created executive role reporting to President and CEO Jeb Terry. Ho will oversee ...
22/06/2026
Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the developm...
22/06/2026
Daktronics has completed an audio control system upgrade at Petco Park in San Di...