Alamiya Media at 50: Preparing for rapid change, an international broadcast centre and the FIFA World Cup By Adrian Pennington Friday, January 31, 2025 - 08:19
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This year is the 50th anniversary of Alamiya Media and Advertising, a company that arguably pioneered media production in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and that has had to rapidly adapt to the sweeping internationalisation initiated by the state since 2016.
There's no small production in Saudi, says chief broadcast officer, Miguel Caso. Even a press conference, which you think is going to be 3-4 camera, will be 14. Even our smallest trucks are 20 cameras.
Alamiya recently signed a three-year agreement with DAZN to be its production facilities partner on Riyadh Season boxing events.
Sultan Al Muheisen, chairman & CEO, Alamiya Media, says: In a short time the Middle East, led by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has leaped to the forefront of becoming the home of some of the biggest and most renowned sporting events globally. The combination of Alamiya's production facilities with DAZN's host broadcasting capabilities and expertise will ensure exciting sports content for existing fans and new audiences.
IMG also signed the Riyadh-based outfit in a new five-year deal starting from the 2024/25 season to provide facilities and infrastructure for its host broadcast of the Saudi Pro League (SPL) on behalf of the Saudi Arabian Football Federation (SAFF).
Alamiya runs a fleet consisting of 26 mobile facilities, almost all capable of 4K and at least mid-sized productions. Caso explains: Our older trucks are HD 1080i/50 but we keep investing and integrating new facilities and pretty much all the trucks in both in the football league and major competitions, regardless of the match being in HD or 4K, are switchable to UHD with standardised technology.
Recent investment has migrated Alamiya towards Sony cameras with EVS servers.
Our aim is to meet international broadcasting standard tech that is being used in World Cups or World Championships, he says.
For transmission it has a fleet of 17 SNGs mostly 4K capable encrypted with Ateme solutions. It also runs a special cameras department which houses kit such as a Skycam aerial cable system, cinematic style cameras, drones and an AGITO buggy.
They come up with ideas which we then present to clients, Caso says. The Spanish and Italian Federations are very flexible and come back to us every year to stage the Super Cups and ask what's new that we can implement that we haven't used before. We keep up-to-date on the latest technologies by attending NAB or IBC.
Read more: Kingdom come: Alamiya Media on bringing the Supercoppa Italiana and Supercopa de Espa a to Saudi Arabia
Alamiya also has studios that mainly cater to local broadcaster MBC and the Saudi Sports Company (SSC) which owns broadcast rights to the SPL, King's Cup and the Saudi Super Cup.
It is in the process of expanding these facilities into an international broadcast centre. In part this is to implement a remote production model, not only for the SPL, but also for a range of other sports and entertainment clients in the country, and to prepare for hosting larger scale international events.
We aim to build an international broadcast centre from where we will run distribution, contribution and remote graphic operation for domestic and international events, Caso says. Saudi Arabia is a very big country, so it does make a lot of sense to move to a remote model instead of running trucks out.
IMG will also help SPL and SAFF to implement advanced remote production technologies, allowing producers to oversee matches across multiple cities on the same day, ensuring that the highest production standards are maintained regardless of location.
Little by little investments are being made and we're on that road, but connectivity is the biggest issue. It is patchy and it is a wider strategy of the country to improve. While the main venues in Jeddah and Riyadh are already connected with dark fibre that's not yet the case all over the country, he adds.
Alamiya employs about 400 people, 300 of whom are production and technical crew and many of those are Saudi nationals.
It's challenging because media is such a new industry but we have some very, very good local engineers. Our talent pool is international. We have EVS operators, floor managers, VT coordinators, camera crew and even TV directors from Egypt, Spain, Portugal, UK, Romania, South Africa and Saudi nationals.
Caso himself has been with the organisation for nine years, long enough to have witnessed substantial change in the country.
It was a totally different landscape in 2016 for sure. Alamiya was doing the SFL and many other local events but the market was very domestic such as with camel racing competitions, he recalls.
Then, as the kingdom opened, the company had to grow in terms of skills, personnel, technology and investment. A few years ago, entertainment was not a thing. In the region, the centre of entertainment was Dubai. Now everything has shifted. All the big concerts and sports competitions in the Middle East are being staged in Saudi Arabia.
So we had to switch strategy, he continues. Whereas previously, we had to branch out to gain more business, now, on the contrary, most of the eggs are in the basket of Saudi Arabia and we're trying to cater for that.
Caso, who is Spanish, has a background in economics and an MBA in business administration. Little by little I built the production technology knowledge to run the company, he says.
Last December, Alamiya was involved in providing coverage of the announcement of Saudi as the host country for the 2034 FIFA World Cup.
It is a key project for this country and something that really excites soccer fans here, Caso says. There is a ge
