ESPN Connects Abu Dhabi and Bristol via IP for Expanded Special Olympics Production The operation marks broadcaster's geographically longest at-home workflow By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor
Friday, March 22, 2019 - 10:45 am
Print This Story
Story Highlights
To deliver the most live coverage of the Special Olympics ever, ESPN this week deployed one of its largest and most complex at-home productions to date, connecting its operation in Abu Dhabi with its broadcast center in Bristol, CT, via redundant IP links. In addition to sending live competition feeds to Bristol for streaming on ESPN3, the broadcaster transferred more than 15 TB of ENG footage back home over the past week and deployed a Bristol control room to produce its nightly onsite studio show as a REMI [remote-integration] operation.
Abu Dhabi hosted the Special Olympics this week, the first time the event has been held in the Middle East/North Africa.
This event is one of the furthest REMIs that we have executed. Our operations team is very experienced with the workflow and continues to refine it on each event, says Jarrett Baker, associate manager, remote production operations, ESPN. Special Olympics Abu Dhabi is the first ESPN remote to transport all video content, file transfer, communications, corporate-data network, internet, VoIP, IPTV, and tallies back to Bristol over a redundant IP link. None of the transmission paths arrived in Bristol as baseband video.
ESPN's coverage of the 2019 Special Olympics World Games Abu Dhabi kicked off with the Opening Ceremony on March 14, airing a three-hour special live on ESPNEWS. Working with host broadcaster Abu Dhabi Media, ESPN3 streamed multiple live feeds each day throughout the Games (March 15-22), delivering more than 175 hours of live coverage across multiple venues. And, each night, 2019 Special Olympics World Games aired live on ESPN2, ABC, or ESPNEWS from a set at the Abu Dhabi Sailing and Yacht Club at Corinche Beach.
In addition to the U.S. domestic coverage, ESPN's coverage reached more than 200 countries through its own branded television networks, digital streaming services, ESPN sub-licensees, and multiple syndication partnerships.
Collaborating With Abu Dhabi Media, Weathering Logistical Challenges
Abu Dhabi Media provided ESPN with six venue feeds and an overarching world feed - all of which were transmitted to Bristol for streaming on ESPN3. This represented a significant increase in content for ESPN's coverage compared with previous years.
The Special Olympics Abu Dhabi LOC and Abu Dhabi TV played an integral role in the volume of live event content that we sent back to Bristol, says Baker. In the past, ESPN covered one or two live venues. [This year,] Abu Dhabi TV provided ESPN with six live venue productions each day, along with a wraparound world-feed production. This allowed our ENG crews to focus on telling individual athlete stories more completely than they may have been able to do in the past.
In terms of its onsite footprint, ESPN shipped 14 tons of equipment from the UK, U.S., and Australia by air and built a production facility inside the IBC at the Zayed Sports City Stadium in just 10 days.
Our biggest challenges on this project involve logistics, says Baker. Mobile units were cost-prohibitive due to ocean transit times from Europe.
ESPN delivered more than 175 hours of live Special Olympics coverage, including Basketball, Track & Field, Swimming, Football, Volleyball, Sailing/Kayaking, Equestrian, and Powerlifting.
Baker adds that the Opening Ceremony on March 14 presented a particularly challenging logistical effort since the host-production mobile unit was several hundred yards from ESPN's production compound. However, ESPN was able to coordinate cable interconnects, camera positions, and more to ensure that each entity had a successful broadcast.
Transportation also proved to be a big challenge in Abu Dhabi.
Our ESPN safety team handled the transportation challenges of an international event, notes Baker. Between ENG teams, technical crews, and production personnel, our shuttle system required a significant amount of coordination and planning.
From Abu Dhabi to Bristol: The REMI Workflow in Action
To deliver the host feeds to Bristol and serve various at-home workflows, ESPN relied on redundant 1-Gbps links between its set at the Yacht Club and the IBC and redundant 2-Gbps links between the IBC and Bristol. Locally, ESPN had 450 Mbps of data connectivity and four bidirectional J2K video feeds between the IBC and the set at the Yacht Club. In total, ESPN sent 12 video feeds from the IBC and six venue feeds to Bristol throughout the Special Olympics production.
It was a challenge establishing the fiber services from the Abu Dhabi Sailing and Yacht Club back to the U.S., acknowledges Baker.
ESPN's host set, which was located at the Abu Dhabi Yacht Club, was a full REMI production: four camera feeds and all microphone feeds were sent to Bristol, where the nightly Special Olympics show was produced out of a dedicated control room.
ESPN deployed seven ENG teams in the field to cover events and transferred all media from Abu Dhabi to Bristol for use by the edit team and production of the nightly studio show. All ENG footage shot by ESPN and Abu Dhabi Media was shared at the IBC. As of Thursday morning, close to 15 TB of ENG footage had been transferred to Bristol over a 1.4-Gbps Signiant pipe.
We were able to achieve the fastest Signiant transfer rate of 1.4 Gbps since ESPN's REMNAS [Remote Near Access Storage] workflow began, says Baker.
The ESPN operation also used 32 channels of communication via a Unity intercom server between the U.S. and Abu Dhabi, with Dante-based comms and IFBs onsite.
ESPN's week-long live coverage concluded today and will be rounded out with a two-hour p
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
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Death Star
Andy Marken July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate i...
03/07/2026
Berklee's New Visual Identity: Honoring Our History, Building for What's...
03/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists awarded $2M to advance global disease surveillance Two Gates Foundation grants will expand wastewater surveillance and AI-driven dis...
03/07/2026
Joan Pulupa joins Scripps Research faculty to study the organization of DNA in brain cells and its links to neurodegeneration Using smell-sensing neurons and ad...
02/07/2026
Entering her senior year, this hometown girl is paving a career in live sports production gaining experience in replay and audio and as a TD
In the live-sports...
02/07/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
02/07/2026
BLAST, a competitive entertainment company focused on esports, has announced more than $133 million in revenue for 2025, representing more than 40% year-over-ye...
02/07/2026
Riedel Communications has announced official SKAARHOJ panel support for SimplyLive production workflows, enabled through the SimplyLive 2.1 release. The integra...
02/07/2026
The Fire Rescue Service of the Czech Republic has deployed LiveU video-over-bond...
02/07/2026
Gravity Media USA has announced the appointment of Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development, effective July 1, 2026. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Bosto...
02/07/2026
TwelveLabs, a video intelligence company, has announced $100 million in Series B funding co-led by NEA and NAVER Ventures, with participation from Amazon, Radic...
02/07/2026
The Pro Padel League (PPL) has announced a broadcast partnership with USA Sports that will air five PPL championship matches on CNBC during the 2026 season, the...
02/07/2026
LiveLike, a digital fan engagement platform, has announced eight confirmed FIFA ...
02/07/2026
Cobalt Digital has received Future's Best of Show Award, presented by AV Technology at InfoComm 2026, for its blueCORE family of standalone signal processor...
02/07/2026
Synamedia has announced the appointment of Dr. Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transition...
02/07/2026
The Esports Foundation (EF) and Sony Group Corporation have announced an expanded collaboration for the Esports World Cup 2026 (EWC), taking place in Paris, Fra...
02/07/2026
Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd. ( Z') has announced exclusive broadcast and digital rights for the Bundesliga in India for five years, beginning with the...
02/07/2026
An effort uniting News, Sports, Local, and Telemundo, the 50+-camera live produc...
02/07/2026
Zoey Deutch, John Slattery, Ken Marino, Miles Gutierrez-Riley, and Ben Wang appe...
02/07/2026
Stammering, stuttering, strangulated tones
The Crow Hill Company's latest creation promises to be the most original sound set they've produced to d...
02/07/2026
A new era in unmixing and spectral editing
The latest version of Steinberg's spectral audio-editing software has just arrived, building on the strength...
02/07/2026
Aims to simplify additive synthesis
Sine Machine is the debut launch from Melatonin, a Vienna-based developer who have spent the past six years creating wha...
02/07/2026
Products to remain fully active & supported
Following the news of Native Instruments joining the inMusic brand line-up, Academy and Emmy Award-winning visua...
02/07/2026
What you missed!
Last weekend, Saturday 27 June 2026, saw the debut of Sound On Sounds new GearExpo UK event, the largest dedicated pro-audio event to take ...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Following the successful launch of its inaugural APAC Mentoring Programme last month, the Rise AV APAC Regional Council will bring the conversation around mento...
02/07/2026
Blackmagic PYXIS 6K Used to Shoot Director Takahisa Zeze's Cry Out
Brie Clayton July 2, 2026
0 Comments
Highly mobile camera supports tense and de...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions acquires BFE, expanding its lead in European broadcast, medi...
02/07/2026
Berklee Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's 250th Anniversar...
02/07/2026
Broadcast Solutions GmbH, a leading systems integrator and provider of innovative solutions for the broadcast media industry, is acquiring BFE Studio und Medien...
02/07/2026
Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has extended the ingest facility at leading Brazilian sports company LiveMode, work...
02/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
02/07/2026
Standalone processors acknowledged for the innovation and value they bring to Pro AV
Cobalt Digital, a leading designer and manufacturer of signal processing ...
02/07/2026
Synamedia announced today the appointment of Dr Tzvi Gerstl as Chief Executive Officer. Paul Segre, who has served as CEO for the past six years, will transitio...
ESPN Connects Abu Dhabi and Bristol via IP for Expanded Special Olympics Production The operation marks broadcaster's geographically longest at-home workflow By Jason Dachman, Chief Editor 
