Mammoth Production: Eleven Sports Teams with Proximus Media House to Create a Sensational Broadcast of the Belgian Pro League Matchday 34

Mammoth production: Eleven Sports teams with Proximus Media House to create a sensational broadcast of the Belgian Pro League matchday 34 By Heather McLean

Monday, August 21, 2023 - 08:12

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Proximus Media House, working closely with the Belgian Pro League, was responsible for bringing all seven simultaneous matches on day 34 of the regular season to viewers

Proximus Media House, working closely with the Belgian Pro League, was responsible for bringing all seven simultaneous matches on day 34 of the regular season to viewers

The Belgian Pro League, also known as the Jupiler Pro League, culminated its regular 2023 season with seven simultaneous matches on Sunday 23 April. Proximus Media House, working closely with the League, was responsible for bringing all of these matches on day 34 to Belgian viewers within the country, in a multitude of languages, for the League's domestic rights partner Eleven Sports, as well as for the world feed.

The Belgian football format means that following the regular season, playoffs decide the championship and which teams will get seeded for the different European Championships. On the last match day of the regular competition, the rules specify that all matches should be played at the same time.

The matchday 34 Multilive production enables all viewers to experience all matches at the same time, which is only possible due to a close collaboration and planning ahead

For the 2023 League format, this was potentially going to be nine matches played simultaneously. At a TV production level, this created a massive challenge for Proximus.

It was decided that two matches had no influence on the result and could be played at a different time, so while production was prepared for nine simultaneous matches, the main event was a production of seven matches that would all kick off at 18:30.

Production set up

Being a bilingual country, for every match in the Belgian 1st division three different programmes were produced; one in Dutch, one French, and an international clean feed. In addition to this, three selected matches were also produced in an English programme version for international distribution.

The commentators for the Dutch and the French programmes were located in the stadium and the commentary was mixed inside the OB van at the stadium. However the English commentary was added from a voicebooth at the Proximus master control room (MCR) in Brussels. The different graphics for each language were also added at the MCR.

The OB van at the stadium produced a main and backup feed which was then fed through the award-winning video contribution next generation (ViCoNG) network to Proximus' central MCR.

This ViCoNG network is a dedicated nationwide video IP network that connects all of the football stadia of the first division in Belgium to the MCR, and also to various broadcasters as well as to the VAR centre based in Tubize, near Brussels.

Using this set up, Proximus can send up to eight production feeds to the MCR and a maximum of 16 isolated camera feeds to the VAR centre. At the same time Proximus can send eight return feeds to the OB van, as well as four additional VAR feeds which were used exclusively for the referees in the stadiums. This entire IP network is based on SMPTE-2110 with full redundancy in place.

A total of 48 cameras were used to cover all these matches, commentated on by a group of 16 Dutch and French-speaking commentators, and two matches in English.

More than 600,000 viewers enjoyed the multi-live experience of matchday 34 on the Eleven Pro League Channels; amazing numbers

Added complications

Rightsholder for the day 34 matches in Belgium, Eleven Sports, produced a show called Multilive so viewers could follow all of the action on the different pitches in real time. Whenever something notable happened on one of the matches, the programme immediately switched to it so viewers could catch up and see replays of goals or goal attempts. This show was also produced in two languages using two separate production crews from two production control rooms, also located at the MCR.

Jan Mosselmans, COO at ElevenDAZN Belgium and Luxemburg, comments: More than 600,000 viewers enjoyed the multi-live experience of matchday 34 on the Eleven Pro League Channels; amazing numbers. This success was undoubtedly the result of intense and efficient cooperation between ElevenDAZN and Proximus Media House, but also with the other partners from the new production ecosystem created around Belgian Football: Mediapro, Woestijnvis, and WTvision.

The huge audience numbers of the multilive programme is also proof that sports content is being consumed in an increasingly fragmented way. As sports media, we absolutely must respond to this trend, continues Mosselmans.

Eleven Sports offers 13 linear sports channels to viewers in Belgium, and also provides an over the top (OTT) platform for watching online. For matchday 34, Eleven Sports created additional event channels on its OTT platform. It also sublicensed some of the matches on its linear channels to other broadcasters.

In terms of content on the linear channels, this required a different approach for Proximus as some sponsors or partners could not be shown on the sublicensed match channels, but still needed to be shown on the OTT platform. Separate workflows needed to be created to cover these issues.

Says Perrine Bichet, CEO at Proximus Media House: ElevenDAZN and Proximus Media House continuously strive to optimise the viewer experience for the Belgian Football League. The matchday 34 Multilive production enables all viewers to experience all matches at the same time, which is only possible due to a close collaboration and planning ahead.

In terms of distribution, Proximus distributes a total of about 48 feeds to nine different takers on a normal day during the competiti

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