Knockout Competition: Behind the ZDF and ARD Production of the Women's World Cup 2023 Using SRT

Knockout competition: Behind the ZDF and ARD production of the Women's World Cup 2023 using SRT By Heather McLean

Thursday, August 17, 2023 - 15:48

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Germany's team for the Women's World Cup 2023 celebrate an early win

German broadcasters ZDF and ARD are producing the Women's World Cup using secure reliable transport (SRT) streams for the first time ever for a major sports event. While ZDF used SRT for the audio description for the European Championships 2022 in Munich, this event marks the broadcaster's initial usage of it for a key competition.

All 64 games of the World Cup are being made available on ZDF and ARD live on TV, streamed over the top (OTT), and in each broadcasters' media libraries.

With a rights deal via the EBU for Germany plus France, Italy, Spain and the UK only coming in at the last minute in June, ZDF and ARD had to prepare for the tournament beforehand, just in case a deal was struck.

On the challenge of producing this with the last minute rights acquisition, Florian Rathgeber, head of engineering at ZDF, tells SVG Europe: We had to determine several deadlines for different parts of the whole production: rental equipment, hotels, shipping, staff acquisition, etc. Whenever we hit one of these deadlines we had to reduce something. For example that is why ZDF has no audience in the TV studio for German matches.

Andr van Lengen is an outside broadcast engineer at Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), a German public broadcaster based in Hamburg and member of ARD, the joint organisation of Germany's regional public service broadcasters. NDR is responsible for the ARD side of the Women's World Cup production, while ZDF is producing its own content and providing NDR with a centralised operations at its National Broadcasting Centre (NBC) for getting the live feeds into its own network.

Read more about the ZDF and ARD National Broadcasting Centre

Van Lengen says: The short preparation time after acquiring the rights was a big challenge. From the very beginning, we made a technical plan assuming the broadcast would be secured, to avoid any time constraints. A significant advantage was the ability to incorporate a large portion of the content acquisition and cross-media distribution concept from Euro 2022.

The quality of SRT signals is very convincing. In fact, during this event they are even faster than satellite transmission, as complex encryption processes lead to significant latency in satellite signals. With conventional signal transmission, we sometimes encountered disruptions due to damaged fibre optic cables or weather-related issues with satellites. So far, SRT has been running completely error-free

ZDF started its planning process for the tournament with a small planning group at the end of last year during the FIFA World Cup in Qatar. Notes Rathgeber: We set up several scenarios, from a bigger on site presence to the absolute minimum, which we are actually doing right now.

For ARD, the planning began earlier this year says van Lengen: Fortunately, we have a team that handles the planning of all sports events, such as handball and athletics championships, as well as the Olympic Games. Therefore at the beginning of the year we were able to expand the team by a couple of colleagues. We started by planning the studio in Hamburg first and assessed the requirement for additional personnel for the event, ensuring that we informed the schedulers well in advance.

Neither broadcaster created any costs or commitments prior to the rights situation being resolved.

NDR's studio for the Women's World Cup 2023

SRT from the IBC

Neither have a presence at the IBC in Australia this year. Instead, both broadcasters, with ARD supported by NDR in Hamburg and the Sportschau editorial team at WDR in Cologne (Sportschau is a German sports magazine programme on ARD, produced by WDR) take the world feed direct to ZDF and ARD's NBC in Mainz that ZDF is working directly out of.

Both broadcasters realised that they would not be present at the IBC early on in planning. Van Lengen says: It was evident that the presentation of the World Cup should not take place on site for both economic and ecological reasons. Through past events, we have already gained experience in transforming the footage from on site camera teams into stories here in Hamburg. Additionally, remote technical support for our commentators on site has become a familiar practice, especially since Tokyo 2020.

Adds Rathgeber: From a very early stage it was clear, that no editorial staff would be at the IBC, making the IBC the TV signal pick up point only. Because of the SRT host feed distribution, including ISO feeds, it was possible to get enough feeds back to the NBC in Mainz to produce the World Cup properly, without shipping our own equipment and crew to the IBC in Sydney. We have the master control room (MCR) which connects the NBC and NDR in Hamburg to the SRT feeds.

Originally developed and pioneered by Haivision, SRT is an opensource video transport protocol and technology stack that optimises video streaming performance across unpredictable networks.

Rathgeber comments on the use of SRT: The decentral signal delivery via SRT-streams enables us to have no presence at the IBC in Sydney. This is most cost effective. The streams are very reliable and we have no disadvantage compared to former signal distribution concepts.

Van Lengen adds that SRT for the World Cup has been a great choice: The quality of SRT signals is very convincing. In fact, during this event they are even faster than satellite transmission, as complex encryption processes lead to significant latency in satellite signals. With conventional signal transmission, we sometimes encountered disruptions due to damaged fibre optic cables or weather-related issues with satellites

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