Mira! Broadcast Keeps Esports Fans on the Edge of Their Seats at the Esports Madrid Series

Mira! Broadcast keeps esports fans on the edge of their seats at the Esports Madrid Series By Heather McLean

Friday, February 21, 2025 - 08:30

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Putting its expertise to use on the Esports Madrid Series, Mira! Broadcast played a central role in producing this year's League of Legends and Valorant Grand Finals hosted at the Madrid in Game campus

With digital entertainment including esports evolving at an unprecedented pace, a younger, harder to impress audience is demanding unique content and immersive experiences that bring them closer to their idols.

Spain is global esports hub, with top tier teams, international tournaments, and increasing investment from sponsors, all pushing production standards higher. Production company Mira! Broadcast is at the thick of esports in the region.

Mira! Broadcast is known for delivering world class tournaments and digital experiences for titles like League of Legends, Valorant, Counter-Strike, Pok mon, Fortnite, and Free Fire. It is also the technical force behind Movistar Koy, the esports team backed by Ibai Llanos and Gerard Piqu , formed following a strategic partnership between Movistar Riders and Koi.

Putting its expertise to use on the Esports Madrid Series, Mira! Broadcast played a central role in producing this year's League of Legends and Valorant Grand Finals hosted at the Madrid in Game campus, a municipal project that promotes the growth of the video game industry.

The campus' master control room (MCR) is built around the Atem 4M/E Constellation HD, a versatile live production switcher used in tandem with the Atem 2 M/E Advanced Panel 20

Esports Madrid Series

As the tournament's technical partner, Mira! Broadcast handled all aspects of the live production and streaming. We were working with a huge number of video inputs, including player gameplay, live audience reactions, caster commentary, and VT content, while also managing dynamic graphics in real time, says Jes s De Lucas, technical manager at Mira! Broadcast.

On stage, each final featured two teams of five competing on high performance PCs arranged in a V' formation. The proximity of the audience amplified the excitement to a level rarely felt in larger arenas, notes De Lucas.

The campus' master control room (MCR) is built around the Atem 4M/E Constellation HD, a versatile live production switcher used in tandem with the Atem 2 M/E Advanced Panel 20. The switchers ability to handle multiple simultaneous game feeds, without having to worry about resolution or frame rate, makes it the ideal tool for complex and fast paced tournaments like this, says De Lucas.

He adds: SuperSource enabled dynamic visuals like split screens and picture in picture layouts, adding variety to the broadcast while the Atem Constellation's customisable keying capabilities and macros allowed us to adapt to and quickly take advantage of the unexpected moments.

But video is only part of the equation; audio synchronisation is just as crucial, according to De Lucas. Esports production involves managing multiple sources, from casters' microphones and in game sound to audience reactions and sponsor announcements, all while keeping everything in sync, he explains. Converters like the Teranex Mini Audio to SDI 12G embeds and synchronises audio with SDI video, preventing latency and drift.

Signal management and redundancy

All incoming feeds were routed through a Blackmagic Videohub 40 40 12G located in the gallery's vision rack while a separate Blackmagic Videohub 20 20 12G handled live video feed distribution to auxiliary screens, VIP zones, and audience seating areas throughout the venue.

A robust backup workflow, included back up encoding and internet, was in place alongside the MCR, ensuring the production had contingencies in place. An Atem SDI Extreme ISO served as a secondary production switcher primarily handling an alternative feed for casters and analysis desk coverage. This ensured we always had a safeguard in place, allowing us to switch to a backup feed without any downtime, if any issues arose with the main broadcast, says De Lucas.

In esports, where every move matters, instant replays are a crucial part of the storytelling. De Lucas says: Another key aspect of the production was delivering highlights and instant replays. The audience expects to relive key moments almost immediately, and getting this right is essential to maintaining their engagement.

Spain-based Mira! Broadcast production is carrying out esports productions using Blackmagic Design's Atem technology

Reliving key moments

To achieve this, the broadcast team built a Blackmagic Replay system that combined multiple HyperDeck Studio HD Plus broadcast decks to record SDI camera feeds and esports gameplay directly to a Blackmagic Cloud Store Max 24TB. A 10GbE (10-gigabit Ethernet) switch connected the HyperDecks and Blackmagic Cloud for low latency recording and playback, ensuring replay clips were instantly accessible for playout.

Designed for seamless multi angle playback, the replay workflow utilized HyperDecks in a rolling record system. This ensured continuous recording while allowing the replay operator to instantly cue and play back crucial moments without interrupting ongoing footage capture.

The replay operator used DaVinci Resolve Replay Editor to mark key moments, allowing clips to be trimmed, slowed down, or re cued. Selected replays were then sent from DaVinci Resolve to the ATEM switcher, with an UltraStudio 4K Mini used for SDI playout purposes, explains De Lucas.

To maintain broadcast synchronization and signal integrity, a series of BiDirectional SDI/HDMI 3G Micro Converters and Teranex Mini Audio to SDI 12G converters were deployed. These ensured seamless signal conversion and frame synchronisation, notes De Lucas.

He adds:

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