Live From FIFA World Cup: Poland's TVP Sport Supports Broadcast Operations With Onsite OB Van

Live From FIFA World Cup: Poland's TVP Sport Supports Broadcast Operations With Onsite OB Van The broadcaster also has nine shooting positions, studio at Sapphire Plaza Hotel By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor

Thursday, December 15, 2022 - 9:00 am

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The FIFA World Cup brings nations near and far to the International Broadcast Centre, and situated within the Qatar National Convention Centre, countries big and small are sending feeds back home in different ways. Poland's TVP Sport, for example, is a country that's blowing out their coverage of this year's tournament with an onsite OB van, nine separate shooting positions, and a studio at a local hotel in Qatar.

We've been cooperating with our colleagues from our news division on a daily basis, says Dominik Kopacz, international coordinator, TVP Sport. From the technical side, everything has gone really well.

Marcin Szuba, ukasz Ja nicki, Jan D bkowski, and Dominik Kopacz at TVP Sport's IBC location.

Prior to arriving to Doha, Kopacz and his crew needed to nail down their way of producing this content. Understanding that going down the IP route was a bit expensive, the team chose to go down the more traditional path as a cost-effective measure. After discussing with some of their European clients, they zeroed in on the services of EBU, who handles their broadcasting rights through a deal with FIFA. To simplify the costs even further, the individuals operating the OB van are from Qatar' neighbor, Saudi Arabia.

The OB van has been a key part of their operations strategy. Using this vehicle as a conduit between their multiple shooting locations, their hub in the IBC, and main broadcast facility in the Polish capital of Warsaw, the team is able to bring viewers and supplement broadcasts of all 64 matches with commentary teams located in all eight venues. On the studio side, the nine locations around Qatar have been produced with one camera, but the biggest operation has been its main studio set at the Sapphire Plaza Hotel. Equipped with three cameras, these prematch and postmatch shows are sent back to the IBC TELCO room via high-bandwidth WAN links and a 10G Ooredoo pipeline in the OB van before heading to TVP's dedicated location in the IBC and then off to Warsaw for distribution online and linearly on TVP Sport, TVP1 and TVP2. For matchday Host Broadcast Services (HBS) sends the commentary feed from the venue to the IBC, which gets passed along to TVP Sport before being sent to Warsaw. However, HBS sends the multilateral feed directly to Kopacz and company. As for technical execution, it's a bit different depending on whether or not the game includes the Polish national team.

We're essentially responsible for two productions because we can send it directly through Telstra's network to Poland or by satellite as a backup. All matches are receiving feeds directly from satellite, but for Polish matches, the situation is quite different because we're producing the feed onsite, sending it back to the IBC to Warsaw.

These intricate productions began with the squad's group stage fixtures against Mexico on Nov. 22, Saudi Arabia on Nov. 26, and Argentina on Nov. 30. Even after Poland's run ended against defending champion France on Dec. 4, TVP Sport will continue to provide content through the Final on Dec. 18.

As for onsite personnel, a total of 58 employees have come from Poland, including five ENG crews (four for broadcast and one for digital) and six pairs of commentary teams. At the IBC, Kopacz is working alongside Head of Sports Events Broadcasting Marcin Szuba and Editors ukasz Ja nicki and Jan D bkowski.

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2022/12/15/live-from-fifa-world-cup-poland...
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