Live From Paris 2024: Telemundo Deportes' Ops Team Links IBC Workflows, Football Coverage Around France to Miami Facility

Live From Paris 2024: Telemundo Deportes' Ops Team Links IBC Workflows, Football Coverage Around France to Miami Facility Roaming production teams send feeds from multiple venues across the country By Kristian Hern ndez, Senior Editor

Tuesday, July 30, 2024 - 10:26 am

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Although Paris is the designated host of the 2024 Summer Olympics, multiple sports are being played at venues throughout the country, and, among those sports, football has the highest priority for Telemundo Deportes. With roaming production teams in the various cities, the Spanish-language broadcaster's operations team ships all the video feeds and content from its setup in the IBC to Telemundo Center in Miami, where its live Olympics coverage is remotely produced.

Whether they're in Paris or chasing football around France, our five roaming crews are leaning heavily on LiveU to send all of their content straight to Miami, says Chris Suarez-Meyers, SVP, content operations, Telemundo Deportes. It's a pretty straightforward workflow that makes it a lot easier to point everything directly back home.

Football Ramp-Up: Efforts Intensify for Large Slate of Matches For perhaps the most popular sport on its schedule, Telemundo Deportes is dedicating a fair amount of time and attention to the football matches. The U.S. Men's and Women's National Teams are the center of focus, but, with Spain on both sides of the tournament and countries like 2022 FIFA Men's World Cup champions Argentina and Olympic debutant Dominican Republic competing, there are many storylines to cover.

Telemundo Deportes' Chris Suarez is leading the technical charge at the IBC in Paris.

The matches take place in venues outside Paris: Nice's Allianz Riviera, Lyon's Groupama Stadium, Bordeaux's Matmut Atlantique, Marseille's Orange V lodrome, and Nantes's Stade de la Beaujoire - Louis Fonteneau. Handling the extended coverage - a normal day has six hours of daytime coverage, but football game days extend that to 12 hours - are roaming teams comprising ENG camera operators, technical support, and talent like play-by-play announcer Andres Cantor, analysts Natalia Astrain and Manuel Sol, and reporter Carlos Yustis to call the main games onsite.

Not only was traveling to the different stadiums important for bringing authenticity and real-time energy to the broadcast, the teams' travels throughout France offer the opportunity to spotlight French culture for viewers watching from home. Travel has involved a mixture of car rides, hopping on a train, or going wheels up on an airplane - an endeavor made a lot less cumbersome by lightweight technology.

We're on a pretty hectic pace right now, traveling almost every day, says Suarez-Meyers. [The mobile setup] allows us to be a lot nimbler, keep our footprint small, and be able to move from city to city without having to strike a big operation.

Luckily, as men's and women's football heads toward the Knockout Rounds, Parc des Princes could host several teams of focus. Home to 12-time Ligue 1 winner and a club known around the globe, the 47,929-seat venue in Paris Saint-Germain is only 12 miles from the IBC.

Besides the football focus, the ENG crews are developing in-depth features on Hispanic athletes to watch, including U.S. breakdancer Victor Montalvo, Mexican gymnast Alexa Moreno, Cuban wrestler Mija n L pez, and Venezuelan triple jumper Yulimar Rojas.

New Addition: Opening Ceremony Debuted on the Broadcast Schedule Football is a major chunk of Telemundo Deportes' live programming from Paris, but, for the first time in 20 years of hosting the Olympics, the broadcaster aired the spectacular Opening Ceremony that took place on the Seine. Taking the world feed produced by Olympics Broadcasting Services (OBS), the coverage was announced by the talent team of Miguel Gurwitz, Jessica Carillo, and Julio Vaquiero from a dedicated host position in the stadium in the Place du Trocad ro. Though broadcasting the four-hour-long celebration for the first time, Telemundo Deportes navigated the challenges that came with a parade of that size, including traffic congestion, heightened security, and long periods of rain.

At some point, says Suarez-Meyers, I think every broadcaster were wondering what was going to happen [with the weather]. The rain might have added to the storytelling, becoming a dramatic backdrop to the visuals, but, thankfully, it all turned out to be great.

For onsite studio programming, Telemundo Deportes has a Parisian rooftop location. With the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower in the background, this stunning site is supported by the NBC News operations team. The video feeds are sent via NBC News circuits to the facility at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City and rerouted to Telemundo Center via a connection used on other programming.

The studio programming, along with the feeds for live game coverage, are produced remotely by nearly 100 staffers in Miami. In Paris, Telemundo Deportes' onsite presence peaked at 40 individuals, but, with the conclusion of the Opening Ceremony and the departure of Gurwitz and Carillo to call live shows from a virtual studio in Miami, the count has decreased.

Important Puzzle Pieces: Ops Crew Credits Production Colleagues, NBC Olympics Partnership Deep into the first full week of contests, Telemundo Deportes is back in the broadcasting rhythm it has been accustomed to over two decades of Olympics coverage. Besides the flexibility to deal with the last-minute or unplanned changes that come with the Summer Games, the chemistry between the ops team and the production team led by EVP, Sports, Eli Velazquez has burnished the broadcaster's creative shine.

It's all about streamlining and learning new ways of telling the story, Suarez-Meyers explains. We're lo

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