Road Warriors 2019, Part 3: The Top Sports-Production Highlights From Across the Pond

Road Warriors 2019, Part 3: The Top Sports-Production Highlights From Across the Pond Behind the Scenes at FIA World Ski Championships, French Open, FIFA Womens World Cup, Wimbledon, and The Open Championship By SVG Staff

Friday, December 27, 2019 - 11:00 am

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Following on the heels of a year that saw both the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics Games and the 2018 FIFA World Cup, one might have expected the 2019 sports-production calendar to be a bit quieter. As this year draws to a close, it's clear that that could not be farther from the truth. While there were plenty of massive stateside productions in 2019 (check out PART 1 and PART 2 of Road Warriors for a look), European production crews were as busy as ever.

Here is a look back at many of the events where SVG Europe were onsite, including FIA Alpine World Ski Championships, French Open, FIFA Women's World Cup, Wimbledon, and The Open Championship.

FIA Alpine World Ski Championships re Ski Resort, re, Sweden

February 5-17

Sweden's SVT and Infront broke new ground in remote production during its host production coverage of the FIS World Ski Championships when it sent 80 camera signals from the course via two 100 Gbps fiber circuits from Telia to three control rooms in Stockholm.

Adde Granberg, SVT, director of technology, CTO, said the accomplishment at the World Ski Championships shows how far things have come since 2012 when SVT put remote production to the test for the London Olympics. This event, he said, shows the full potential of remote production.

It's not about new technology, it's about a new way of working, he explained. This has nothing to do with IP as the facilities at the course are the same if we were not using IP. Only the transport of signals is over IP.

About 150 people were at the course, including technicians, the camera people, and the director. The director had access to a control panel to control the Grass Valley vision mixer located in Stockholm where a production team of about 40 created the ultimate coverage.

Grass Valley cameras were the make of choice, serving content to EVS replay operators in Stockholm. FIS handled the creation and management of graphics which were then integrated with the produced feed.

French Open Stade Roland Garros, Paris, France

May 26 - June 29

The Roland Garros French Open tournament in Paris offered tennis fans plenty of stellar matchups and Eurosport, with broadcast rights in more than 50 territories, was on hand to make sure that all of them resonated with viewers across Europe.

This was the 31st consecutive Roland Garros tournament that Eurosport has delivered and there were more than 200 staff onsite producing coverage for 10 localized Eurosport versions distributed across the continent. The channel delivered every minute of more than 600 matches live. Coverage from all 16 courts (as well as all 160 qualifying matches) was produced and available via the Eurosport Player.

With Eurosport's main production facility located in Paris (and relatively close to Roland Garros, home of the French Open) it was no surprise that the European sports powerhouse looked to leverage its own facilities as much as possible. Last year the broadcaster brought back a finished feed and then integrated it for playout, but this year, all camera signals came back alongside the host feed and were cut from control rooms there.

The team at Roland Garros had 14 unilateral cameras in use to cover activities across the grounds, and onsite, there were teams from Eurosport France, Germany, Norway, Spain, the UK, Russia, and Italy.

Two studios and a control room on site at Roland Garros gave the production teams flexibility so that the different production teams could best meet the needs of viewers back home. The Paris facility had 14 control rooms and a studio, which gave the team a chance to integrate things like virtual and actual reality elements.

FIFA Women's World Cup France

June 7 - July 7

The beginning of the 2019 FIFA Women's World Cup in Paris marked the end of a long period of planning in which Fox Sports made use of skills the team developed in Canada, home to the previous Women's World Cup in 2015, and in Russia during the Men's World Cup last summer.

One of the first things viewers noticed was the studio-show set, which was located at the Caf de l'Homme. Paris has plenty of iconic views, but it is the sight of the Eiffel Tower that resonates with people around the world, and the view from the Caf - part of the Musee de l'Homme - did not disappoint.

The studio had 10 cameras, including a 50-ft. SuperTechno50 crane with a Stype kit for augmented-reality graphics that could show sweeping shots of the Palais de Chaillot and the Trocad ro. There was also a beauty camera that used LiveU's Matrix IP cloud video-management platform to make it available to Fox TV stations that wanted to integrate live shots into their newscasts.

EVS XT-VIA operations, graphics, and playout were done in Los Angeles and the technical director in Paris cut to tape machines located in Los Angeles, not in a B unit. Similarly, the graphics team in Los Angeles controlled three Viz engines in Aurora, and the prompter crew also worked remotely. Bexel helped outfit two trailers located in Fox Sports' Pico studio lot, and a Century Link trailer helped pull in 120 Gbps of data from Paris.

The Fox facility in Los Angeles also built two rooms for off-tube needs because all audio and video passed through a control room in Los Angeles. The commentary, whether off-tube or onsite, was matched with a UHD feed that ultimately was downconverted to 720p for distribution to viewers.

This was the first time that a Women's World Cup had a proper building for its International Broadcast Center (in 2015, the IBC was housed in offic

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