EMG / Gravity Media Italy reaffirms its leadership in live sports content production and distribution by taking on the role of Executive and Editorial Producer for the Winter Universiade Torino 2025.

The event, scheduled from 13 to 23 January, includes comprehensive coverage of all competitions, including the opening and closing ceremonies.

Live Production: A Multi-Faceted Commitment

Leveraging extensive experience in winter sports productions, EMG / Gravity Media Italy has deployed a high-level technical and organisational service, ensuring live coverage of all disciplines featured in the official programme of the Torino 2025 Universiade.

The disciplines covered include alpine skiing, biathlon, cross-country skiing, slopestyle, moguls and aerials, figure skating, speed skating, curling, and ice hockey. Live productions have been concentrated in the competition venues selected by the WUG2025 Committee, with a significant commitment at Pragelato Rua for the biathlon, where the Orion 209 mobile unit has been deployed.

The Orion 209 from EMG / Gravity Media Italy is an advanced mobile unit dedicated to high-definition audiovisual production, designed to meet the demands of complex live events. Equipped with state-of-the-art technology, it supports multi-camera production, IP connections, and UHD-HDR broadcasting. Thanks to its modular design and extensive operational capacity, Orion 209 ensures flexibility and quality for sports productions, concerts, and television broadcasts.

The unit stands out for integrating cutting-edge solutions that optimise the management of audio and video signals, both in traditional configurations and remote production (REMI) environments. Additionally, drones have been introduced to enhance footage of the biathlon and the closing ceremony, providing unprecedented and immersive angles.

The Operational Team

“The operational coordination,” explains Davide Furlan, Project Manager for EMG / Gravity Media Italy’s production of the event, “involves a high-profile team comprising six Unit Managers dedicated to the competition venues, coordinated by me at every stage of the project. The team is further strengthened by the involvement of around 220 freelancers, reflecting the logistical and production complexity of an event of this scale.”

“A key aspect of EMG / Gravity Media Italy’s commitment,” Furlan continues, “is the technical and editorial consultancy provided to FISU to optimise the live coverage of competitions. Thanks to our expertise in winter sports disciplines, we have successfully translated FISU’s specific competition requirements into effective and high-quality production solutions.”

International Distribution: A Global Network Supporting FISU TV

Beyond live production, EMG / Gravity Media Italy has also managed the international signal distribution from its MCR in Cologno Monzese, dedicated exclusively to FISU TV. This service, previously tested during the 2023 Winter Games in Lake Placid (USA) and the 2023 Summer Games in Chengdu (China), is a model of efficiency and scalability.

The MCR operates an advanced cloud-based platform capable of managing up to 8 Main + 8 Backup live input feeds, ensuring a potentially unlimited number of output streams. For the Torino 2025 Universiade, nine international broadcasters are involved as takers, highlighting the event’s global appeal.

EMG / Gravity Media Italy’s collaboration with FISU also extended to the management of its International Broadcast Centre (IBC), hosted at the EMG / Gravity Media Italy facility in Cologno. Here, an EVS operator, a technical manager, and a media manager have overseen the control and delivery of content to FISU’s Media Hub.

The FISU production area included:

• One coordination and production workstation for FISU’s Head of Production.
• Three editing rooms: two for editing and one dedicated to news.
• One taker coordinator for managing outgoing signals.

To ensure continuity and precision at every operational stage, the EMG / Gravity Media Italy team assigned to Cologno included a producer/general coordinator, supported by five MCR operators, an MCR supervisor, two technical supervisors, and three IT engineers.

An Innovative and Reliable Production Model

EMG’s integrated approach to the Torino 2025 Universiade highlights the company’s ability to manage complex projects, combining technical expertise, cutting-edge technological solutions, and structured organization. The synergy between live production and international distribution strengthens the relationship of trust with FISU and international partners.

© 2025 Presspool PressOffice RobertoLandini

EMG Italy completely renewed the infrastructure of the San Siro stadium, one of the symbols of Milan and Italian football

The Giuseppe Meazza Stadium, a tribute to the legendary Italian footballer, also known as “San Siro” from the Milanese district where it stands, is the largest sports facility in Italy and the second largest in Europe in terms of capacity.
Inaugurated in 1926, it is owned by the Municipality of Milan and managed through the company “M-I Stadio”. Today it seats 75,923 with the two teams AC Milan and FC Internazionale, who use it to play their matches.

In addition to concerts and religious events, it regularly hosts the Serie A TIM football championship, the Coppa Italia, the Supercoppa Italiana, the Champions League, the Europa League, the World Cup and the European Football Championships. Following an intense commitment, first for the design and then for the construction, EMG Italy completed, a few months ago, the complete renovation of the now dated audio/video/data infrastructure of the San Siro Stadium, also known as “La Scala del Calcio” for its beauty and prestige.

The work began at the end of the 2022-23 top-flight football championship and kept the technicians and companies involved busy for over five months, leading to the testing of the solution in mid-November. The new and advanced technological infrastructure was used for the first time on 2 December 2023, during the television production of the Serie A football match Milan-Frosinone.

“We have redesigned the entire infrastructure,” says Francesco Donato, CTO of EMG Italy, “with this project we have updated the systems not only by adapting the wiring to current technological standards, but we have also thought about it in light of the new filming formats, which require a different and more current configuration of the filming stations. The narrative of our days is certainly aimed at the maximum spectacularization of the sporting event and therefore we have implemented new solutions and positions previously available only through additional temporary systems.

Then, to make the connection with the filming equipment located at the TV compound easier, we have designed and installed all the terminations and active devices in a special container to allow the best connectivity to and from the stadium, in addition to having implemented control solutions to verify the functionality of both the active and passive components that make up the system infrastructure. The new solution, therefore, allows for the creation of productions that are significant from the point of view of narrative and technological complexity, favoring a rapid process of installing the filming stations as well as everything necessary from the point of view of reporting and interviews”.

New setup

The new setup has created 23 new shooting positions inside the stadium, plus an additional termination point for the cabling that is inside the container in the TV compound.
The cabling of the shooting positions was created with SMPTE cables and dark fibre for all positions, and active equipment was installed in some positions, both for the transport of video signals and audio signals. Finally, for some of these positions, copper connections were also created, to be considered only and exclusively as a reserve system. The system was also designed to allow a good degree of scalability, to guarantee a possible temporary expansion, should it be necessary to implement large-scale shooting configurations.

“There’s more,” adds Francesco Donato, “the new infrastructure was created in such a way that it will eventually be possible to carry out television production also in “reverse” mode and therefore, if required, it would be possible to carry out two simultaneous productions with great advantage from a commercial point of view, since the visibility of the sponsors would be doubled”.

EMG Italy, as project manager, carried out all the engineering of the project and meticulously followed the physical implementation carried out by CRV Sistemi di Nicola Carvelli, with the contribution of Professional Show which supplied the active components of the system.

Some numbers of the system:
• 30 km of cable between SMPTE and Dark Fiber
• 60 SMPTE camera points
• 200 dark fiber connections
• 82 SDI to Fiber and Fiber to SDI video trunks
• 210 Audio to fiber and fiber to audio
• 30 trunks with media converters

Double safety

“One of the fundamental objectives of this project”, adds Simone Sofia, Technical Resources Manager who personally followed the implementation, “was to guarantee the total safety of the system, which we wanted to be truly double and complete.
This means that first of all the cable routes between the shelter and the wall box were studied in particular, taking care to prepare dedicated passages and avoiding crossing old cable ducts. Furthermore, there was particular attention to the redundancy of the electrical supply, so that any event can take place without the slightest risk of discontinuity in the service.
The power supply, in fact, is double and is supplied to the shelter and the wall boxes both by a protected network with an electrical cabin owned by the stadium, and by hooking up the generator, when it is used in events. The same applies to the prevention of malfunctions due to possible excessively high temperatures. The shelter where all the connections end, positioned in the TV compound, operates at constant and controlled temperature and humidity.
All the wall boxes are also equipped with internal ventilation that manages and maintains constant the temperature, when necessary, in order to safeguard the machines contained even in the case of beating sun, avoiding possible blockages of the equipment due to excessively high temperatures.
All this is managed by EMG both in maintenance and in daily management, entrusted to a technical supervisor who, in addition to assisting the broadcasters in setting up the events, coordinates the entire active part of the system from a dedicated control station inside the shelter”.

The advantages: reliability and speed of set-up

The new system provides a great advantage both in the set-up phase and in terms of operation, then, last but not least, it is completely modular and adjustable both in terms of use and in terms of flexibility.
Francesco Donato concludes: “I would like to remind you that this new configuration also prepares the sports facility to facilitate a possible technological implementation, to develop “on-venue” communication and entertainment strategies and to promote new service systems, such as the adoption of 5G technological solutions that allow the capture and dissemination of special content dedicated to the entertainment of the public”.

© 2024 Presspool PressOffice RobertoLandini

EMG’s Fabio Guadagnini on an intense start to the football season in Italy

Fabio Guadagnini, CCO at EMG Italy, says: “It has been a really intense period because, in addition to our harmonization process and the activities with the group on a European level already very demanding by themselves, most of the production activities and the related contracts reached their natural expiration: we enthusiastically faced a renewal cycle that went in parallel with the world of football, Serie A and Serie B in particular”.

“We have found ourselves operating on many fronts, with Serie A, Serie B, Lega Pro, Champions League, with Amazon and DAZN, partnerships of which we are very proud.”

He continues: “We are active in various sports: cycling, skiing, basketball, volleyball, mountain biking, superbike, so it was really very intense. But we are satisfied, and we know that we are only at the start of a journey with our customers who will always have the maximum commitment from us. We’ve had excellent results, with a group of great quality, both on the company level as a whole and on the top management, guided by CEO Claudio Cavallotti, CTO Francesco Donato, CBO Davide Furlan and COO Stefano Nicoletti. A nice mix of experience, modernity and a sense of innovation.”

Football

In addition to all the live graphics for Serie A, dedicated spaces – studios and galleries – have been created for three very important organizations on Italian and international level, Lega Serie A, DAZN and Amazon, enhanced with the latest technologies. These have been integrated into the original spaces of 3Zero2TV in Cologno Monzese.

Guadagnini continues: “In football, we have just finalized a new studio for DAZN, flanked by two very modern control rooms with HD and 4K HDR technology.

“And, on the subject of partnerships with broadcasters, we must mention the ones with Amazon, with Eurosport, in addition to the already consolidated relationship with Sky. All of this is obviously a source of great satisfaction, for the trust that such important players in sports entertainment are giving us”.

“For Amazon, we will produce Champions League matches at the stadium, and we have created dedicated spaces within Studio 2 in Cologno, from which all content related to the Champions League will be produced. We shot the European Super Cup as a test, and the first full production was the UEFA Europa League group draws. DAZN has become the most important player in Serie A and behind this success, there is a considerable production effort to which we have contributed. Sky continues to maintain its centrality in sport at 360-degrees and we are also happy for the projects underway with Mediaset on the entertainment front.”

New studios

Inside the historic 3Zero2TV headquarters, the new studio dedicated to DAZN offers different shooting sets and various options to make it dynamic and able to interact as needed. It also features two contiguous, high-tech control rooms, which are able to operate simultaneously. All studios, including the Eurosport production spaces, are scalable to operate in 4K UHD HDR, as well as HD.

Still on Serie A, EMG Italy is managing the 4K host production for six clubs: AC Milan, Inter Milan, Atalanta, Empoli, Genoa and Sampdoria. For this purpose, we are using our own EMG trucks, one coming from Global Production’s fleet and a second one coming directly from France: Nova 103. This OB Van was specifically created for the European Championship, and it will be strategically used at San Siro stadium.

Also for Serie A, EMG Italy obtained the renewal of the agreement for all graphics production, as well as a three-year contracts for Inter TV and Milan TV which are very relevant football channels in Milan.

Serie B

“On Serie B,” Guadagnini says, “agreements have been signed that guarantee all graphics production for another three years, furthermore we will take care of all television production in partnership with Sky, which has acquired the rights of Serie B. So, in addition to carrying out all the booking and planning activities, we provide three areas of activity, reporting, administration and production.  It should be noted that in Serie B the quality standard has been high and has risen to a minimum of eight cameras following Standard A.”

Lega Pro

Lega Pro has also renewed its contract with EMG Italy for another two years of production on about 1,260 games for Eleven Sports. The novelty is that they will no longer be made in a single camera configuration but in bi-tri-camera or penta-camera for Rai Sport, and on at least four games per weekend in tri-camera for Sky.

All the production and the organizational aspects are the prerogatives of EMG Italia which, in partnership with the president of Lega Pro Francesco Ghirelli and the new vice president Marcel Vulpis, is trying to further raise the quality output and bring a greater number of cameras to the championship.

Wider portfolio

In addition to football, EMG’s commitment in Italy continues with the Superbike World Championships and Dorna as a big partner. Cycling is also joining with the Mountain Bike World Championships in Val di Sole and the European Road Cycling Championships in Trento.

Guadagnini concludes: “This is an excellent order obtained by working at a European group level with EMG, which allowed us to win the production of the European Road Cycling Championships held in Trento. We are exhausted but satisfied, in a period in which we are already in action with the European Volleyball Championships, the ski season will soon begin in which – as always – we are very strong with the production of the World Cup races and for the other disciplines.”

© 2021 Presspool PressOffice RobertoLandini

The wait was finally over as the Supercars Championships returned for the BP Ultimate Sydney SuperSprint on Saturday 27 June. The Sydney MotorSport Park SuperSprint featured seven time Champion Jamie Whincup’s long-awaited 500th career Supercars race.

There was no rest over the weekend as the Gravity Media team provided all the technical broadcast facilities with almost 12 hours of practice, qualifying and racing broadcast live and advertisement free exclusively on Fox Sports 506 across the two-day event.

Drivers arrived in Sydney on Friday 26 June to conduct team track walks, which were carried out in line with COVID-19 government regulations. The weekend saw Nick Percat’s first win with Brad Jones Racing which didn’t go unnoticed as he now holds a strong lead as Sydney’s BP Ultimate Performer. You can now watch the highlights from across the weekend here.

Gravity Media facilitates a lot of live streaming for Telstra, the well-known Australian telecoms and technology company. Last week, for example, we produced two live streams for the client – one for International Women’s Day and one for CEO All Hands, an all-staff communication from the company’s management team. For the latter, a panel of senior managers was convened, answering questions from the physical audience as well as online viewers via Yammer. 

Production for each involved deploying crews to Telstra’s Sydney and Melbourne in-house theatres, which are connected via a two-way fibre video link. The Gravity Media crews switch vision in each, and output to a live stream that plays on Telstra’s intranet. Each show is sent on Telstra’s Digital Video Network (DVN) back to our Production Centre in Sydney, where the Gravity Media team records, uploads and outputs reference files back to the client.

The team is also currently in pre-production for a one-hour business digest show called LIVEnterpise, which will go live on 24 March. This will be produced at the Studio T setup at Telstra’s HQ, which Gravity Media manages on the client’s behalf. 

This facilities management arrangement involves Gravity Media overseeing the technical operation of the studio, where we provide crew and production management services whenever Telstra has a broadcast production requirement. Between productions – having provided the technical scope for the studio’s original build – we keep a close eye on the equipment to make sure everything is kept in perfect working order.

A senior trio from Gravity Media will be at the 2019 SportsPro conference in Madrid next week. Ed Tischler (Managing Director), Barry Revels (Business Development Manager) and John Henry Williams (Head of Projects) will be meeting a number of clients and contacts to discuss the future of sports broadcasting – and how Gravity Media can help you with your next production.

Sport is in Gravity Media’s DNA. We’ve been a key player in sports broadcasting for three decades, and we’re proud to count FIFA, UEFA, the ITF, ATP Media and the IOC among our many sporting clients. We’ve also been pioneering direct-to-consumer transmission since it first hit the market, as well as many other broadcast innovations in sectors ranging from eSports motor racing to Grand Slam tennis.

The SportsPro OTT Summit runs from 19 to 21 November 2019 at the Meliá Castilla in Madrid, Spain. If you’d like to arrange a meeting with one of the Gravity Media team, please email enquiries@gravitymedia.com

Daniil Medvedev continued his rich vein of form at the 2019 Shanghai Masters, defeating world number 5 Alexander Zverev 6-4 6-1 in the final. 

Medvedev’s win marked something of a changing of the guard in Shanghai. Since Nikolay Davydenko won the tournament in 2009, only three players have lifted the trophy in the past decade. Defending champion Novak Djokovic has won the title four times, Roger Federer was hoping to win his third Shanghai title, and Andy Murray, a three-time past champion, was just happy to be playing as he continues on his comeback trail. 

Gearhouse Broadcast was on hand to support transmission in China, providing robotic cameras and a hi-motion Sony HDC4300. We also set up the edit facilities, gallery and audio control room for ATP Media’s World Feed, supplying a Sony vision mixer, LAWO audio console and EVS XT3 servers.

Gravity Media (as Gearhouse Broadcast), a supplier of technical facilities, crew and services used to capture the world’s most watched content, has completed the delivery of two studios for the Globo Group in central Moscow for its international football coverage this summer. It has also delivered additional audio/video signal routing, standards conversion, distribution and QC monitoring facilities for TV Globo within the International Broadcast Centre (IBC).

The Brazilian rights holder commissioned Gravity Media to provide it with TV equipment rental, systems integration and local tech support services for its studios in Red Square, where it has concentrated its main production facilities around the World Cup. The two studios are connected by fiber optics links to Globo’s Free TV and Pay TV  broadcast centres in Rio de Janeiro, so that its programming can be cut together remotely by its production crews back in Brazil, and thus achieving significant efficiency savings.

Within the main studio is a complex VR environment that is being used to illustrate the 6 daily network news shows and 2 weekly programs aired live from Red Square. The studio has no physical scenic elements, and the presenters interact with a variety of 3D and 2D graphics elements that cover the main events for each day of the tournament. The graphics are created daily in Rio, so as to always maintain a fresh look, and are exported to Moscow through a robust data pipe using file acceleration protocols. To bring Globo’s creative vision to life within a VR space has taken careful planning and even required the installation of two specialist high-resolution large LED screens that feature a fine 1.2mm pitch. Stype camera tracking technology is being used to provide the lens and positional data for the cameras, which is then fed into Avid’s Maestro Graphics solution along with the video output of the 6 camera set up to create the VR environment.

“In the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games, Globo surprised everyone with its studio in the center of the Olympic Park, featuring virtual and AR graphics that were both informative and eye-catching. As you’d imagine, the World Cup is a huge event for Brazilians, and it’s important that we deliver to our viewers a visual experience that represents a substantial evolution from the Rio 2016 design,” said Jose Manuel Mariño Globo’s Director of Technology for Sports. “We were very impressed with the level of detail Gearhouse went into with its initial proposal. It also has a proven track record when it comes to delivering remote production solutions at high profile events like this.”

Ed Tischler, managing director of Gearhouse Broadcast UK said: “On this project we’ve assumed the role of technical partner to Globo, bringing together industry-leading technology and expertise to deliver cutting-edge studio build, graphics and remote production solutions. Our relationships with manufacturers, access to kit and skilled personnel combined with the ability to get large shipments in and out of challenging locations has proved key to successfully delivering this project.”

UEFA has selected Gearhouse Broadcast to deliver their Technical Operations Centres (TOCs) and Cable Interconnection Room (CIR) as part of their comprehensive installation at each of the ten EURO 2016 venues located in Paris, Saint-Denis, Bordeaux, Lens, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, Saint-Etienne and Toulouse. Gearhouse broadcast has also provided a special cameras and EVS slow-motion operations facility at each venue.

At each TOC, Gearhouse Broadcast has installed around 100km of high quality fibre cable. Each TOC is responsible for distribution of the live stadium – or ‘world’ – feed from each venue to the IBC for worldwide distribution. The venue TOC also passes the feed to the nearby CIR where it is distributed direct to UEFA broadcast partners with an on-venue unilateral presence. The CIR is a cable interface hub, which acts as the central demarcation point at each venue.

The stadium special cameras facility is responsible for receiving feeds from the UEFA helicopter camera, in-goal cameras, handheld radio frequency cameras and the stadium ‘beauty’ shots located high above each stadium. These feeds are racked and then distributed to UEFA’s multilateral and FANtertainment outside broadcast (OB) vans. The space also supplies all of the racks and monitoring for the on-site EVS replay area that houses all of the XT servers used for the live production.

UEFA EURO 2016 runs from 10 June to 10 July in France and features 24 of Europe’s leading international football teams.

Gearhouse Broadcast’s Project Solutions Division has been appointed by UEFA to provide high definition technical facilities for each of the eight Technical Operation Centres at the UEFA EURO 2012™.

Briefed by UEFA, broadcast solutions provider Gearhouse Broadcast will supply the entire technical infrastructure at each of the Technical Operation Centres (TOCs) based at all eight stadia.  There are four stadia situated in Poland; Gdansk, Warsaw, Poznan and Wroclaw and four stadia in the Ukraine; Kiev, Kharkiv, Lviv and Donetsk.

Kevin Moorhouse, Chief Operating Officer at Gearhouse Broadcast explains, “Each Technical Operation Centre comprises seven broadcast racks of equipment, with a total of fifty-six racks across the eight venues. Each facility contains a 128×128 Snell router, Imagine Communications glue products, Sony monitors, Tektronix waveform monitors, Evertz SPG’s and multiviewers and a Riedel communications matrix. The TOC racks were all built and tested at our UK Headquarters in April prior to shipment to Poland and Ukraine.”

In addition Gearhouse Broadcast will also be providing Commentary and Information Systems RF distribution at each of the eight stadia. The technical infrastructure is the provision of a ten channel RF modulator systems, amplifiers, mixers and RF splitters.  Each commentary area will allow for eighty to one hundred commentary positions for commentators from all over the world.  Also within the commentary area Gearhouse Broadcast will provide RF feeds for the printed press positions for international media.

In terms of personnel Gearhouse Broadcast will provide each of the eight TOC’s with four Broadcast Engineers and two Wiremen.  To staff the RF Installation, Gearhouse Broadcast will provide a Senior Engineer and two Broadcast Engineers to carry out the installations at the Polish venues, whilst another crew with the same staff will carry out the installations at the Ukrainian venues.

Andre Nel, Broadcast Engineering and Technical Manager for UEFA TV Production said, “Providing Broadcasters at each venue with the latest technological solutions to fit their production and technical operational needs is vital during an event such as the UEFA EURO 2012™. Moving between venues and fast reliable interconnection and set up is of the utmost importance to Broadcasters and Gearhouse Broadcast delivered these services to a very high standard and quality.

Gearhouse Broadcast has provided the TOC installation solutions for UEFA EURO 2004™, UEFA EURO 2008™, FIFA World Cup Germany 2006™and FIFA World Cup South Africa 2010™.