As the curtain fell on an unforgettable UEFA Women’s EURO, Gravity Media proudly celebrated its role, on behalf of UEFA, in delivering global live coverage of this landmark sporting event.

Technical teams from Gravity Media, representing four different countries, collaborated to deploy outside broadcast (OB) units at seven of the eight venues across Switzerland. By combining cutting-edge technology with exceptional talent, Gravity Media successfully produced the tournament for UEFA, culminating in the final, which saw England crowned champions.

Many of the matches were delivered by crews with a strong female presence – including guarantees and department heads – marking another important step in Gravity Media’s ongoing commitment to gender diversity and inclusion in the broadcast industry.

Gravity Media’s specialist camera team also supplied in-goal mini cameras for the host broadcast, while the radio frequency team provided crews and transmission links for Steadicams across seven of the tournament’s stadiums.

Additionally, Gravity Media delivered selected unilateral services on behalf of visiting broadcast partners during UEFA Women’s EURO 2025, including both fully and partially equipped commentary positions.

The Gravity Media teams worked together across all the host cities, led by Chrissie Collins, UK Head of OB Client Delivery, who commented:

“This has been a true testament to our global collaboration. Our teams have worked seamlessly across all the host cities to provide world-class coverage of this incredible tournament. It’s been especially inspiring to see so many talented women at the heart of our facilities’ delivery, and I’m incredibly proud to be part of such a formidable and passionate team.”

United Kingdom
NOVA 118 was deployed from the UK to multiple stadiums in Switzerland. Serving as a central hub and designed for maximum flexibility and efficiency, the OB truck allowed Gravity Media’s technical teams to deliver consistent coverage throughout the tournament.

Netherlands
From the Netherlands, Gravity Media deployed NOVA 106 and NOVA 107 to three stadiums with a dedicated technical team including camera operators, senior vision and EVS guarantees, communications engineers, audio technicians, riggers and a travelling team of three shaders.

Italy
NOVA 103 was stationed in Bern, staffed by a ten-person crew. Gravity Media’s Italian team successfully covered four matches, including three group-stage games and the quarter-final between Spain and Switzerland.

Belgium
Gravity Media Belgium contributed a travelling team comprising four ENG camera operators, two engineers and one audio assistant, working throughout Switzerland. Meanwhile, NOVA 102 was on-site at St. Gallen, staffed with a six-person crew.

Eamonn Curtin, Chief Commercial Officer, commented:

“Our work at the Women’s EURO has been a powerful reflection of our international capability, collaborative spirit, and technical excellence. As we step into a bold new era with our refreshed brand identity, we are proud to support iconic events like the UEFA Women’s EURO with the dedication and quality that define our teams around the world.”

This tournament marks the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Gravity Media, as the company continues to expand its global footprint and shape the future of production, content, media services and facilities.

Het gaat onder meer om TOC’s, faciliteiten voor host broadcasters, RF-faciliteiten en Fan Engagement-zones.

EMG / Gravity Media gaat namens de UEFA geselecteerde broadcast-oplossingen leveren, waaronder Technical Operations Centres (TOC) en host broadcast-faciliteiten voor de 2024 UEFA European Football Championships, die plaatsvinden in 10 Duitse steden van 14 juni – 14 juli 2024.

Vóór de fusie leverden zowel EMG als Gravity Media jarenlang met succes technische productieoplossingen voor de UEFA EURO. Tijdens het toernooi van dit jaar zal de nieuwe gecombineerde wereldwijde organisatie van EMG / Gravity Media voortbouwen op deze ervaring om de TOC’s en FANTV-oplossing te leveren op elk van de tien locaties. EMG / Gravity Media zal het team en de technische middelen leveren om de gigantische schermervaring in de stadions voor, tijdens en na de wedstrijden te leveren.

De groep zal vier OB trucks leveren, inclusief RF apparatuur (host Steadicam en handheld RF camera) in twee van de tien stadions voor de wedstrijden in Keulen en Düsseldorf.

Daarnaast zal EMG / Gravity Media group live helikopterbeelden in 1080p HDR vanuit de lucht maken van alle wedstrijden van de EURO, van de opening tot de finale in Berlijn. De zes helikopters, allemaal uitgerust met de nieuwste UHD HDR gestabiliseerde camera gimbals, worden ondersteund en bediend door zeer ervaren operators. Omdat duurzaamheid een prioriteit is voor de groep en het toernooi, zullen alle helikopters uit de regio, inclusief piloten en technici, het EMG / Gravity Media’s CO2-compensatie-initiatief volgen.

Eamonn Curtin, Global Client Director van EMG / Gravity Media: “De krachtige combinatie van onze uiteenlopende expertise, apparatuur en technologie zal ervoor zorgen dat elke situatie wordt gedekt voor dit prestigieuze wereldwijde evenement. Omroepen hebben tegenwoordig behoefte aan flexibiliteit en keuze, of het nu gaat om budget, formaat of projectomvang, en we zijn ervan overtuigd dat we door de EURO’s kunnen laten zien dat we een totaalleverancier zijn van onze diensten voor elke productie, of die nu op locatie of op afstand plaatsvindt.

I joined Gravity Media in March 2021, and so far it has been non-stop. I’ve worked on the Welsh Elections, the Europa League Final and the six weeks of the Euros, as well as the UEFA Super Cup and the 2021 UEFA Nations League Finals. Gravity Media is one of the few companies that pioneers the use of IP, which is what excited me about joining the company, and thanks to my previous experience ‒ working on the integration and build of the UK’s first IP trucks ‒ I’m allocated to many of the IP and SDI-based projects.  

Every single job I’ve done, right down to the cards in the glue frames, has been completely different. A bespoke system rolls out of the door every single time. Each project begins with the client brief, and from that I will establish what needs to be delivered: which formats we’ll use, the type of conversion necessary, how to integrate audio into that. Then the system needs to be decided on, and the project engineer, head of engineering and director of services will discuss the client’s requirements to agree on the appropriate kit. Assembling the kit takes time. If a job is big, the number of individual pieces of kit required runs into the thousands. For the Super Cup, the kit alone totalled 1,300 items transported to site in a 40ft articulated lorry ‒ and that was just a medium-sized project; a single football match.  

The next step is to build the system, which involves lots of screen time creating rack layouts, paperwork, the cable schedules and kit lists. I will work with both the Asset and Warehouse teams and, once everything required is booked out, then it’s time to build the test rig. For the Super Cup Technical Operations Centre (TOC), I looked after the technical workbook, which we used to build all the systems and make sure the rigs were assembled and tested before shipping. Time-wise, normally you get a couple of weeks to prepare for a TOC.  

All the rigs travel pre-built, so everything goes out as it is ‒ the router rack, the sound rack with Codecs and Lawo core ‒ it is all rigged and tested and travels in a flight case with that rack. For the Super Cup, it was a five-day rig; the kit landed in Belfast on match day minus eight, and I had to be ready to hand over by lunchtime on match day minus two. But that wasn’t the end of my duties. The role of Project Engineer has three elements: rigging engineer, support engineer, and team manager. It’s at handover point that my role moves from rigging engineer to onsite support and team manager. I have to handle the distribution of feeds to the unilateral broadcast partners (UBPs) and all the feeds to QC, which is continuous. If anything breaks or there are any faults, it is down to me to find it and fix it if it originated with us. In addition to this, I am running the onsite crew; I must look after them, keep everyone fed, watered and happy, and make sure their travel arrangements are sorted ‒ all the personnel aspects. Most of it is routine, and the only crisis management I’ve had to do so far was COVID-19-related ‒ test results did not return, so retesting needed to be done, which meant flights back home were delayed.  

When a project involves flypacks, you know the job is going to be a minimum of about two weeks, and can be anything up to eight. We fit our downtime around that. We’re incredibly busy at the moment, so it’s more on than off, but we’re all just pleased the business is doing so well. It is always full-on during a project, but that’s what I thrive on and, onsite, team spirit is what keeps everyone going. We provide each other with a support network onsite, which keeps morale buoyant – and delivering an outstanding result for the client is an incredible feeling. Over the six weeks we did on the Euros – across the 11 UEFA TOCs, BBC Sport and the ESPN output – Gravity Media had 100% clean to air ‒ you can’t top that! 

It’s exciting to be working on such high-profile events – particularly the Euros, which had such an incredible, positive impact on the country for a few weeks. You’re working of course, so you can’t fully get into in like the fans at home, but for the Euros, I was working in the International Broadcast Centre (IBC), doing the remote operation for ESPN. We were sited quite close to two British areas, with a Spanish broadcasting team just down from us and an Italian one across the other side. Even though I was quite remote from the action, it was easy to tell how the game was going from which group was screaming when their team scored a goal.   

My first six months have been a bit of a whirlwind, but I’ve been loving what I’m doing. Moving forward, I’d like to continue running projects and designing systems, and whatever happens, I want to remain on a technical, practical project management route. One of the things I like about working here is that there is no chance of losing touch with engineering even when moving into a managerial role. As a vision engineer and EIC (engineer in charge), I’m always heavily involved in the engineering side of things. We have other great people dedicated to production account management and technical project management; it’s brilliant to have so much resource at our disposal, which is ultimately there for the benefit of our clients.   

To speak to a colleague about how we can help with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com. 

 

Gravity Media, a leading global provider of complex live broadcast facilities and production services to content owners, creators and distributors, utilised Canford manufactured termination panels and custom racking throughout its Euro 2020 Technical Operation Centres (TOC), broadcasting the tournament to an estimated live audience of 4.7 billion. 

Canford has manufactured and supplied critical broadcast solutions for decades. Established in 1976, the company is regarded throughout the global broadcast industry as ‘the supplier of choice’ for custom metalwork, fibre termination, breakout, and interconnect solutions.

Based in Washington, Tyne & Wear, UK, Canford has amassed an unrivalled level of experience over its 45-years. The company has a reputation for high-quality, precision-made product. This has seen an increasing number of leading providers of complex live sports broadcast, facilities and production services turning to Canford manufacturing for robust and reliable, mission-critical components.

One such company is long-standing Canford customer Gravity Media. Gravity Media supplies high-quality production facilities and project management support for large-scale live and near-live events, locally or on location anywhere in the world. Whether it’s a single venue or multi-site broadcast, Gravity Media’s comprehensive solutions include designing, building and integrating International Broadcast Centres, Master Control Rooms, Technical Operation Centres (TOC), Commentary Control Rooms, Production Control Rooms and Media Centres.

Gravity Media supplied eleven TOCs, distributed over nine European countries for the recent Euro 2020 tournament.

Simon Nicholls, Gravity Media’s Director of Engineering in the UK explains more about the role of Technical Operation Centres: “Traditionally in big events such as the Euros, World Cup, Olympics etc, every signal that would go to or come from a Venue would do so via the TOC. It’s the Venue gateway and how signals travel between it and the International Broadcast Centre (IBC). The IBC is a dedicated temporary facility that hosts the Main Host broadcaster and any broadcast partner (BBC, ITV, ZDF, etc) who may have a presence there. Generally speaking, all program outputs are sent to the rest of the world from the IBC and this is the final piece in the transmission puzzle.

The TOC plays an important role, where signals are monitored for technical QC but also distributed to broadcast partners who may also like to broadcast from a Venue (BBC and ITV at Wembley for example). Essentially any broadcast of a Euros football match will have been through a Gravity TOC and thusly through a Canford termination panel!”

Canford has supported Gravity Media for many years. Engineering teams have established a collaborative approach to designing custom solutions, drawing on the substantial experience within both companies. Euro 2020 was no exception. In addition to Canford Termination Panels, there was a custom requirement.

Gavin Drake, Canford Production Manager – Portland explains: “On this occasion, the specialist involvement from Canford Portland was a requirement to design and manufacture a fleet of robust, fully welded 42U equipment racks. Initially required for Euro 2020, these ‘Transport Proof’ racks would eventually be incorporated in other Gravity Media projects.

Canford design engineers spent time on-site with Gravity Media to facilitate the development and ultimately to approve a prototype. The resulting racks had to be strong enough to protect expensive kit during international transit and movement on-site.

The process moved at pace thanks to the experienced we’d gained on an earlier project. Canford had manufactured ‘The Beast’ – a bespoke product that not only provided a means of transporting and protecting sophisticated routing technology, but also incorporated patching for rapid termination and on-site set-up by Gravity Media engineers.

All design aspects were carefully considered. What might appear to be small details can make a big difference – such as doorway clearance and specifying wheels suitable for all anticipated terrain.

COVID disrupted the tournament, eventually delaying it until 2021 but Canford was able to keep going throughout the entire lockdown and delivered the finished racks well ahead of kick-off.”

Testament to Gravity Media’s experience in handling major live event broadcasts and to the professionalism of its skilled team, the entire Euro 2020 tournament was broadcast without a single TOC related on-air glitch. That was 51 matches with eighteen feeds per match, including the Live Stadium Feed (LSF) – also known as the ‘world feed’.

In total, Euro 2020 matches were shown by over 130 global broadcast partners, present in over 200 territories around the world, with an estimated total live event audience of 4.7 billion during the tournament.

An average of 100 million live television viewers were expected to tune in to each match, with nearly 300 million expected to watch the final live. Throughout the tournament, the host broadcast team were expected to produce a total of 3,500 hours of content.

An estimated 44 million UK viewers tuned in to see the final – Ok, so we all know the result of that one…….

Commenting on Canford’s involvement, Nicholls added: “Canford move mountains for us when we need it. It is nice to be in a position where we can thank you and your hardworking team for making big projects like this come alive.”

Gravity Media’s work at the Euro 2020 finals was nothing short of astounding. Tournament stats give some understanding of the sheer scale and complexities of the project:

That’s a very impressive 180,700m of cable in total across the whole project.

On Sunday 6 June, the UEFA Under 21 Euros final took place which saw Germany and Portugal battle it out.  

The Gravity Media team at The Production Centre in London delivered the digital edits and commentary for the final match where Germany U21’s won the title.  

Our flexible Production Centre in London offers full live production, whether on-site or as part of a hybrid remote configuration. A robust and agile broadcast facility that has fully redundant technical power for services to continue unaffected in the event of a local power loss. 

Ideal for fast turnaround rolling highlights edit for broadcast or digital, live streams, in-match clips for social and digital, as well as crafted highlights, along with features and traditional post-production. Robustly designed for delivery of live sport, it is equally capable of providing broadcast facilities for live events and other fast turnaround programming genres. 

To find out how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com 

With the UEFA Euro’s kicking off on Friday 11 June, Gravity Media featured in Adrian Pennington’s article in IBC 365 entitled UEFA Goes Remote At Scale For Euro 2020.  

The Euros were delayed by a year due to the global pandemic and are now taking place across four weeks. They are the first European Championship to be held across the continent, with 11 host cities in 11 different countries.  

Gravity Media has been tasked with implementing and managing signals, along with monitoring and quality control through technical operations centres at each venue through to the International Broadcasting Centre.  

The technical operations centres provided by Gravity Media will be supervising distribution of all UEFA on-site feeds, including those for Eurovision, UEFA broadcast partners and for VAR (Video Assistant Referee) – which is making its Euros debut.  

Gravity Media is delighted to be working with UEFA and its broadcast partners again, supporting what will undoubtedly be one of the biggest sporting events of the year. 

You can read the article in full here and to tind out more about our services at the Euros here. Email enquiries@gravitymedia.com to find out how we can help you with your next production.  

Gearhouse Broadcast, a leading supplier of specialist broadcast solutions, has installed unilateral facilities within the International Broadcast Centre (IBC) at Paris Expo Porte de Versailles in Paris for several leading rights holders including ITV which shares the UK’s rights for the tournament.

For this install, a redundant MADI network has been constructed to ensure a stable broadcasting environment. ITV uses this network to take incoming match feeds from the venues and add its own mix before sending them to London Studios for playout.

“Both in and outside of the IBC, the scale of what we’ve done for Euro 2016 is massive, but all the while we’ve had to ensure we stay on the right side of complex local regulations,” said Ed Tischler, head of projects at Gearhouse Broadcast. “There’s not many that could handle a job of this size, let alone to the high standards we’ve achieved.”

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

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 acquires 14 Alchemist HD SDI standards converters to answer broadcasters’ demands for HD coverage of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the UEFA Euro 2016 Football Championships.

Building upon its longstanding relationship with SAM, global rental house, SI and OB provider Gearhouse Broadcast has announced the purchase and availability of 14 Alchemist HD SDI converters for its customers. These are in strong demand by broadcasters for HD coverage of the upcoming Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil this summer and the UEFA Euro 2016 football championships being held in France in June. This recent purchase adds to Gearhouse’s existing fleet of nine Alchemist units, which now total 23.

Headquartered in the UK, Gearhouse Broadcast has been serving the broadcast market for 20 years with offices in Paris, Qatar, Australia and the United States. The Alchemist converter delivers unrivaled quality that puts Gearhouse ahead of its competition and gives its customers the best possible options within their HD productions. This is hugely impactful in a live sports production context.

Edward Tischler, Head of Projects at Gearhouse Broadcast commented: “We’ve used Alchemist for several years and we’re continually impressed with its clean and detailed format and framerate conversions. We’re delighted to continue our relationship with SAM. We’ve had a significant number of broadcasters contact us to rent Alchemist, and we expect that interest to grow as these two major sporting events draw closer.”

Alchemist Ph.C-HD provides broadcasters with a complete, one-box system solution that seamlessly converts between 1080p, HD, and SD broadcast standards and formats. It relies on SAM’s proprietary Ph.C motion estimation technology to deliver the best possible quality in a live broadcast environment.

Neil Maycock, EVP Marketing at SAM commented: “A great standards converter is essential to a live sports broadcast because the quality of the final broadcast output needs to be perfect. The fact that broadcasters around the world are entrusting their content to SAM’s Alchemist for HD coverage of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and the UEFA Euro 2016 football championships is a testament to the product’s performance and the stunning picture quality it generates. We’re delighted that working with Gearhouse ensures they are able to satisfy the demands of their customers and provide them with the high level of service their customers have come to rely on.”

International Broadcast Solutions provider Gearhouse Broadcast is to provide the multilateral and unilateral cable installation for the entire UEFA EURO 2012™ tournament.  The contract has been awarded by UEFA who is managing UEFA EURO 2012™ host broadcast operations directly.

The broadcast contract involves installing over 880 kilometres of cable across the eight stadium venues throughout the host nations of Poland and Ukraine.  Gearhouse Broadcast selected Draka cables and will be using a variety of cable types including Triax, Video, Audio, Cat 5, 12 core single mode fibres and SMPTE camera cable in varying lengths.

The cable installation is a huge project in terms of scale and commenced in April and will complete by 20th May. It will then take approximately 20 days to terminate around 100 kilometres of cable per venue with the various connectors. Two Wiremen per venue will be responsible for this termination and then all connections will be tested by the Technical Operation Centre Broadcast Engineers prior to any connections being made.

Andre Nel, Broadcast Engineering and Technical Manager for UEFA TV Production said, “Gearhouse Broadcast delivered the cable installation solutions for the UEFA EURO 2004™ and UEFA EURO 2008™ tournaments, so we were more than confident in their abilities to provide a first class cable installation and solution for the 2012 tournament”.

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™.