UEFA’s newest national-team competition, the 2021 UEFA Nations League Final was held in Italy from Wednesday 6 to Sunday 10 October, and was contested by the four group winners of Nations League A – Belgium, France, Italy and Spain.
Gravity Media was at the heart of the action on site at the San Siro Stadium in Milan and the Juventus Stadium in Turin to deliver the final tournament of the 2020–21 edition of the UEFA Nations League. The Gravity Media team built and designed the Technical Operation Centres at each stadium, deployed commentary facilities, and captured content for FAN TV.
To find out how we can help with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com
For the massive puzzle that was the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, one component that Gravity Media provided was commentary for the Seven Network coverage.
This apparent simple connection through cables, signals, and technical equipment via Gravity Media’s studios and control rooms takes months of planning to ensure this link is not obstructed by the restrictions of time, distance, or the global pandemic.
In addition to months of setting up this technical network, Gravity Media used rehearsals and consultation to fine tune the commentary studio schedules and positions in the days leading up to the first event. Each team has their own requirements for space, vision, and data to suit their own ways of working.
To cover any situation arising from the ever-changing regulations regarding COVID-19 restrictions, commentary was provided from three primary sources: Tokyo, Melbourne, and Sydney.
However, there were even more variations due to travel restrictions. For example, cycling commentator Phil Liggett who worked from The Production Centre in Chiswick in the UK was seamlessly integrated into RBC (Remote Broadcast Centre) Off–Tube Booth’s in Melbourne, Australia.
Liggett was able to watch live feeds of the track from Tokyo, along with his co-commentators, Scott McGrory and Anna Mears who were also watching the live feeds in Melbourne. With the ability to watch the same feeds and communicate with each other from separate locations, their commentary was delivered together live on the Seven Network channel. To the viewers’ ears, they may as well have been seated side by side on location.
All throughout the games, links between Melbourne, Sydney, and Tokyo were pushing audio and vision back and forth between studio hosts, venue hosts and commentators, all operating simultaneously.
The amazing minds behind the technical expertise to set up these intricate facilities, along with the incredible management of commentary schedules across multiple locations with ever-changing event timetables is just another reason why Gravity Media is at the forefront of major broadcast solutions.
To find out how Gravity Media can help you with your next production, email enquiries@gravitymedia.com.
Switzerland recently played host to the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games, which ran from 9 to 22 January, and which saw 1,872 young athletes from 79 countries take part in 16 disciplines across eight sports.
The action took place in and around Lausanne, on the shores of Lake Geneva and in the nearby Vaud Alps. Gravity Media was engaged by The Olympic Channel to run a remote transmission suite for the event from Madrid.
The Youth Olympic Channel covered a range of events including Figure Skating, Speed Skating, Ice Hockey, Curling, Slopestyle, Halfpipe, Big Air and Slalom Alpine Skiing.
Our Madrid team (Director, PA, EVS operator and GFX op) looked after four feeds, relayed from Lausanne to Madrid where commentary was implemented. The broadcast went live between 09:30 and 10:00 each day with a mixture of live and pre-recorded material, with Gravity Media overseeing the edits and ensuring smooth transition between events.
Our thanks go to everyone at The Olympic Channel for making it such an enjoyable project to work on. We were all made to feel very welcome, and we’ve all come away delighted to have contributed to the most successful Winter Youth Olympics ever.
The Gearhouse Broadcast Australia team recently supported the EJ Whitten 2019 Legends game at AAMI Park in Melbourne. Held on Friday 30 August, the game saw some of the greatest AFL champions take to field alongside a number of celebrities to compete in a state of origin challenge to raise funds for the EJ Whitten Foundation.
EJ Whitten is considered by many as one of the most complete footballers ever to play the game, and he was also a larger-than-life character loved for his caring nature, unique character and common touch. Following his early passing in 1995, the EJ Whitten Foundation was set up to raise funds and awareness for prostate cancer. Since its inception, the Foundation has raised over $13.5 million for men’s health programs and prostate cancer research and treatment – contributing to the EJ Whitten Foundation Prostate Cancer Research Centre at Epworth and a number of other research facilities and treatment centres.
Gearhouse Broadcast is delighted to have supported the 2019 Legends game, deploying its ground-breaking SportsCom Umpire communication system free of charge. SportsCom provides communications between on-field and off-field match officials, generating content to be used in the broadcast mix, as well as providing seamless communications between the ground and remote match officials potentially based anywhere in the world. The Gearhouse team included Andrew Henderson and Jess May.
~ Flypacks deployed at three venues including UHD solution for final in Beijing ~
Watford, UK, 11 September 2019 – Gearhouse Broadcast, the Gravity Media-owned supplier of technical facilities, crew and services used to capture the world’s most watched content, is providing a range of facilities to FIBA, through is entity FIBA Media, for its host broadcast of the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019. These include the deployment of Gearhouse’s Flypack portable production systems at three of the eight official venues, with a UHD solution being used in Beijing where the Final will be held. The 32-team tournament takes place across China between 31 August – 15 September.
In what FIBA Media describes as its biggest and most ambitious TV, digital and social media coverage global production plan ever, this World Cup marks a momentous change in the production, coverage, presentation and multi-platform availability of the event. It’s featuring a host of innovations, including augmented reality, referee-audio, and a broadcast SuperFeed.
Gearhouse Broadcast is also providing host commentary services for FIBA Media at six of the eight venues. This enables rights owners to deliver bespoke broadcasts to their audiences – either on site at the arena or remotely using real-time audio-over-IP networking technology.
Ed Tischler, Managing Director at Gearhouse Broadcast (UK) said: “With viewer expectations so high these days, the pressure is on to make productions stand out by delivering a large amount of quality coverage across a multitude of formats. Rights owners like FIBA that are looking to further enhance the quality of their coverage are turning to Gearhouse Broadcast because of its reputation for innovation and its track record of working with host broadcasters at the biggest events.”
Gravity Media will be showcasing the latest complex live broadcast facilities and production services it offers across its four core brands – Gearhouse Broadcast, Hyperactive Broadcast, Input Media and Chief Entertainment – on stand 10.B39 at IBC2019 in Amsterdam.
The UEFA Super Cup is an annual football match contested by the reigning champions of the two main European club competitions: the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League. That meant another Battle of Britain for home supporters last night, as European Champions Liverpool took on Europa League winners Chelsea.
Once again, Istanbul proved a happy hunting ground for Liverpool, as they beat the Blues 5–4 on penalties after the teams couldn’t be separated after 120 minutes of normal play. It also marked the end of a crazy week for Liverpool’s new keeper Adrian, who was unemployed just nine days ago, and is now a Super Cup winner.
A team from Gearhouse Broadcast UK was onsite in Istanbul too, setting up the Technical Operations Centre (TOC), as well as a full host commentary system and FanTV facilities.
As with the UEFA Champions League and Europa League finals, we built the TOC around an IP core, which involved a lot less cabling than traditional systems – making the installation quicker, simpler and more versatile. An IP core also means greater scalability and decentralised resources, not to mention future-proofing the production to format changes.
While live events are made by outstanding athletic performances and the atmosphere created by the spectators, they are often best remembered by the skilful, sometimes humorous, and occasionally even poetic, abilities of the professional commentator.
No football fan will ever forget Kenneth Wolstenholme’s immortal “… they think it’s all over. It is now!”, nor Martin Tyler’s more recent ‘Aguero moment’.
At Gearhouse Broadcast, we like to think we’re playing a small part in keeping these legendary memories coming. To complement our equipment rental, OB and systems integration offerings, we’ve developed a complete commentary infrastructure service for live sports events.
It’s a versatile commentary solution that gives rights-holders the ability to deliver fully bespoke broadcasts to their audiences either on-site at the stadium or from a remote location – while keeping down production costs.
The service uses real-time audio-over-IP networking technology, giving us the ability to provide a fully flexible IP contribution network that cuts out the need to patch in each commentator manually via ageing ISDN lines. In short, our fully customisable commentary service keeps everyone on the ball.
Take a bow, son.
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™.
