Are you ready to shout from the rooftops?

At Gravity Media, live sport is an integral part of our business. Gravity Media not only support the production and broadcast facilities of major sporting events, but they also support the construction of the stadia that makes those competitions possible.

With experience spanning decades – and almost every major sports event in existence – Gravity Media has become a world leader in designing stadium broadcast solutions fit for international federation standards. Gravity Media has provided services to events internationally, including most recently the World Cup in Qatar.

Working closely with sports associations, constructors, and contractors, the Gravity Media team is often involved from the outset of these major capital projects. Clients come to Gravity Media for comprehensive, end-to-end solutions comprising planning, consultancy, design, engineering, project management, installation, commissioning, training, maintenance, and aftercare.

Gravity Media’s aim is to future-proof our installations as far as possible, including fitting out venues for multiple legacy uses. The result being stadium clients are connected and fully prepared for content creation and distribution to global audiences both now and in years to come – be that for sport, music, or any other large-scale event.

Are you working on your next stadium construction in Saudi Arabia or the Middle East? Reach out to Gravity Media to find out how they can support you on your next project – enquiries@gravitymedia.com

The Gravity Media crew was behind the scenes at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix for the Channel 4’s highlights show.    

The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix was held at the  Yas Marina Circuit and took place over 55 laps. Max Verstappen has now finished 3rd, 2nd and 1st in successive Abu Dhabi Grands Prix, to end Mercedes’ run of six consecutive wins around Yas Marina! 

The Gravity Media team supplied outside broadcast facilities including our remote operations flypack for the Channel 4 highlights show alongside Whisper covering the final race of the season.      

What a season it has been! You can now watch the final race highlights here.

Throughout the F1H20’s Global Tour 2019, the Gravity Media team has travelled to destinations across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. They are now ending the year in the UAE, for the Grand Prix of Sharjah.

The F1H20 UIM World Championship is the world’s foremost international series of single seater inshore circuit powerboat racing. 

Gravity Media is the Host Broadcast provider, with an onsite flyaway consisting of 10 cabled cameras and four onboard boat systems along with a support team of six broadcast and RF engineers. 

Renowned throughout the Arab world for its commitment to art, culture and preserving the local heritage, the Emirate of Sharjah is the place to visit and explore, experience and discover the secrets of a unique Arabian lifestyle and Islamic culture, and offers an impressive array of over twenty museums, several art galleries and beautifully restored heritage areas.

Sharjah is the third largest of the seven emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and is the only one to have land on both the Arabian Gulf Coast and the Gulf of Oman.

It is an emirate of contrasts where visitors can enjoy a holiday in the sun, discover traditional markets (souks) or visit modern shopping malls, exploring the many heritage sites and museums. As well as admire the majestic mosques, stroll around the lagoons, and experience the natural beauty of true Arabian deserts, mountains and seas.

Sharjah covers approximately 2,600 square kilometers. In addition to Sharjah City, which lies on the shores of the Arabian Gulf, the emirate has three regions on the scenic east coast; Dibba Al Hisn, Khor Fakkan and Kalba and is a close neighbor to Dubai.

Sharjah‘s location is significant both geographically and historically. The city overlooks the Arabian Gulf coastline that stretches for more than 16 kilometers, consisting of sandy beaches and built up areas. The central region combines lush green oases, with gravel plains and rolling red sand dunes.

To the East the emirate reaches the Gulf of Oman coast where the landscape changes to a spectacular rocky coastline backed by impressively high mountains. Historically, the east coast is full of archaeological sites dating back to as early as the 2nd millennium, and forts built by the Portuguese in the 16th century were used to control the spice trade.

Last year, we were kept busy the world over, working on projects as far afield as Africa, North America, the Middle East, Europe and Australia. While those projects ranged in scale from small flypack facilities to full broadcast studios, one thing remained constant: customers want more guidance, and they want more value.

The trick is to be completely in front of new technologies, and to sift through the proposals we receive from new and ‘forward-thinking’ vendors to offer our customers the expert, independent advice they need.

The role of a systems integrator is evolving faster than ever. There’s a perception that all new technologies will save money – but that’s just not the case, and it’s our job to help customers see the wood for the trees and get a better, longer return on their investment.

One of the trends that has caught our eye of late is IPTV, but although the operational efficiencies of internet protocol systems are rightly generating interest, there’s still a lack of commitment to move into full IP solutions, and a big market remains for standard baseband. 

Perhaps a more interesting proposition is remote production, primarily because it’s got the ability to make a huge difference in the live environment. Gravity Media (as Gearhouse Broadcast) has been one of the leaders in this area, having already initiated a number of successful remote projects.

For some time now, we’ve been looking ahead to a point where cost-effective bandwidth solutions are available to the market. We’re getting closer to that stage, and connectivity inside venues is continuing to improve, which means we have a better grounding than ever for remote productions to take off.

Meanwhile, higher resolutions have been conversation, as always, but HDR stands out for me because in reality it’s a more suitable solution for everyone, bringing outstanding picture quality without the need to invest in delivery solutions and 4K-ready end-user devices. Big sporting events are often used to introduce new broadcasting technologies, and this year has a packed sporting calendar that will undoubtedly drive the widespread uptake of HDR content.

One of our key projects last year was to build full HD studio for Live Point Art Production in Dubai. The fast-turnaround project took just 13 weeks from order to completion – there aren’t many systems integrators that have the skills to deliver something of that size at that speed.

With a number of interesting global projects on our books already, 2018 is shaping up to be another big year for our Systems Integration team. We look forward to bringing our customers along the journey with us.