Paris, France – 20 June 2023 – Boost Graphics, the wholly owned graphics subsidiary of the leading international broadcast solutions and services provider EMG Group, has been selected as the graphics partner for the broadcast of ARES Fighting. Boost will provide a range of graphics capabilities and integrations including a dynamic design refresh for the ambitious Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) league for this and the next four seasons.

Since its launch in December 2019, the ARES Fighting Championship has brought together some of the best French and international fighters in a series of events in North Africa and in France. It was set up by Fernand Lopez, head of MMA Factory and Sports Director of ARES Fighting Championship, who has long held the ambition to widen both the talent pool of athletes and the sport’s viewing audience.

ARES is the first French MMA league and the only one to be currently broadcast on UFC Pass. ARES has also closed a long-term rights deal with the French pay-television broadcaster Canal+.

Integral to the presentation of the ARES Fighting Championship matches is Boost Graphics’ suite of technology and technical and creative expertise. This includes providing a refresh of the motion graphics re-design for the broadcasts and integration with social media for inclusion in the live coverage.

Matthieu Skrzypniak, CTO of Boost Graphics, explains, “We are excited to work with ARES Fighting Championship to showcase all the power, action and athleticism of mixed martial arts to fans and new audiences alike. We will provide a dedicated interface to the editorial crew which will enable them to ingest tweets related to ARES Fighting Championship and to select the best ones to be displayed as graphics on screen. Boost will also deliver a dedicated interface for their statistics experts to allow them to quickly and easily select and prepare relevant data to be displayed as graphics during live broadcast.”

The Boost Graphics platform is also connected directly with the event’s official timing system to extract precise clock information and refereeing decisions. In addition, the company has developed a bespoke tool for ARES to manage all graphical elements including clock, fighter data and statistics, VIP names, fight results, and match ID.

The next event, ARES FC 16, will take place on June 23 in the Dome De Paris in Paris, France.

Dario Marra, Head of Graphics of EMG Italy, talks about the many services implemented: with data, statistics, reporting, content enrichment and virtual advertising.

More staff is present in the Milan offices, and some is still stationed in Lissone, where the technical equipment for all graphics playout is already installed.
The effort is quite large because it reaches up to 6 signals, distributed for each game, including international signals and unilateral signal for broadcasters like SKY and DAZN, who owns the rights.

Specifically, broadcasters have the possibility of activating a one-sided graphics package, which it is characterized by custom-made elements rather than a simpler package included with multilateral signals.

On the multilateral signal, graphics are provided as per running order, but for the broadcasters that have both pre-match and intra-match slots with different needs, Boost Graphics, together with Lega Serie A, provides additional contents.
All of these elements are always synchronized with all statistics from Lega Serie A’s Database: we manage data coming from Stats Perform – which provides data from the whole event – from Hawk Eyes, for all tracking data, and from a virtual coach algorithm – an app promoted by Lega Serie A.

All data merge together in the databases, and from there it is provided to a multitude of outputs, including graphics.

Overview process

On-site, operators use a highly developed client which allows to broadcast on real time all graphic contents requested by the central control room from Lega Serie A in Lissone. All the graphic elements are provided in preview-mode on site, in order to monitor what would be the real broadcasting result.
When these inputs are sent form the fields via fibre connectivity (provided by Lega Serie A), they land in Lissone and are able to activate the actual graphics through the servers.
Therefore, the operator who’s on site selects a graphic input which is then broadcasted as television graphics by multiple servers, on as many as there are on Lega Serie A distribution lines.

All this takes place only thanks to multiple supervising and control-related professionals, to technical-operational alignments, to on-field personnel with equal levels of check, in order to arrive to the program ready to the live delivery. During the live broadcasting, in agreement with the director, all match statistics are provided as well as all the graphics that may be requested.

Even the wipe, which goes between one replay and another, is directly broadcasted by Boost to give the ability to Lega Serie A to customize that type of element as well.
From the stadium up to Lissone, only one clean feed signal is issued, on which signal no graphics are inserted; thus, once received, it can be differentiated with graphic elements in different languages and with different sponsors.
This allows Lega Serie A to distribute contents according to multiple different options.

For every game, Boost Graphics, moves around 50 professionals who are involved as operational staff, as well as around 10 supervisors, in addition to the project managers and booking professionals.
For each match , there’s always one Boost Graphics’ small Van operating on-site.

There are a total of 380 Serie A matches to which, adding Coppa Italia, the grand total of games reaches 420 in one season.
This is the first of the three years foreseen for the cycle of supplying graphics services to Lega Serie A.

All graphics are delivered in progressive 1080 and, also in UHD, according to the different requests.

Boost Graphics does not only take care of graphics services, but also of making all the data coming from different providers flow into its database systems of normalizing them, saving them, and making them available to all takers, third-party interlocutors, and Lega’s outputs.
These also include the Lega Serie A website and the Lega Serie A application.
In addition to this, Boost Graphics also provides to Hawk Eye and Stats perform the technical staff for the tracking services – a service which allows to know, in real time, the position on field of each player, the average speed, the Km traveled and, in general, a complete analysis of all athletic performances of the players.
Moreover, Boost Graphics provides operational staff for the Tactic Camera service, which consists of a camera that, with an exclusively tactical focus, it shots the block of 22 players on field in order to give the possibility to watch, in real time, what is happening on field to all coaches, analysts and all coaching staff.

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