Two incredible semi-final comebacks have set up an all-English Champions League Final tomorrow, as Spurs take on Liverpool at the Metropolitano Stadium in Madrid. Gearhouse Broadcast will be there on the night too, with UEFA’s broadcast operations being built around our state-of-the-art new Grass Valley IP System.
Everything has been installed in the stadium’s Technical Operations Centre (TOC), which, being an IP setup, has 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, as well as future-proofing the production to format changes.
The full kit list for this application – perhaps a world first in sport – comprises:
2 x Cisco 3236C 100-Gbps switches
2 x Tektronix TSG8000 with PTP
34 x Grass Valley IQUCP25/50 multichannel video-over-IP transceivers
2 x Grass Valley MV-820-IP multiviewers for high-density IP monitoring
2 x Grass Valley IPRA/C IP router controllers/adapters
1 x Grass Valley log server
8 x Cisco 3750G switches for control and monitoring
Gearhouse has been onsite for a full two weeks to support the installation and testing, and our engineers will remain on hand tomorrow night to oversee the distribution of live feeds to rights holders around the world.
The Champions League Final will be a second run-out for our new IP equipment, as we built a similar workflow for the other all-English game this week – the UEFA Europa League Final in Baku. Indeed, IP is setting the tone for many upcoming deployments, as our Projects team continue to see demand growing day by day for applications ranging from sport to current affairs to live entertainment.
