special report live sports coverage
Between this and the rise of HD, broadcasters are already throwing much larger amounts of money at the World Cup, notably in the Middle East, where sport and broadcasting are really taking off.
Many countries, particularly in Europe, have only just started making broadcast decisions based on the results of the recent qualifiers. Whether or not a country qualifies for the World Cup makes a dramatic difference to the level of coverage and budget they will dedicate to the broadcast. This very short lead time creates challenges for broadcasters who then have only five or six months to prepare for the event. Some of the larger broadcasters will have enormous requirements from companies like GlobeCast. For the last World Cup, which was held in Germany in 2006, one major Latin American broadcaster requested four SNG trucks for the entire period, each with two or three cameras to drive around Germany covering various team’s matches, players’ hotels, training camps as well as the fans. The contributions were then sent via satellite to the IBC where the programmes were put together and sent back into Latin America via both satellite and fibre. This broadcaster’s request was almost twice the size of
As the
popularity of football continues to soar and world television audiences continue to grow, the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be at its largest, with a more widely- spread audience than the Summer Olympics.
their requirements at the Athens Olympics. Bearing in mind that the 11 competition venues were widely spread from the north to the south of Germany, it is clear from this example the amount of travelling broadcasters have to commit to, and the strain on resources the market is set to face for an event of such scale.
As well as the strain on resources, short lead times and widely spread venues, capacity is a major issue for South Africa in 2010. With limited satellite capacity in the region and an increase in HD feeds (which require a lot more bandwidth than SD) broadcasters, satellite providers and service providers like GlobeCast are currently developing solutions to get around this. Broadcasters will have between five and six months, once all contracts are in place, to secure this capacity, find the right technology and gather all their resources.
XIX Commonwealth Games
From 3-14 October 2010, more than 5000 elite athletes from 71 Commonwealth nations, representing over a third of the world’s population, will gather in New Delhi to take part in the XIX Commonwealth Games. The event, a combination of 13 individual and four team sports, is expected to attract a global television audience in excess of two billion people, which includes all 71 Commonwealth nations and an increasing number of non-commonwealth countries. Like the Winter Olympics and World Cup before it, Commonwealth Games broadcasters will face the challenges - stretched resources, short lead times and limited capacity - that come with broadcasting 17 sports from 23 widely spread venues located throughout New Delhi and surrounding regions. But unlike the World Cup and Olympics, broadcasters at the Commonwealth Games will also face the challenges of transmitting from a nation that has never produced an event of this scale before. This is the first time an international event of this magnitude is being held in India and a lot of improvements have had to be made to the country’s infrastructure and facilities, including a new communications network, 24-hour power supply and increased water supply. HD will be launched in India during the Commonwealth Games. For the first time, the national terrestrial broadcaster, Doordarshan, will telecast the Games throughout India in HD.
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16th Asian Games
The 16th Asian Games, to be held in Guangzhou, China from 12-27 November 2010, will host athletes from a record 45 nations competing in 42 sports ranging from conventional athletics, gymnastics and swimming, to the more traditional karate and kabaddi.
Although the Games are of particular interest in Asia, some overseas broadcasters are paying as much attention to this up and coming event as the Summer Olympics. This could perhaps be due to the fact that over 3000 hours of TV will be produced in Guangzhou, more than at the Olympics!
Whilst broadcasting out of China does have its own unique set of challenges, which include regulation, infrastructure and language, the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics taught broadcasters and service providers, like GlobeCast, a lot of valuable lessons and most are now very well equipped to face this. For example, not all Asian countries are equipped with HD viewing capabilities or facilities to receive them, so companies like GlobeCast have had to creatively optimise their resources to switch from an SD to a HD feed and back again using MPEG-4 according to each client’s request.
If the shoe fits…
It is important to note that although the market seems to be moving towards fibre, this method of transport is best when used at special events where the material generated is unilateral and specific to each individual broadcaster. In contrast, a football match, where coverage is the same for everyone, is far more cost-effectively broadcast via satellite as all rights holders can downlink from the same satellite, within a given region. It is a question of economies of scale - for point to multi-point delivery, satellite is the most cost effective but for point-to- point delivery, it is likely that fibre will win.
Network-agnostic (hybrid sat + fibre) providers such as GlobeCast are benefiting both from this growth in fibre and the continued demand for satellite. With its global resources and extensive network - both satellite and fibre - GlobeCast is prepared for the challenges and opportunities that sports broadcasting in 2010 promises to bring.
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