International. Eurovision Sport, the sports arm of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), made the most of its current relationship with LiveU at the 2023 UCI Cycling World Championships, using LiveU Ecosystem solutions to create agile, cost-effective and captivating coverage of the largest cycling event ever held, further increasing the number of stakeholders in the event worldwide.
The event was held at Eurovision Sport's remote Broadcast Operations Centre (BOC) located at BBC Scotland based in Glasgow. This was the first time the UCI combined its multiple World Championships into a single, integrated event. 13 World Championships were held in seven disciplines. These included mountain biking, road and track cycling (both male and female), plus paracycling.
Franck Choquard, Director of Content and Platforms at Eurovision Sport, said: "This event was a huge project. What we were looking at was how we could use innovative technologies to be more cost-effective with guaranteed resilience in the field. Our conversations with LiveU revolved around two main use cases. First: the need to bring signals from various sites, including motorcycles, helicopters and other moving vehicles along with ENG teams, to the BOC, which was operated by our regular production partner, Actua Films. This was certainly more cost-effective than using RF and gave us the flexibility we needed. And the second was to secure the contribution network with ten locations being used across Scotland with a 'ultimate backup solution'. We needed a resilient IP-based solution with link for contribution, so we used LiveU, receiving a couple of relevant feeds from each site."
12 LU800 units operated by Actua Films were used in multi-camera mode, both for content acquisition and signal protection. As Choquard added, "LiveU is ideal for use in moving vehicles and its capabilities really come to the fore."
Eurovision Sport very successfully developed a hybrid model, which it used in broadcasting, with SDI implemented wherever possible at the BOC centre, supported by LiveU's cloud services. Choquard continued, "We used LiveU Matrix and Cloud Connect to contribute production feeds on LRT or SRT™ to some of the participants. We have our Digital Content Center and we use it in combination with the LiveU Ecosystem. We had stakeholders who wanted a lot of material for their digital platforms but didn't want to spend to access satellite broadcasts. Our LiveU workflow was perfect for this. For several events, some participants created their own remote productions."
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the world's largest public service media alliance. It has 112 member organizations in 56 countries, as well as 30 affiliates in Asia, Africa and the Americas. Eurovision Sport has an extensive relationship with LiveU, formalised in an ongoing solutions framework two years ago, which includes field units, cloud services and data packages.
Choquard concluded, "LiveU really delivers on the quality of service. It can easily provide a complete service across the entire video production chain. There's also its reach among our member stations in terms of local receiving technology. We are constantly looking for ways to innovate with our distributor LiveU."
Roy Hasson, Director of Solutions Sales at LiveU, said: "This was a very complex project that involved an in-depth solution architecture. LiveU's touchpoints covered almost every aspect of production. Eurovision Sport continues to expand the use of our solutions, taking advantage of our overall IP service proposition. We look forward to working on future projects as the relationship continues to grow."
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