Chile. TVU Networks helped the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, CONIFA, which represents more than seven billion people in eighty regions around the world, achieve a seemingly impossible goal. At the end of June, CONIFA successfully produced and broadcast a professional soccer tournament from the remote Chilean city of Linares, virtually without equipment, with minimal staff and at low cost.
Even more challenging, due to last-minute issues with the conventional transmission system, they had only a few days to plan and carry out the production of this high-profile event. The solution CONIFA employed to achieve its goal in record time was a combination of cloud-based solutions from TVU Networks that enable a new way to produce sporting events with smartphones.
CONIFA's hardware in Chile consisted of only three smartphones and two tablets connected to the 4G network available with SIM cards, as well as microphones, tripods and stabilizers for field shots. An ultra-portable TVU PowerPac lithium-ion battery pack kept phones and tablets charged. TVU cloud-based solutions: TVU Producer multi-camera live production platform; TVU Partyline cloud collaboration solution; the cloud-based comment platform TVU Remote Commentator; and the live streaming mobile app TVU Anywhere – they did the rest of the work to create a reliable and affordable workflow with just a few technicians on site.
For the Copa America event, video captured with smartphones and tablets in Chile was sent directly to TVU Producer via the cloud, where two solution architects from TVU Networks in Mexico managed video, graphics and audio production. TVU Remote Commentator, also managed from Mexico, allowed TVU staff to insert stories and comments from guests from around the world into the broadcast, keeping all elements perfectly synchronized. Through TVU Partyline, team members at both locations collaborated in real time during production. Finally, TVU Anywhere live-streamed the broadcast on CONIFA TV, other content distribution networks and social media platforms.
"With the TVU ecosystem, four or five people in different countries participating in production and transmission, some basic equipment and a couple of smartphones, we were able to broadcast live to the whole world from a small town in southern Chile," said Diego Bartolotta, president of CONIFA Americas. "Before the Copa America, I was a little incredulous that we could achieve the streaming quality of a professional football match only with interconnected phones. But TVU has totally changed my perspective. World-class quality streaming in this way can give us the widest possible reach and will be very important for the future of CONIFA games and tournaments throughout Latin America and around the world."
Rafael Castillo, General Manager/Vice President of TVU Networks for EMEA and Latin America, said: "We are proud that the TVU ecosystem has faced the formidable challenge of CONIFA, providing the high quality of a traditional broadcast, with reliability, stability and without worries. operation even in an extremely demanding environment. With our modular building block approach with easy-to-deploy infrastructure-less solutions, limited resources and remote locations no longer limit what you can achieve."
