New broadcasting center for beIN Sports
Qvest supports leading sports channel in the MENA region
beIN Sports is a leading player in international sports broadcasting. It delivers the finest programming from the world of sports covering major top divisions and tournaments in football, motorsports, tennis, rugby, and boxing. Qvest has helped the member of beIN Media Group build one of the world’s biggest media centers for TV processing, production, and broadcast of live sports and sport news on the beIN Sports campus in Doha.
As a consultant and solutions architect for broadcasting and media projects, Qvest supported beIN Sports in the technological development and planning of the infrastructure as well as the definition of workflows. In addition, the Qvest team in Dubai was responsible for the entire technical systems integration, implementation, and commissioning of the systems.
Leading technologies for major sports
With its new high-tech environment, beIN Sports has production and broadcasting capacities for dozens of HDTV sports channels at its disposal. At the core of the new technical infrastructure is a seamless IT-based production and broadcasting platform, which uses the latest broadcasting standards for bringing programs on air. Specially designed for the specific requirements of live sports productions, the integrated system architecture is based on concepts that offer rapid production processes, extremely high accessibility, and collaborative working.
Additionally, in a second built-out phase, the system architecture can be networked to numerous locations. A total of ten HD studios are fully integrated in the production processes, and these can be used by the channels for presenting its live broadcasts.
Best-of-breed technology
The broadcaster developed a “Structure follows Technology” strategy in the conceptional planning phase. This means that the design of the buildings, the arrangement and grouping of the production areas and the structure of all workstations in the new sports broadcasting center are all tailored to optimally meet its technological and production-related requirements and conditions.
The realization of the new broadcasting infrastructure involved only cutting-edge technologies and work processes which were specially developed for live sports platforms: The repertoire of beIN Sports includes end-to-end file-based workflows, centrally controlled content ingest, and a high degree of automation for the live production of sport and sports news, highlight productions and re-broadcasting as well as a media asset management system implemented throughout the entire company. In addition, beIN Sports uses an intelligent traffic, rights, and advertising management concept. In keeping with this strategy, the broadcaster cooperates with leading product and software manufacturers from the broadcast, media, and IT sectors, such as Arvato Systems, Avid, Cisco, EVS, Harmonic, IBM, MediaGeniX, Pebble Beach and Skyline.
Need for speed
Competitive live production of sports broadcast and sports news necessitates speed. For this reason, beIN Sports uses VPMS, a high-end media asset management software from Arvato Systems that is precisely tailored to the needs of the broadcaster. The traffic management software Whats’On from software developer MediaGeniX is seamlessly integrated. This application makes it possible for an operator to centrally manage the complete program scheduling, contracts & rights management, as well as advertising and campaign planning.
Graphics Integration redefined
The innovative integration of graphics is a must in today’s TV programming, especially for international sports broadcasters, and has a considerable influence on consumer perception of the beIN Sports brand. Overlays with interim and final results, information about the games and players, overview schedules and tables or 3D-based game analyses – no highly publicized sports event could be transmitted without high-quality graphic elements.
Alongside a high-end graphics system based on Vizrt components, a novel graphics management system is used for the production of graphics. It enables re-broadcasting of archived material with other graphic designs, even with automated processes. The specialized graphics recording system for re-broadcasting is deeply integrated with the playout automation and was developed in collaboration with beIN engineers and was he only one of its kind in the world.
Turning possibilities into feasible business models
Audience and viewer behavior have undergone significant changes over the past years. Live streaming on the internet and via mobile apps, multi-media libraries, and video on demand platforms (VoD) enable access to TV content regardless of location and time. Here beIN Sports scores again by using additional distribution channels to bring home both major and other sports to everyone, the broadcaster reaches a wide audience as well as special interest groups.
All kinds of content that has been recorded, processed, or stored can be tailored to individual target groups and made available via online distribution channels and VoD offerings. At the same time, in just a few steps all content can be made available via internal and external content delivery networks (CDNs) for desktop or mobile applications.
No compromises
With its new broadcasting center beIN Sports has a special focus on issues pertaining to broadcast safety, data control, and content accessibility. To rule out every single point of failure, the highest safety standards were built into the entire technology concept. The completely redundant systems and highest service standards guarantee maximum availability of the technology for the business of beIN Sports. With the integrated solutions of DataMiner and VSM Control the broadcaster is also implementing its first global monitoring & health management systems. These enable the monitoring and controlling of processes, AV, IT systems, and workflows from across the campus from a single workstation.
