SVG Europe
While the pandemic
forced the shutter down on spectator attendance at esports events, unlike
regular sports the live action continued unchecked.
For players, the
shift to playing remotely was not a big adjustment as they were already used to
playing online and from home. Most talent were also already outfitted for
online streaming, as many had their own content channels and had already
invested in the kit needed to broadcast online. It was up to esports producers
to quickly pivot to this new reality.
Perhaps the world’s
biggest is ESL Gaming, part of digital entertainment group MTG, which operates
international leagues and tournaments under the ESL Pro Tour umbrella,
including Intel Extreme Masters, ESL Pro League and other pre-eminent,
stadium-size tournaments such as ESL One.
ESL Gaming also
operates production facilities (Burbank, Sydney and Cologne among them) which
host its own branded events as well as white label content for other
tournaments or events.
The Katowice,
Poland hub for ESL is among its most prestigious. In the past year it has
quadrupled in size from one studio and control room to four new control rooms
and three multipurpose halls, including ESL’s existing arena space. Design and
specification began in March 2020 with the last studio/control room finished
and operational in June of this year.
Head of engineering
Krzysztof Pawlus explains that flexibility was the key element when designing
the production workflow and control infrastructure.
“We produce a huge
variety of live events, including ESL-branded formats,” he explains. “With that
in mind, the entire workflow is reconfigurable to meet those needs and demands.
Recently most of the talent has been remote and we also have to ensure the
production teams continue to stay safe. We’ve made sure the studio infrastructure
can bring in multiple external sources alongside signals from the studio floor,
without any latency issues. It’s imperative that our streams are accurate.”
The entire facility
– built at a new site just 100m away from the original studio – is now fibre connected.
Each interconnected control room has a 288×288 router with 24 fibre in and out,
as well as a bank of SDI cards for converting PC desktop signals to SDI. It
enables the team to distribute any incoming source to anywhere in the facility,
depending on the production’s requirements.
Blackmagic Design
sits at the heart of the complex, which relies on multiple ATEM Constellation
switchers and Universal Videohub for content production.
A new green screen
virtual production set has camera tracking from RedSpy, chroma keying courtesy
of Ultimatte (part of the Blackmagic Design stable) and rendering in Unreal
Engine.
The halls are
equipped to host a wide range of events, including space to accommodate up to
64 PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds mobile players.
Content is vision
mixed on a variety of ATEM switchers. The largest control room has been
furnished with an ATEM Constellation 8K switcher, which has been deployed
across several high-profile events, including the Gamers without Borders
charity tournament, where dual language programs were delivered simultaneously.
All productions are delivered in 1080p 59.94 and streamed to Twitch and YouTube
or via live video cloud to other platforms.
Other gear includes
EVS replay machines and the Dyvi vision mixer, AJA signal conversion cards and
Sony FS7 and Sony 4000 series studio cameras. All video equipment was delivered
by local distributor Wamm Video Solutions.
“Communications can
be an issue, and making sure everybody is on the same page is a lot more
problematic in a decentralised production,” says Pawlus. “The amount of
communication, split-second decisions, and the speed at which the in-game
production takes place makes remote operation a challenge, for sure, especially
when we aim to improve on last year’s event, not go down in production value.”
Intel Extreme
Masters Katowice 2020 tournament had to be played without fans in attendance at
the 11,500-seat Spodek Arena as the Polish government forced the country into
quarantine. That may have helped the final of Counter-Strike: Global
Offensive IEM Katowice 2020 set a viewership record.
Esports Charts
pegged the final’s peak viewership at 1,002,132, which it says is a new record
for the IEM series.
Earlier this year,
the 2021 tournament was also forced to play behind closed doors. With more than
20,500,000 hours watched across multiple distribution platforms, IEM Katowice
saw hundreds of thousands of fans tuning in to catch the action with peak
concurrent viewers (digital platforms, excluding China) surpassing 580,000,
according to ESL figures.
ESL Gaming is now
selling in person stadium tickets for the February 2022 IEM Katowice event but,
even if fans are permitted back to the arena, many of the remote workflows
implemented during the past couple years are here to stay.
“Many more
production personnel who would have been involved in an outside broadcast at
the studio prior to the pandemic can now operate remotely. These include
observers (in-game camera operators). Also, we’re just starting to expand the
features for our virtual studio. We want to introduce more video feeds, for
example,” reveals Pawlus.
“The availability
of Blackmagic’s SDK allows us a high level of workflow customisation, while the
ability to automate complex processes through custom macros is a real advantage
and helps us to diversify our streams.”
The new studio
facilities will allow ESL to expand its range of events and enable the team to
innovate further in its content production.
Canal+ called on
the facility to produce a FIFA 20 esports tournament production in the absence
of traditional sports during the pandemic.
“We can now go to
air with four to five productions at the same time,” Pawlus says.
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