copy written for Net Insight
A first ever
combined remote production and centralized VAR contribution network powered by
the Nimbra platform throughout the Balkans.
https://netinsight.net/resource-center/case-studies/arena-sport-fss/
Pay-TV broadcaster
Arena Sport has gone live on Remote Production for Serbia’s premier league
Super Liga at the same time as the Serbian Football Federation (FSS) activated
its new centralized VAR system. Net Insight Nimbra is providing secure and
reliable live contribution for both those projects simultaneously, contributing
critical feeds over IP from stadiums across the region to centers in Belgrade,
Serbia. Net Insight Customer Success team assisted the skilled team of the
local partner Tera Adria to ensure smooth and timely deployment.
About: Arena Sport
Arena Sport is a pay TV sports network based in Serbia and broadcasting across the Balkans regions including in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Arena Sport is part of the biggest telecommunication company in the region Telekom Srbija.
About: The Football Association of Serbia
Fudbalski savez Srbije (FSS) is the governing body of football in Serbia, based in Belgrade. It organizes Serbian football leagues including the Superliga and the Serbia national football team.
Remote Production required at Arena Sport
Arena Sport holds
the prestigious multi-year contract to produce and broadcast Serbian premiere
soccer league Super Liga. When it recently won the rights to broadcast NBA and
Euronews Serbia in the Balkans it took the opportunity to reassess its approach
to production at scale.
Shifting from a
traditional satellite linked outside broadcast to a remote production model
would enable the broadcaster to expand smoothly while gaining immediate cost
benefits by contributing all match signals over IP to a central operations hub.
Arena Sport is able
to base its transmission process toward users and partners on Telekom Serbia’s
optical infrastructure.
“We needed a
solution to run this complex operation from a single location with minimum
staff and yet retain the absolute reliability and high quality level that live
sport broadcast requires.”
Working with
Belgrade headquartered broadcast systems integrator Tera Adria, Arena Sport
selected Net Insight for the secure and reliable transmission of live sports
content.
With ad hoc
production required at live events from multiple stadia over the entire Balkans
region the flexibility of solution was important to Arena Sport.
Tera Adria
recommended a model based on four identical portable Nimbra 680 kits. These are
installed in Arena Sport’s fleet of OB vans for ready plug and play into the
stadia’s network. Eight camera feeds including Super SloMo along with
AES-EBU discrete audio and IP/Ethernet streams and data are transported from
each stadia securely and reliably to Arena’s Remote Production Center where a
Nimbra 688 unpacks the media for production.
The Nimbra 688
receives all camera feeds from four stadiums simultaneously (x40 feeds) and
sends return feeds back to all four stadiums with the ultra-low latency and
visually lossless quality of JPEG 2000 demanded for live broadcast.
VAR solution for FSS
Contemporaneously
with Arena Sport’s remote production plans, the FSS were exploring solutions to
implement a Video Assistant Referee ahead of the start of Super Liga season
2021-22.
With a secure
reliable remote contribution network being built out by Arena Sport for
coverage of FSS matches, the clear and logical decision was to leverage the
same solution to deliver VAR. Crucially, this would also minimize investment
and simplify the management of the VAR system for the FSS.
An important
reference and proof of concept for the FSS was the national media contribution
network based on Net Insight solutions utilized by the Turkish Football
Federation to connect 19 football stadiums to a centralized VAR system. It has
been in successful operational since the 2018-19 season.
The solution for FSS, once again worked out with Tera Adria and with the help of Net Insight Customer Success team, is to route all camera feeds via Nimbra 688 in the Arena production hub to a Nimbra 680 in the VAR Center, outside of Belgrade, and to feed the cluster of Xeebra EVS servers centralized there. Four live games or 32 camera feeds + 4 program feeds from the Remote Production Control Rooms can be sent simultaneously over the network to the VAR Center with four feeds returned to the ground for officials to review.
Results
The centralized VAR
and the remote production solutions running over the Net Insight secured and
managed optical network went live in July 2021.
“Working with local
Net Insight partner Tera Adria and Net Insight is really an example of how
partners in the market should do business,” commends Petrovic. “From the moment
of our sending the inquiry, through the presentation and adoption of the
solution to the full implementation, we had fast and clear communication.”
Despite the global
pandemic, he says, both companies managed to carry out the projected works and
our system for transmission and distribution of the signal in a very short
time.
“Net Insight
provides excellent quality and reliability, so securing our operations and Tera
Adria provides full technical support 24/7 but we’ve not experienced any
interruptions or system failures since going live. It has been a fantastic
experience that has opened the space for us to continue cooperation on new
projects.”
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