Globecast provided contribution and distribution services for the Orange Africa Cup of Nations Equatorial Guinea 2015, bringing the football tournament to screens around the world.
François Persiaux, head of global contribution France, said the event “presented some very specific – and sizeable – challenges. For instance, the venue was finally switched to Equatorial Guinea as the host country as late as the end of November last year. This presented a massive logistical challenge, one that we rose to.”
Globecast gathered a team from its staff and began the process of configuring and shipping seven HD flyaway uplink kits – there was a total of 4.5 tons of equipment – then had to organise local logistics and seven different satellites for contribution and distribution. The situation was made more complex by the fact that the capital of the country – Malabo, to where all the equipment had to be shipped – is a 45-minute flight from the mainland.
Globecast supplied uplinks and contribution from the four stadium locations for its customer, to sports marketing agency Sportfive Africa. Distribution was global to 51 broadcasters, with Globecast supplying a field team of engineers and a coordination manager in Africa as well as a MCR in Paris with a dedicated engineer and coordinator for each match. There was also a supervisor for worldwide distribution plus remote live monitoring for each downlink on every satellite. Additional French commentary was added in the Paris MCR, giving a total of eight language broadcasts.
Persiaux said, “This was clearly a very big project carried out in a very short space of time. Having shipped and set up all the equipment, we produced 170 hours of live HD transmission using four C-Band and three Ku-band satellites. This was the biggest single flyway operation managed by our Paris office using skills from across the company.”
