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Sky News sets a Guinness World Record with LiveU tech

UK broadcaster’s general election coverage from 138 locations to cover 150 constituency results is a World Record

Sky News’ broke a world record for its UK general election coverage on 7 May, aided by LiveU technology. The broadcaster set a new Guinness World Record for the most concurrent live web streams for an event – streams fed from 138 locations to cover 150 constituency results.

LiveU supplied 138 units for the coverage, including comprehensive testing, to allow the broadcaster to bring what was predicted to be a very tight election to its viewers.

Sky News described its coverage at the time as “the most ambitious and wide-ranging results service available and will ensure customers have the most up-to-date information as it happens”. This included a specially created studio at Sky News’ Osterley location.

LiveU units were managed and controlled by LiveU Central, the unified, cloud-based management platform, which enables fleets of units to be centrally controlled using geo-location capabilities alongside a host of other management options.

LiveU cellular bonding technology has been employed in elections coverage around the world, including last year’s Indian general election as well as those in Sri Lanka and also the 2015 Greek election.

“Getting the confirmation email was fantastic and an enormous relief,” said Richard Pattison, deputy head of technology at Sky News. “I had to provide a great deal of evidence to the Guinness World Records team to validate the attempt so I was slightly worried that what evidence we had might not meet their stringent criteria, but in the end it only took them a couple of days to ratify the attempt, which is great news.”

Samuel Wasserman, LiveU CEO, added, “We were already proud that Sky News, one of the world’s leading news operations, chose LiveU as a key technology partner for the UK general elections. We are even prouder now following the tremendous success on election night and Sky News winning a world record. There are not many that can say that and it’s a true indication of the way that cellular bonding has changed live video acquisition forever.”

www.liveu.tv