Canal+ delivers large-scale Champions League multiplex
French football fans recently enjoyed a unique experience when Canal+ simultaneously covered 17 of the 18 Champions League matches taking place on the last match day of the League Phase on 29 January. The huge live multiplex programme was one of the largest of its kind in history and a feat of broadcasting ingenuity, according to Christophe Schatz, head of sports TV production at Canal+ Group.
In total, close to 300 people, including a statistician, worked to ensure the flawless delivery of match coverage that evening. The Champions League multiplex was one match short however, due to French laws prohibiting coverage of online financial trading outfit Plus500, sponsor of Switzerland’s BSC Young Boyswho were playing Crvena Zvezda.
“The ability to offer 17 matches simultaneously – 18 in terms of statistics – is a technical feat that wasn’t easy to achieve, the tricky bit being the flawless ingest and distribution of the various feeds as well as the statistics, everything is multiplied by 18,” says Schatz. “We produced our first large-scale multiplex for the Conference League in December 2024, and followed it up with the Champions League one and they were a huge success. A multiplex is a premium offer in our portfolio that allows viewers to follow all matches simultaneously and to see the goals in near real-time. Viewers hop from one match to the other depending on action, activity and goals.”
The new format ran on the Canal+Sport 360 channel, alongside classic match coverage on other Canal+ channels. Schatz explains that Canal+, exclusive owner of the rights of the UEFA club competition cycle for France, set up this event in response to the new competition format announced for the Champions League, the Europa League and the Conference League, that sees more clubs competing and more matches being played.
“This year, we decided to premiumise this particular programme by running it alongside our classic match coverage, giving viewers the option to either watch a single match with dedicated commentary, or immerse themselves in the live action at all the stadiums via the multiplex,” he says.
During the regular season, Canal+ ran smaller three to four match multiplexes to give viewers some highlights of the nine Tuesday and nine Wednesday matches, with a maximum of 10 matches covered in a multiplex format for the Conference and Europa League on a Thursday.
“On the last day however, every match was of interest from a sports point of view and because all the matches are played at the same time, Canal+ had to make an editorial decision to either prioritise coverage of PSG, or make a smaller multiplex of just the French teams, or maybe another one focused on the larger teams like Liverpool and Real Madrid. In the end, we decided to take on a technical challenge by offering viewers a mega multiplex with all of the matches together.”
On their home page, subscribers could choose to watch one of 17 fully commentated matches on a Canal+ Live channel, or to watch the multiplex. Nine of those matches carried double commentary, meaning they were not only commentated on for the multiplex by two commentators, but also exclusively commentated on by a single commentator for the Canal+ Live channel. The eight others shared commentary between the multiplex and full match coverage by a single commentator. Here the journalist commentates on the full match but pops into the multiplex to interact with that programme in a neutral manner, on demand.
“For the multiplex, the hardest part was finding a simple way to present score and league table information to viewers in near real-time, when one goal could impact the position of five or six teams,” says Schatz. “We had to create something simple for the viewer, presenting all the matches and showing all scores, as well as the league table of the 36 teams, with information on those who are qualified, near-qualified and eliminated. It had to be fast and, above all, error free.”
“For the multiplex, the hardest part was finding a simple way to present score and league table information to viewers in near real-time, when one goal could impact the position of five or six teams”
Canal+ worked with UEFA to put in place a data pipeline from the pitch to the screen, feeding information from an existing UEFA structure into its Vizrt system. “We automated our entire dynamic on-air branding with Vizrt, not only for the presentation of the near-live statistics and league table in collaboration with UEFA, but also for the creation of a ‘multi-window’ landing page for all 17 matches using a Vizrt mosaic,” he explains.
“It was the first time we created such a landing page. It allowed us to present all matches visually, in a fluid manner to subscribers and to make it easy to switch from one match to another. This entire operation was a true technical challenge and we delivered flawlessly.”
An exclusive UEFA distribution rights deal comes with production obligations for French club matches on French soil. Brest/Real Madrid and Lille/Feyenoord were therefore double commentated, ingested and classically produced on behalf of Canal+ by French technical provider AMP Visual TV, using its Millenium Signature OB van.
These feeds were not only distributed internationally, they were also directed to Paris where they were coupled with branding for use on Canal+ Sport 360 for Brest/Real Madrid, and for Canal+ Live for Lille/Feyenoord. “We are proud to highlight that these two programmes were directed by Laurent Lachand and Jean-Jacques Amsellem, two very famous names in the world of sports,” adds Schatz.
French services company Globecast handled transmission from AMP Visual TV’s OB van at the Stade de France back to headquarters for coverage of the French club matches.
Canal+ also invested in the production of two overseas matches for the French teams, Stuttgart/PSG and Milan/Monaco, double commentated on for both the multiplex and the full coverage, with additional interviews and presentation.
Schatz highlights the demands of offering double commentary on so many simultaneous matches, including that it requires a large number of commentator booths and a lot of anticipation and preparation to ensure no balls were dropped. “To lighten our load, we outsourced some of the workload to on-site commentators to allow us to double up commentating for the four French club matches,” he explains.
Back at the Canal+ Parisian headquarters, over 60 inbound feeds were ingested into the MCR and redirected to four production control rooms, including one multi-feed control room in support of the multiplex. Canal+ gathered all international feeds over a 1Gb IP pipeline from the EBU content hub in Amsterdam, directing all these UEFA feeds to its data centres in the Paris area, and on to its control rooms where MediaKind RX1 decoders ingest all the feeds and ready them for use. A Grass Valley AMPP virtualised, open media live production platform runs the Canal+ multifeed control room.
“One unique aspect of this UEFA commercial rights period is that we produce in 1080p50 SDR, which is innovative from the UEFA point of view,” says Schatz. “We had to bring our infrastructure in line with this new format because we usually produce classic HD in 1080i, and that was a technical challenge in itself.”
Schatz explains that this year, Canal+ produced the matches on French soil in HDR. “We are the only ones in France to offer HDR for sports coverage, in 1080p50 HDR, which allowed us to upscale them to UHD HDR for the enjoyment of our subscribers,” he concludes. “A unique feature of this year’s season of Champions League matches offered on Canal+ and Canal plus Foot is that they were in UHD HDR, and with Dolby 5.1 surround sound, which is very exciting.”