Despite Mexico’s Exit, Telvisa Carries on in Brazil

Mexico may have suffered a stunning heartbreaker in the Round of 16 of the FIFA World Cup, but the nation’s rights-older Televisa is far from done in Brazil. Televisa, which shares Mexico’s World Cup rights with TV Azteca, has dramatically ramped up the scale of its production in Brazil compared to four years ago in South Africa and continues to send home top-flight pitch coverage to the soccer-hungry nation.

“This production is bigger compared to the 2010 World Cup and much bigger than [the 2012 Olympics in] London where we did not even had space inside of IBC, we were in the parking lot with our control rooms,” says Elias Rodriguez, Director General of Operations of Grupo Televisa and Televisa’s Director of Operations and Engineering. “It is a very large production for us.

Televisa has rolled out about 220 staffers to produce eight different programs per day, ranging from World Cup specific coverage to general sports and even news coverage. Compared to South Africa, Televisa is producing three additional programs: overviews of each match, replays of full matches, and in-depth interviews.

Inside its 900-sqaure-meter area at the IBC in Rio de Janeiro, Televisa has erected two studios (80 and 400 square meters, respectively) and two dedicated control rooms, as well as two off-tube announce booths. In addition, Televisa has rolled out two mobile units and three SNG trucks from Mexico.

“The biggest changes [of the] production in Brazil are we have more equipment, we brought two production Trucks from Mexico and 3 SNGs, and we are using new software Adobe Anywhere editing software,” says

With the Adobe Anywhere collaborative-workflow platform, Televisa Adobe can utilize apps like Premiere Pro CC and After Effects CC together between Brazil and Mexico City using centralized media and assets. It relies on the GPU-powered Mercury Streaming Engine, which allows users to use full-res, high-data-rate files even over low- bandwidth connections.

The control rooms feature Snell & Wilcox switchers, Calrec audio consoles, EVS replay servers, a Miranda router, and Vizrt graphics, while the studios are equipped with Sony cameras. In terms of editing software, Televisa utilizes a mix of Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere (in conjunction with Adobe Anywhere), and has a fleet of Quantum servers on hand for storage.

As for ENG, Televisa has deployed 15 Panasonic P2 cameras and large team to cover the sights and sounds from off the pitch throughout Brazil.