FIFA TV wins IBC2014 International Honour for Excellence
The IBC2014 International Honour for Excellence, the highest honour IBC bestows, goes to FIFA TV, the media-rights and broadcast operation within football’s global governing body. The award was presented at IBC on Sunday 14 September to Niclas Ericson, representing FIFA at IBC and director of FIFA TV.
The FIFA World Cup is far and away the most popular single-sport event in the global calendar, and television audiences for its finals rival the Olympics in terms of international audiences. Since FIFA changed its structure of the management of media rights and production from 2007, television coverage of the World Cup, along with other FIFA competitions, has been the responsibility of FIFA TV. This is to ensure that everyone in the world benefits from the highest-quality coverage and innovations in services.
The first radio broadcast of a World Cup was in 1930 from Uruguay. By 1954, in Switzerland, television had joined the party, and, in Mexico in 1970, colour was added. The first high-definition coverage was from Italy in 1990, and, by 2006, in Germany, all 64 matches were in HD.
Twenty-five games were produced in 3D in South Africa four years ago. The estimated global audience for that tournament was 3.2 billion people worldwide. This year, three matches in Brazil were produced in 4K/Ultra HD and nine in 8K Super Hi-Vision. The final was filmed in 360° Ultra HD Omnicam. Ten million FIFA apps were downloaded, with peak daily activity by 3 million users. According to Akamai, it was the biggest online event ever, with a peak streaming rate of 6.9 TBps during the Netherlands–Argentina match.
The International Honour for Excellence is presented in the gift of the IBC Council. Chair of the Council Peter Owen said, “FIFA TV continues to innovate and to engage with its huge global audience. It brings together the latest technologies and leading vendors to deliver unmatched content to unrivalled audiences. For this reason, FIFA TV is the richly deserved recipient of the IBC2014 International Honour for Excellence.”
Said Ericson, “I am delighted to accept this award on behalf of FIFA, and our deepest thanks go to IBC for this honour and recognition. It also pays a fitting tribute to the dedication of our industry-leading service providers who help us deliver the very best coverage of the FIFA World Cup to football fans all over the world.
“Together,” he continued, “we are able to make the World Cup a truly global experience for everyone. We look forward to continuing this pioneering work with the broadcast industry as we offer the unique platform of the FIFA World Cup to help drive technology forward.”