Live from the World Cup: BeIN Sport Gives Football Fans 24/7 Coverage

BeIN Sports has a big presence in Brazil for the World Cup and for good reason, as the team of 300 is responsible for creating content for two channels in the Middle East and Africa (MENA) regions as well as a channel in France and the U.S. “Everything has gone smoothly as we have a lot of experience with big events like the World Cup in 2010, three Euro tournaments, and the Olympics,” says Mohammad Jaffal, BeIN Sports producer for the MENA channels.

The Snell Kahuna production switcher at the BeIN Sport master control area for the World Cup.

With the help of local technical services provider Medialoso BeIN Sport is able to have 33 ENG crews armed with Sony HDCAM cameras (24 for MENA, six for the French channel and three for the U.S. channel) as well as 14 Avid editing suites in the IBC. There are three studio locations up and running for each match: the studio at the IBC, one at the Copacabana Beach, and then a studio in Dohar at the BeIN Sports headquarters.

The master control area in the IBC features a Snell Kahuna production switcher and Yamaha audio consoles.

“For MENA we are broadcasting between 16 and 18 hours a day plus match coverage and more so the channel is 24 hours a day of World Cup coverage,” says Jaffal.

For today the network came on air with World Cup coverage at 6 am Brazil time and will stay on the air until 2 am Monday morning. Along with coverage from the three studio locations the network will be at Maracana Stadium and also have feeds from fan zones in both Germany and Argentina.

“I think BeIN Sports always wants to be in the lead and we expect good coverage and want to improve more and more,” says Jaffal. “We want to focus a lot more on the creativity of the production and programs and also things like 4K and 8K as we were one of the first to broadcast in HD and also 3D.”