M6 France, one of the largest private national French TV channels, has the rights to a World Cup for the first time in its nearly 40-year history.

For Virgil Beljambe, technical coordinator (pictured above, centre, with M6 France team members Jonny Koy and Victorie Wauquiez), and a small team of six at the IBC, the goal is simple: to serve as a master control room that receives streams from the venues and FIFA’s feeds at the IBC and ensures that everything is okay with respect to picture, color, and lip sync via SDI and MADI circuits. Telstra handles transport and frame-rate conversion of signals back to Paris via Net Insight Nimbra.

“This is the first time we’ve had the rights, and we have them for the next one as well, so we wanted to do this one well,” says Virgil. “We arrived on the 18th of May, so we have been here almost four weeks preparing everything. And for now, we’re pretty happy because everything looks good. Yes, there are some small issues, but we are just fine-tuning those.”

M6 offers its viewers broadcasts in 1080i50 HD and in 4K SDR and HDR (HDR10), thanks to the various feeds provided by HBS.

Virgil says that, back home in Paris, there is a master control room that receives the 12 feeds from the IBC and also records signals for slo-mo highlights for halftime, for the newsroom, and especially for the production of sports magazines. There are also two off-tube commentary teams in Paris, as well as a backup commentary team if needed in France in case of issues in the U.S., Canada, or Mexico. Three teams of commentators are traveling through the three countries to cover the 16 stadiums.

“With the need for so much plane travel, we decided to do off-tube because it otherwise would be too expensive for us,” he adds. A Ross XPression can also provide a backup clock and score in case of issues with the main feed. Other gear in the Paris facility includes a Grass Valley Kahuna vision mixer, Stagetec Crescendo audio console, Sony HDC-3500 cameras, and a Blackmagic Ultimatte 12 for chromakeying.

“We also have a second master room because we have a TV football show between each game, except when it’s too late in France, like around 1 or 2 a.m.,” adds Virgil.

As for ENG crews, there is a four-person crew following the French team, as well as two people following the next opponent.

“We don’t need a lot of reporters on site because we subscribe to the FIFA Max server, and we use a lot of that footage as it’s pretty convenient,” says Virgil. Haivision is used to transmit those signals directly to Paris. “At first, management wasn’t convinced to book that service, but we did a demo, and they saw how valuable it was, especially for things like covering training. The FIFA Max server gives us those highlights, plus the press conferences and other things for the magazine show.”

The M6 equipment room at the IBC features a Riedel MediorNet MicroN router, EVS Cerebrum, Craltech 4K Craft multiviewer, and Bluebell BC160-V2 for fiber-optic interfacing.