Royal Belgian Football Association teams with Evertz for slomo replay VAR

The Royal Belgian Football Association (RBFA) has worked with Evertz to create a slow motion replay system to serve as a backup for referees in cases where their initial decisions were disputed.

RBFA is currently housed in a purpose-built facility in Tubize, Belgium, which opened in 2021. This eco-friendly headquarters has athletic facilities, auditoriums, an esports room, offices to house RBFA’s 230-plus employees and a state-of-the-art referee training centre that aims to get the best out of the nation’s referees so they may excel on a global stage.

When RBFA was designing its new basecamp in Tubize, it wanted to include a dedicated VAR replay and referee training centre capable of modernising Belgian professional football.

The make up of the personnel within the VAR team places an emphasis on efficient and innovative training delivery. The new Replay Centre needed to provide a central meeting point where VAR team members could be trained on VAR technology and protocols in a communal, group-oriented approach. Incorporating multiple booths so that everyone could be in one place and training at the same time was imperative, as was access to a system that automatically stores a file of all camera angles from each live match in both native and transcoded formats to create a database of clips for training and education. The creation of this database was a requirement so that the next generation of video assistant referees could learn from real life examples.

RBFA also wanted its VAR technology centralised at Tubize so that it could reduce its reliance on mobile virtual referee vans. Driving vans to different stadia every weekend was risky because traffic jams or accidents could easily prevent them arriving in time to do their job. In addition, each van was using fuel, as were the VAR teams travelling to training and match assignments. Thanks to the reasonably central location of Tubize, RBFA felt it could significantly reduce its carbon footprint if it centralised all VAR technology and staff in one place.

Evertz, working with AV equipment suppler, Studiotech Belgium (STB), has installed a technological solution for VAR that incorporates 12 interconnected clusters of Evertz DreamCatcher VARs for capture and playout, a flagship Evertz EQX routing solution, and an Evertz Magnum-OS control, orchestration, monitoring and analytics system that allocates resources throughout the facility and allows staff to organise signals, systems and operator stations for each game or training session. Other Evertz products used in the facility includes modular video conversion equipment, timing and camera synchronisation tools.

All 16 of the top flight stadiums that hold Belgian Pro League matches are connected to Tubize Basecamp over a dedicated high speed fibre network, which facilitates the transport of camera angles from the football pitch to the centralized VAR hub. Each host stadium delivers between five and 15 camera feeds, which arrive as HD-SDI baseband signals and are distributed around the VAR centre by the EQX router. The router also disperses the signals to the DreamCatcher cluster for record.

Once a VAR decision has been reached, the VAR server output, offside line server output and privacy logo slate are returned to the stadium hosting the match via the transport network for display on the pitch side referee review area RRA, which allows the on-field referee to visualise footage of the incident should an on-field review be required.

Inside the VAR centre there are five booths permitting a maximum of five concurrent matches to benefit from VAR assistance. Each booth can be assigned to a scheduled match, or used as a hot-swappable backup if the room is not operating at full capacity.

On occasions where multiple games are played in one day, this centralisation of VAR technology makes for much greater efficiency as the same equipment can be used for consecutive matches rather than being tied to one game, which was the situation before when RBFA was relying on mobile VORs. In addition, personnel costs are also reduced because VAR teams no longer need to be physically at a stadium so can therefore cover multiple games in a day.

The five review booths are each equipped with eight monitors displaying a selection of inputs for monitoring and the DreamCatcher VAR user interface, which permits visualisation and control of all camera angles from the match. The Magnum-OS scheduler application is the overarching orchestrator of resources throughout the facility and provides the ability to organise signals, systems and operator stations into games.

The centre also has an engineering and supervisor station so that tech support has a central command post. This also allows a VAR manager and senior officials to watch all matches and VAR teams to judge how they are performing during games and training sessions.

The reduction in equipment wear and tear is also noticeable as the DreamCatcher VAR systems are no longer being moved around the country in a van. Having a centralised location for all its VAR technology also means that RBFA has the flexibility to cover any match, regardless of the number of cameras involved, because VAR resources can be allocated to create the most efficient workflows.

Moving VAR operators into the new HQ has reinforced the importance of referee development to RBFA’s strategy. As a federation that is at the forefront of innovation, the RBFA is already planning to expand the scope of the Evertz solution to include an additional VAR booth for a sixth concurrent game, an easy-to-use simulator system for independent VAR team training and an inhouse production station to generate over the top (OTT) content monetisation. These changes will utilise the existing resources already available for the current VAR solution.

“Our previous experience with Evertz and STB clearly showed that both companies were capable of delivering everything we were asking for, particularly in terms of hardware and software that could be controlled and operated by amateur referees,” said Dieter De Naeyer, VAR project manager at the RBFA.  “Also, Evertz offered exceptional support that we were very happy with. We felt Evertz wanted to grow with us as they were willing to implement our ideas and suggestions to improve their product.”