Gravity Media deploys IP-based infrastructure for major sporting events

IP systems from Grass Valley have been selected by Gravity Media to form an open standards-based IP core built – together with Cisco Nexus 9000 IP switches – as part of an upgrade to its live production capability.

The deployment includes Grass Valley UPC-25/50 Gateway cards and MV-821-IP multiviewers as part of a wider roadmap to full IP migration by the global provider of complex live broadcast facilities and production services to content owners, creators and distributors.

The system was deployed at the UEFA Europa League final in Baku, Azerbaijan on 29 May 2019 and also formed the heart of the live production environment at the UEFA Champions League final in Madrid on 1 June 2019. It was more recently used for the core of a Grand Slam tennis tournament.

To evolve its live production capability, Gravity Media began migrating towards a live IP-based production environment at the Australian Open tennis tournament in January 2019, making use of Grass Valley IP multiviewers to handle its monitoring requirements.

“By taking an IP-based approach we have been able to vastly simplify the system. Now we can get the whole IP core up and running within a day – that is unheard of for a major sporting event,” explained Ed Tischler, acting managing director for the UK at Gravity Media.

The inherently flexible nature of IP means Gravity Media can easily scale the system up or down to meet the requirements of a wide range of live events. The open standards-based approach allows the broadcast services provider to seamlessly add IP elements to the live production environment, selecting best-of-breed systems as more vendors roll out solutions based on SPMTE ST2110.