PLAZAMEDIA once again ready for UEFA Champions League

The UEFA Champions League gets into full swing during September after the draw for the group stages yesterday (30 August). German clubs Borussia Dortmund, Bayern Munich and Schalke 04 are in contention for the 2012-13 title of club champions of Europe and ZDF will be host broadcaster for all their home matches, with facilities provided by PLAZAMEDIA.

As part of its deal with the regional public broadcaster, PLAZAMEDIA is supplying production services for coverage of 18 live matches during the competition, all to be broadcast in HD and Dolby Digital 5.1. The contract also covers the play-off games involving Borussia Mönchengladbach and today’s (31 August) UEFA Super Cup in Monaco between 2011-12 Champions League winners Chelsea and last season’s Europa League title holders Atlético Madrid.

During the group and knockout phases of the Champions League PLAZAMEDIA will be providing full host facilities at matches in Germany and additional presentation equipment to ZDF for away games. It will also be involved in the Final, to be held at Wembley Stadium in London next year.

“PLAZAMEDIA has been producing UEFA Champions League matches for more than 10 years,” comments Florian Nowosad, chief executive of PLAZAMEDIA. “The deal with ZDF is evidence of our know-how and experience in technically complex football productions and underlines our market position as an expert full-service provider.”

Jochen Eberlein, director of outside broadcasting at PLAZAMEDIA, explains that the host broadcast facilities are designed to meet UEFA requirements. “This can include over 20 cameras,” he says. “With unilateral productions we use between five and eight cameras. For the matches in Germany broadcast by ZDF we use two HDTV OB trucks and one for the matches abroad.”

Video equipment used includes cameras and other devices from Grass Valley and Sony, as well as networked EVS replay servers. On the audio side 5.1 mixing is on Lawo, Studer or StageTec consoles, with monitoring loudspeakers from Geithain and Klein & Hummel. Communications are based on Riedel and ClearCom intercom.

Special facilities include the Boxcam, supplied by PLAZAMEDIA’s co-operation partner TV Skyline, which is being used as a goal-line camera. Polecams also feature in the production and from the quarterfinals onwards a Spidercam will give overhead views of the action.