MBC Installs Grass Valley’s Replay Solution to Improve Exclusive Coverage of Saudi Arabia’s Professional Football League

posted:

10/11/2015

As the Middle East Broadcasting Center (MBC) prepares to begin its second season of exclusive coverage of Saudi Arabia’s professional football league, the network has invested in a market-proven replay solution from Grass Valley that will help it tell better stories.

MBC, headquartered in Dubai, will use the K2 Dyno Replay System, to create engaging content, including program highlights and replays. The K2 Dyno delivers an exceptional user experience and is a powerful, cost-effective, and easy-to-use instant replay and highlights generation system for HD, SD, 3G and UHD/4K with pan/zoom technology—as well as high-frame-rate productions with Grass Valley's LDX camera systems. Its unique AnySpeed technology provides the smoothest playback at any speed from zero to 200 percent, including speed transitions. This dramatically expands the ability to tell a compelling story during replays, especially when footage is captured at 6X speed.

This marks the first in a series of projects MBC plans in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates after winning the rights to broadcast the Saudi Arabian Football Federation for the next 10 years.

MBC Chairman Sheikh Waleed al-Ibrahim (L-background), MBC's Group Director General Ali al-Hedeithy (L), STC Chairman Abdulaziz al-Sugair (R-background), and STC's Senior VP for Technology and Operations Dr. Khalid bin Hussain Al-Bayari (R)

“We know viewers love watching these games, and we’re thrilled that Grass Valley’s K2 Dyno replay system will make the experience even more enjoyable,” said Nick Barratt, senior broadcast manager, MBC. “This technology provides the smoothest playback at speeds from zero to 200 percent, so we’ll be able to highlight the important plays as they happen. And after evaluating the replay options, this was much more cost-effective than other solutions on the market.”

The K2 Dyno replay system offers MBC more functionality because it works well with not only the station’s existing K2 media server, but also its on-air graphics system.

“This is a move that really will enhance MBC’s coverage of this popular sport,” noted Steve Stubelt, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Grass Valley. “MBC is an award-winning station that prides itself on broadcasts of unparalleled quality—the implementation of K2 Dyno is just another example of how they do that.”

The channels are dedicated to broadcasting Saudi Premier League matches and other football tournaments in the kingdom, targeting viewers in Saudi Arabia and the wider region.

MBC Pro Sports network has signed a megadeal with STC to sponsor the televised broadcast of the Saudi Professional League. The deal, signed in a ceremony at MBC’s headquarters in Dubai, also sees STC gain digital rights to live stream the “Abdul Latif Jameel League.”

Following the launch, Sheikh Waleed announced MBC Pro Sports is also eyeing European football broadcast rights.

About Grass Valley
Grass Valley, a Belden Brand, keeps broadcasters, content owners and service providers Future-Ready as they navigate the changing landscape of television. With the most comprehensive collection of workflow solutions in the industry, Grass Valley delivers end-to-end television production and content distribution workflows, combined with expert consultation and insight that lead to sustainable success. Grass Valley, headquartered in Montreal, is part of St. Louis-based Belden Inc. Belden delivers a comprehensive product portfolio designed to meet the mission-critical network infrastructure needs of industrial, enterprise and broadcast markets. With innovative solutions targeted at reliable and secure transmission of rapidly growing amounts of data, audio and video needed for today's applications, Belden is at the center of the global transformation to a connected world.