Sogecable at the FIFA World Cup 2010

Sogecable’s sports-centric Alberto Arrillaga Imaz

With an overall crew of 80 – 40 technicians and production personnel at the IBC, 20 at the Spanish National Team training camp and ten two-man ENG crews – Sogecable can certainly be said to have a presence at this tournament. “The main work is, of course, sending the live matches back to Spain, which we are doing across six fibre optic lines – two in HD and four in SD,” explains Alberto Arrillaga Imaz, Technical Manager for Sogecable, “however, on top of this, we are producing a lot more content.”

Included in this extra content are live feeds of the Spanish team training, as well as two sports-centric news shows. “We have one hour of sports news a day, spread across two shows – one at 15:00 and the other at 19:30,” continues Al­berto. “One presenter is based here, in Johannesburg, the other with the team. We also have our own OB van at the Spanish matches, sending unilateral feeds in HD.”

Sogecable have six dedicated sports channels on their digital/satellite platform behind the pay-wall, as well as one free-view channel. They are broadcasting the matches and news shows across the scrambled channels, and all primetime games are being made available on the free-view channel.

“We are also broadcasting ten of the matches in 3D,” concludes Alberto, “I’m not sure how many people will be utilising these games at home, but they will also be broadcast in theatres in Spain – it is definitely the beginning.”