United Facilitates European Athletics Championships 2016

posted:

07/07/2016

Broadcaster NOS has asked United to register the European Athletics Championships 2016. This will be one of the most prestigious assignments in United’s history. A major challenge in a summer crammed with sports events: We will be working at the European Football Championships, the Tour de France and, of course, the Olympics.

The Athletics Championships are an extensive multi-camera project involving 77 cameras, 8 direction units, and 200 crew of United. No fewer than 27 countries will be purchasing the images. The tight events calendar presents an additional challenge: All 44 disciplines will be competing in just 5, instead of the usual 6 days. The athletes preferred a short programme because of the Olympics in Rio later this year. This increases the pressure on the organisation as more events will take place simultaneously. Moreover, there are two official venues: The Olympic Stadium and Museumplein.

United Facilitates European Athletics Championships 2016

Considerable Challenge

Besides registering all events, United will be responsible for the Technical Operational Centre (TOC), the EVS network, the commentary positions and the dedicated live mix zone. Some nine months ago United began preparing project management, logistics and planning to get all facilities and people ready in time. Not an easy feat in this action-packed summer. We succeeded owing to our close alliance with the technical production team of NOS and of course our position in the Euro Media Group and cooperation with sister companies like VideoHouse and EMP.

Event Presentation

Commissioned by Amsterdam2016, the organisers of the Athletics Championships, United is in charge of the overall event presentation. With a portable direction unit and three cameras we will offer visitors a total experience, using the big screens situated in the Olympic Stadium and Museumplein. Our own Graphics division will add design and content shared by visitors on social media, automatically collected by our smart tool MediaConnect. Our editors will then use that same tool to post the shared movies, photos, Tweets, etcetera on the big screens, but also on Amsterdam 2016’s website, app, and social media channels. MediaConnect is linked to a press portal, where accredited members of the press can download professional content for editing or immediate broadcast on TV or online. MediaConnect allows Amsterdam2016 to keep the entire media production together.