Water Polo developed during the 19th century as an aquatic version of rugby, played informally in rivers and lakes. The version of the game that survives today is closer to Handball: a fast, tough and demanding sport, it has featured on every Olympic programme since the Paris 1900 Games. Women’s Water Polo was introduced at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

Weightlifting will showcase a test of pure strength – the oldest and most basic form of physical competition. At the London Olympics weightlifting is staged at the ExCel exhibition centre.

Recognised as one of the world’s oldest sports, Wrestling was first held at the ancient Olympics in 708 BC, and Greco-Roman Wrestling was included at the Athens 1896 Games, the first of the modern era. Played out on a circular mat, the sport is a battle of nerves, strength and skill, and should provide plenty of drama at ExCeL during London 2012.

The 2012 Tour de France is the 99th edition. It began in the city of Liège in Belgium on 30 June, and is scheduled to end on the Champs-Elysées in Paris on 22 July. Besides Belgium and France, the Tour will also pass through Switzerland. The route features a total of 101.1 km covered in individual time trials and only three uphill finishes: La Planche des Belles Filles (stage 7), La Toussuire - Les Sybelles (stage 11) and Peyragudes (stage 17).

The technology and ingenuity of broadcasters with distribution rights to the 2012 Olympics were thoroughly tested in an effort to serve a wider viewing audience than ever before, measured both geographically and by sheer audience numbers. Following extensive evaluations to find the best encoding platforms for both live and on-demand video streaming, the BBC, CTV, Terra, NHK and Eurosport all selected Elemental video processing solutions to support coverage of the 2012 Olympics.

Spectacular fireworks and impressive performances were the themes of the opening ceremony on January 8th in the Ruhpolding Championspark. Following the biathlon World Championships last year, the world again was watching the Biathlon in the Chiemgau Arena for five days. Tora Berger, Miriam Gössner and Martin Fourcade led the winner's parade in Ruhpolding. Berger anchored the winning women's relay team and then dominated the mass start on Sunday. In between, Gössner captured the fan's hearts by running away with the sprint. Then there was Fourcade; he anchored the relay, and flew to wins in the sprint and mass start. Norway and France with a bit of Germany thrown in was how the week went.

On 29th May 2008 SIS LIVE supported the delivery of a critically acclaimed live advert for Honda, broadcast live on Channel 4. It was described at the time by the Guardian as “the first ever live advert on British television” and featured 45 people sky-diving in formation over Madrid, moving to spell out HONDA, under the tag-line ‘difficult is worth doing.’

Once L-ACOUSTICS were selected as the brand of choice for the sound system at the Olympic Stadium for the Olympics and Paralympics at London 2012, the collective team faced a gargantuan task. Exceptional sound was required to electrify a brand new stadium with a capacity of 80,000 for the Opening and Closing ceremonies of the Olympics and Paralympics as well as for every single athletic event held within the Olympic Stadium over a 29 day period in total.

Following the 2001 World Championship, a memorable event for France as the Men National team won the title, handball became then a very popular sport, and demands of videos kept increasing.

The Tour de France is the most prestigious cycling event and one of the most famous sporting events in the world. The top cyclists from around the world compete in a grueling three week 3,500 km journey each July that takes competitors through the mountain chains of the Pyrenees and the Alps and on to the finish on the Champs-Élysées in Paris.

After a three-year hiatus, the Red Bull Air Race World Championship came roaring back in 2014. The eight-stop 2014 Red Bull Air Race World Championship began in Abu Dhabi in March with subsequent stops in Rovinj, Croatia in April, Putrajaya, Malaysia in May, Gdynia, Poland in July, Ascot, United Kingdom in August, Dallas/Fort Worth, USA in September , and Las Vegas, Nevada, USA in October, before it arrived for the final in Spielberg, Austria, a sensational location for the sport. The Spielberg stop was the 58th overall Red Bull Air Race, a sport that has been staged in 18 countries since it was launched in 2003.

A 22-question, multiple-choice questionnaire was designed to measure the attitudes and preferences of sports fans with reasonable detail (descriptive research). Through random probability sampling, fans were interviewed at a variety of venues – both onsite at major sports events and at public areas such as sports bars, airports and commercial centers. It covered five sports (football/soccer, basketball, hockey, baseball and tennis) across Germany, Belgium, Spain and three major cities of the United States (New York, Chicago and Dallas). Respondents were all 18 years of age and older and identified as a keen spectator of any sport (at least two hours per week spent following sports in person, on television or through any other media). Cross tabulation and chi square segmentation analysis was utilized to formulate results.

It all started with a simple but intriguing idea on a layover at Moscow airport: What if you could get the whole world running? Everyone, worldwide, on the same day, at the same time. A race of epic proportions with just one lone runner left at the end. A world run. But could it be done? It could.

As a leading provider of technical, production and distribution services, the MEDIAPRO Group knows what it takes to produce a great live production. Having been a customer of EVS for over 20 years, it understands the importance of using the right equipment in the unforgiving live environment.

El Clásico is a clash between Spain’s two biggest clubs Real Madrid CF and FC Barcelona, and one of the biggest and most prestigious matches in world football. The first El Clásico of the 2015/2016 La Liga season was played in Madrid in November. In charge of producing the host broadcast feed for the game, MEDIAPRO wanted to broadcast feeds in both HD and Ultra-HD. To do this, it installed a number of EVS technologies to enable the production.

Euro 2016 proved the power of live TV, its capacity to bring people together and its emotional impact across generations. Broadcasters throughout Europe have reasons to be proud of the audience figures achieved during the championship. Live sports events such as the Euros are usually enjoyed on TV sets. However, TV is now available everywhere and on every screen, and more and more viewers can watch games on tablets, smartphones or computer screens – either live or on-demand. The fully audited global figures for the matches will not be known for some time, but broadcasters are already confident that the numbers for the France – Portugal final have surpassed the 299 million viewers worldwide who watched the Spain – Italy final in 2012.