4 October 2021

The inauguration of the new International Broadcast Center (IBC) of Serie A League was held today, at the EI TOWERS headquarters in Lissone, a leading company in Italy in the management of infrastructures for TV, Radio, Internet of Things (IoT) and Telecommunications.

EI TOWERS, technological partner of Lega Serie A, in addition to the infrastructures, has also made available its ten-year experience in the management and broadcasting of the television signal on the digital terrestrial system of MUX Mediaset, MUX Cairo (La7, La7d and DAZN), MUX D-FREE (pay cinema channels  and series) and MUX Persidera (channels on Sky, Discovery, Viacom and other Italian DTT channels).

More specifically, EI TOWERS supports Lega Serie A by providing contribution and distribution services for audio, video and data signals in Italy and around the world, for broadcasters and rights holders.

The new IBC is located in a 2,400 square meter building spread over two levels, renovated and expanded in record time. Renovation work started last April and the building became fully operational from the first Serie A TIM match on 21 August 2021.

Twelve (12) main signals (plus 12 backups) are transported from the stadiums to the IBC for all the matches of the Championship, the Italian Cup and the Italian Super Cup, 12. All the graphics, collective and subjective virtualizations are added here in IBC and then the signals are redistributed, through fiber links, to DAZN, Sky Italia, Rai and Mediaset. The signals are also distributed all over the world with different branding.

Each match is commented in Italian and English and 5 per each day of Serie A TIM are commented in Arabic for broadcasting on You Tube in the Mena area. There are 16 commentary booths (14 single and 2 double coordinated by a dedicated audio direction).

In addition to the activity dedicated to live broadcasting and production of the matches, IBC also gathers the highlights of the Lega Serie A matches in the post-production room, which has 24 workstations that process different summary formats (90 seconds, 3 minutes, 4 minutes, 10 minutes) of the races, always in the three languages ​​of the race commentary, Italian, English and Arabic.

THE PROJECT IN NUMBERS

BUILDING and INSTALLATIONS

  • 2,400 sqm on 2 floors
  • 80 technicians and production workers
  • 1 megawatt of electricity
  • 980,000 conditioning refrigerators
  • 130 km of electric cables
  • 65 km of video and optical fiber cables
  • 40 km of data cables
  • 230 TV monitors

PRODUCTION FACILITIES

  • 24 editing stations
  • 16 commentary booths
  • 3 post-production rooms
  • 1 Master Control Room
  • 1 Control Content Room
  • 1 room for infographics
  • 2 virtualization rooms
  • 1 conference room

VAR ROOMS

  • 12 VAR rooms
  • 1 supervision room

CONNECTIVITY

  • 17 Serie A stadiums connected via optical fiber
  • 10 + 10 Gbps Stadium / IBC connectivity
  • 1080p50 HD signals
  • 2160p50 4K signals
  • 12 + 12 Stadium / IBC signals
  • 4 + 4 IBC / Stage return signals
  • 320 signals sorted per match round
  • 5 different contents produced and distributed in Italy, Europe, America, Asia and MENA per single game