TVU produces CONIFA ‘Copa América’ with smartphones

The Confederation of Independent Football Associations (CONIFA) was able to broadcast a live tournament using TVU Networks‘ ecosystem of cloud solutions.

At the end of June, CONIFA managed to produce and broadcast the Copa America professional football tournament from the remote Chilean city of Linares, with virtually no technology solutions, minimal staff and at low cost. It was not a highly premeditated project, as, due to last-minute problems with the conventional transmission system, they had to plan a solvent alternative in just a few days. The solution CONIFA employed to achieve its goal was a mix of cloud-based tools from TVU Networks that enable a new way of producing sports events with smartphones.

The CONIFA hardware in Chile consisted solely of three smartphones and two tablets connected to the available 4G network with SIM cards, plus microphones, tripods, stabilisers for field shots and an ultra-portable TVU PowerPac lithium-ion battery pack that kept the phones and tablets charged. The TVU cloud-based solutions – the TVU Producer multi-camera live production platform, TVU Partyline cloud collaboration solution, TVU Remote Commentator cloud commentary platform and TVU Anywhere mobile live streaming app – did the rest of the work.

For the CONIFA Copa America event, video captured with smartphones and tablets in Chile was sent directly to TVU Producer via the cloud, where two TVU Networks solution architects in Mexico managed the video, graphics and audio production. TVU Remote Commentator, also managed from Mexico, allowed TVU staff to insert stories and comments from guests around the world into the broadcast, keeping all elements perfectly synchronised. Through TVU Partyline, team members in both locations collaborated in real time during production. Finally, TVU Anywhere streamed the broadcast live on CONIFA TV, other content distribution networks and social media platforms.

Diego Bartolotta, President of CONIFA Americas, believes that this deployment has been a success and that it could be “very important for the future of CONIFA games and tournaments throughout Latin America and around the world.” Meanwhile, Rafael Castillo, TVU Networks‘ general manager and vice president for EMEA and Latin America, stresses that thanks to its “modular, building block approach with easy-to-deploy infrastructure-free solutions, limited resources and remote locations no longer limit what you can achieve.”