Italy’s Lega Serie A consolidated its content production, management, distribution onto Dalet’s centralised media infrastructure, focussed on workflow automation and media management.
Italian football league, Lega Serie A, is one of the most valuable leagues in the world in terms of annual revenue. The league’s International Broadcast Centre (IBC) was installed in 2021 at the Lissone headquarters of EI Towers, a major Italian radio and TV broadcast infrastructure company, launching Lega Serie A’s media company and aiming for efficient distribution with high signal quality.
The IBC supports the production, post production and distribution of highlights and top matches in 4K, as well as the transport of 12 signals per match. A VAR Centre has been set up in the same structure. The league has now consolidated its content production, management and distribution onto a centralised media infrastructure with a new focus on workflow automation and content management.
The goal is to increase production value for over 400 matches and be able to deliver in progressive UHD and 1080p formats over a full IP infrastructure. The enterprise implementation is subscription-based, to give the system flexibility and help Lega Serie A control costs.
“We took on an enormous challenge in building a new production infrastructure within the short time of 30 days – not just the workflows, but also a completely new facility in Lissone able to produce highlights, log match metadata and archive the assets. We needed reliable partners that would deliver for the production part of this project,” said Piercarlo Invernizzi, CTO, EI Towers.
Control Layer, Asset Management and Workflow Engine
In the production system now in place, Dalet Galaxy five serves as the control layer for a Dalet media asset management platform and workflow engine. This system has now been operating successfully for the whole of the season.
According to Dalet, the Lega Serie A transformation demonstrates a trend across sports teams, leagues and federations to develop competitive media strategies capable of delivering sophisticated fan experiences. By partnering with Dalet, for instance, their goals were to take better control of their own strategy, optimising content workflows over time and taking advantage of future business opportunities more easily.
Enterprise media workflow system Dalet Galaxy five controls and handles incoming media transmissions from stadiums and manages that content across the production centre’s fast production storage, nearline storage and archives. The underlying Dalet asset management and workflow engine tracks metadata and orchestrates the key workflows.
These workflows include match content capture across 100 channels of Dalet Brio IP ingest, as well as distribution of digital content packages to main broadcasters, media partners, telecommunication companies and teams using WEBPortals and direct contribution to the stadium during the live events via Dalet Brio IP output. Integrated into the system are Dalet production tools that can be used for immediate sports editing and highlight production, with remote collaboration from stadium to production centre made possible through a secure, hybrid configuration.
From the start, Lega Serie A’s business vision for this project was going to mean significant change across its media production and distribution chain. Dalet’s Massimo Berardi, General Manager – Italy, noted that Dalet’s adaptive approach and agile platforms enable enterprise-level digital transformation and achieve economies of scale.
More Control, Scope to Expand
“Lega Serie A now has full control over its assets from the local level to international with tools that amplify content across marketing channels,” he said. “This change generates opportunities to create new lines of business down at the club level, due to better sharing, repurposing and repackaging. They have more opportunities to expand efficiently on a platform that will be able to cope in the future.”
The Lega Serie A production centre encompasses a 2,400sqm work space equipped with editing stations, post-production rooms, master control room, content control room and a room dedicated to infographics. Dalet Professional Services collaborated with EI Towers and broadcast systems integrator CVE to deliver and install, in one month, more than 100 ingest channels, 12 playout channels, online production, nearline and archive storage, as well as the editing and highlight production applications.
Dalet MAM workflow design and training for the centre’s technicians and operators were also required. Dalet Professional Services, along with CVE, also supply Lega Serie A with first-line, on-the-ground support services. www.dalet.com
