Super Bowl 50: Denver Broncos, LiveU Team Up to Deliver All-Access Coverage for Fans

The Denver Broncos are back in the Super Bowl and, with the help of LiveU, their fans will experience an all-access pass to all the excitement of Super Bowl Week. Utilizing LiveU award-winning technology, the newly crowned AFC champions will present a week of pre-game activities and interviews at Super Bowl City in San Francisco and from the team’s headquarters near Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara to the team’s sizable and passionate base of Broncos Country fans. Broncos TV anticipates live streaming 40 hours of pre-game coverage.

The Broncos will simulcast two daily programs from radio partner, Denver Sports 760, broadcasting from Media Row at Super Bowl City. Video of each show, with live pre-game analysis and special guests, including national sports figures visiting Media Row, will be streamed on DenverBroncos.com using LiveU’s LU500 professional-grade video uplink unit for acquisition, management, and distribution over IP. Featuring LiveU’s bonded-cellular technology, the units weigh just about 2.2 lbs. and are conveniently housed in a custom-designed backpack.

Each day of Super Bowl week, BroncosTV will produce and live stream to DenverBroncos.com a half-hour program featuring Super Bowl discussion and analysis by a team of Broncos insiders, plus interviews with players and coaches and practice footage. For those shows, set for 2:30 p.m. PST, Broncos TV will employ LiveU’s LU700 hybrid video uplink systems for fixed locations —one at the team’s hotel in Santa Clara and another in Denver at Sports Authority Field at Mile High. The LU700 solution optimizes all available bandwidth to deliver broadcast-quality video.

The Broncos TV team, whose activities support both the website and mobile app and the Sports Authority Field video board, began employing LiveU technology in 2013, and since then has dramatically increased its use of LiveU products to deliver a more robust video experience to its fans in real-time.

Jeremy Wecker, the Broncos’ Manager of Audio/Visual Technology and Broadcast Engineering explains, “Since our Super Bowl XVIII appearance at Met Life Stadium in New Jersey, when we employed only one LU700 and one LU500, we’ve worked with LiveU to grow our video streaming function by expanding the footprint of our remote video acquisition and transmission capabilities. For this Super Bowl week, Broncos TV operations encompass 10 LU500 units, two LU700s and the LiveU Central Web-based video management platform for full control and monitoring of the entire ecosystem. With this system, five video feeds—2 from the NFL and 3 of our own—will stream simultaneously over the cloud to the CDN in our control room in Denver for distribution to our website and mobile site.”

Last night, the Broncos TV crew used several of the LU500 backpack units to record and transmit to the website a behind-the-scenes peek at the Super Bowl Week’s “Opening Night” event at the SAP Center in San Jose, which included video chats with former Broncos players, as well as national and Denver media personalities and high-profile fans.

“The partnership between LiveU and the Broncos provides us with the state-of-the art technology needed to deliver to the fans of Broncos Country — and all pro football fans — the most comprehensive, in-depth pre-game content leading up to the Super Bowl,” says Michael Bonner, the Broncos’ Senior Director of Event Presentation & Production.

“Beyond the unmatched technology,” he adds, “LiveU’s support team has made us feel that we are their number one priority, helping us deploy the units and configure them and guiding us on how to get the most out of these systems. They’ve become an indispensable partner.”

“Teams and sports organizations across the world are using LiveU technology for live, mobile video transmission anytime, anywhere,” says Avi Cohen, LiveU’s Co-Founder and COO. “We’re excited to be partnering with organizations such as the Broncos who are pushing the streaming video envelope utilizing LiveU’s complete range of devices to bring the most comprehensive and innovative coverage to their loyal fans.”