French Sports Network Taps Quantel for Digital Production and Delivery System

Quantel has designed and installed an integrated production and delivery system for for L’Equipe TV, France’s No. 1 sports information channel. The broadcast, online, and mobile content  system has been up and running since October, allowing L’Equipe 24/24 and L’Equipe Production to provide digital content to cable and satellite channels, the internet, digital radio channels, and telecom operators.

“Our project wasn’t simply to upgrade our technical facilities,” says Sébastien Valère, operations and marketing manager of L’Equipe 24/24. “Our main goal, in fact, was to implement a business model for rolling out a global brand on five different media. Our main requirement was that our suppliers work together to provide us with a totally integrated workflow solution that enables us to deliver content 24/7 on all our media. The global solution built with Quantel kit is right on the money for us.”

The L’Equipe system revolves around Enterprise sQ servers with more than 800 hours of broadcast quality storage space and a Mission Media Asset Management system. Journalists, editors, producers, archive managers and technicians share the same browse and edit applications, including sQ View, sQ Cut, sQ Edit and sQ Edit Plus, as well as Mission Transfer and sQ Record.

“The entire Quantel team was really in high gear for this complex project,” says Jean-Luc Wolff, Quantel France regional manager. “Our challenge was to design an innovative and integrated tapeless workflow environment. To ensure seamless transition from the previous system, we were especially focused on end-user training and on-air support.  We are really very pleased to see this setup working smoothly and fulfilling our customer’s needs and expectations, facilitating production and distribution to all media.”

L’Equipe TV was formed in 1998 by the nationwide daily newspaper, L’Equipe. The network is currently the No. 1 rated sports network in France.