Concacaf Gold Cup Coverage Embraces 1080p HDR During Month-Long Tourney

Mediapro, Game Creek Video, NEP’s Vista provided support for HBS production

A busy three weeks of TV production for the 2023 Concacaf Gold Cup winds down at Los Angeles’s SoFi Stadium this weekend with 16 national teams whittled down to two: Panama and Mexico. Matches have been held in 17 U.S. cities (as well Toronto), and the 1080p HDR productions, with HBS at the center, have relied on support from Mediapro, Game Creek Video, and NEP’s Vista facility in Miami.

“The Gold Cup is the largest and most important tournament through our two-year cycle of events,” says Oscar Sanchez, director, broadcast operations and media distribution, Concacaf. “It’s a great opportunity to let the fans see their national teams and experience the tournament.”

World-class production teams have brought a world-class look to Gold Cup coverage.

This year’s tournament is the most complicated yet, Sanchez says. The 10 feeds produced include three world feeds, each with different advertising for different regions. Also among the feeds is an additional content feed, which is very important to rightsholders who want to show arrivals and interviews for the two teams playing in the second match on days with two matches (replays from the first match are also distributed via that feed). The rest of the feeds include a tactical feed and aerial-camera feed.

“It has been a big challenge, but it has been great,” he says. “I think we put together a good team, and it has been a good experience for our team and solid crew, which is a mix of people from the U.S., the rest of the Concacaf region, and, in some cases, global [like our directors].”

The regionalized advertising is driven by rightsholders that want more-personalized advertising on the boards around the pitch as well as on the field (the previous Gold Cup had four regionalized feeds). There is a feed for Mexico; a feed for Central America, South America, and the Caribbean; and a third for the U.S., Canada, and the rest of the world.

“Every world feed also has to be double because we’re adding in virtual carpets for our sponsors,” says Sanchez. “We also have to erase and replace advertising in some of the games, having paths that go to a TGI Sports facility in Italy where Brand Brigade clean the feed and then send it back to NEP’s Vista facility, where we add in world-feed commentary and graphics. It has been a fun experience.”

The productions are tiered for things like camera complement and other bells and whistles. The Group Stage matches were covered by about 24 cameras, and that grows to around 32 for the final in Los Angeles on Sunday.

‘What rightsholders want is consistency in what we deliver in the feeds from the game,” adds Sanchez. ‘There is the game, but then other deliverables dictate our plan for each game. And we have the luxury of directors like Laurent Lachand, Grant Phillips, and Oscar Lago, who understand the consistency we are looking for.”

A1 Jamie Wehner puts the right audio together for Gold Cup coverage.

Broadcast partner HBS assembles much of the team at the center of the production, including Game Creek Video production facilities for most games. Mediapro has provided facilities in New Jersey, Miami, and Toronto.

“We worked with Game Creek Video in 2021,” notes Sanchez. “I was impressed with their team and how committed their engineers are. They are young, but they’re also so, so good.”

This is the third Golf Cup that Concacaf has worked with Vista. All match feeds ultimately are sent to the Vista facility in Miami, where commentary and graphics are added, archiving takes place, and distribution to rightsholders is fulfilled (SRT is increasingly popular as a distribution method: for example, The Switch generates more than 200 feeds per match to be distributed to rightsholders.).

“[Vista] know what we need and the setup,” adds Sanchez. “It’s great to see how they work.”

Also providing support are 3G Wireless with specialty cameras; SkyCam for Cablecam 1; Mediapro Omnicam4Sky for Cablecam 2; and LiveU playing a big part. All matches are produced in 1080p HDR, based on feedback from rightsholders.

“I love it. When you see the results on screen, it looks great,” says Sanchez. “It has been a learning curve, but it’s the way the world is moving. If the shaders have experience and understand the difference between shading for HDR and SDR, that gives you an advantage. You know you’ll get great HDR but the downconversion to SDR will also look great.”

All the efforts have produced Gold Cup coverage that can stand toe to toe with the biggest soccer production on the planet: the FIFA Men’s World Cup.

“Our sport is very demanding,” says Sanchez. “The standard set by HBS is very high, and they are going to measure everything against the World Cup. The other thing is, here in the U.S., you have the NFL, NHL, and MLB delivering super-high-quality productions, so we need to keep up with that as well. And fans of MLS are used to getting 1080p HDR from Apple. All of that [competition] is good for us.”

Concacaf has also used the event as an opportunity to give participants in the HBS Broadcast Academy, which prepares young talent to take the next step in a production career, real-world exposure to new production environments.

“The academy supports the dreams of many women who want to be part of this,” says Sanchez, “and, this year, our Chief Commercial Officer Heidi Pellerano got the support of Always [brand]. We were able to have a training session at the EVS training center in New Jersey with Sigrid Lelièvre, who is the only woman director in the French league. After that training, [the participants] came to see the production at Red Bull Stadium and are going to be part of our production on the road to the Women’s Gold Cup. These are not internships; these are paid jobs where we can give them feedback and with a goal of having these women join the production team that will do the Women’s Gold Cup in February.”