Bexel, EVS Complete Massive Tag-team Effort at US Open
At the 2013 US Open, Bexel and EVS worked together to help deliver the broadcast to the millions of tennis fans who watched around the world. In addition to supporting the primary coverage of the tournament on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN360 and ESPN Interactive TV, the companies worked with ESPN Argentina, ESPN Brazil, The Tennis Channel, and CBS Sports. The core of this year’s project for Bexel was putting together an EVS server system that includes 15 XT3 servers, six additional XT series servers, two XS servers, 36 IPDirector suites, six XTAccess servers, two XStoreSE 20TB storage systems, four DBServer SQL database servers, 10 EVS network hubs, and four XFile gateways. Bexel recently purchased 10 IPDirector suites, two XS servers, and an XT3 server to accommodate the massive installation needed at the US Open Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows, New York.
“The EVS workflows are extremely complex around major sporting events like the US Open,” says Bexel VP of Engineering and Operations Craig Schiller. “We set-up multifaceted networks to record, share and edit content that require hands-on support. Having worked closely together for so many years, the engineering teams from both companies are able to work collaboratively to help design, integrate, configure and manage the EVS workflows for our customers.”
“EVS has always been a forward-thinking company. They are extremely open to new ideas and great at making quick adjustments on the fly to improve and support their products, which is vital for live event production,” Schiller says. “At Bexel, we have always sought relationships with manufacturers that are more than just a ‘purchase order and check’ relationship. Our relationship with EVS is driven by collaboration, innovation, and problem solving. That combination has proven to be very beneficial to our common customers, from the training we can provide, to live production, and all the way through to archiving.”
Over the past 15 years, Bexel has transported EVS XT servers from Athens, Greece to Torino, Italy to Beijing, China, and back again. Shipping the powerful and complex servers, and keeping them protected from project to project, has been one of the keys to Bexel’s success in providing these EVS units to the broadcast community. Custom cases, featuring a ‘box within a box’ design and made of a unique polypropylene material used in submarines, offer the necessary protection and ensure that the XT servers perform well upon arrival. Bexel will be sending EVS servers and more to Bermuda in October for the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, to be televised by TNT, and to Macao, China in November for the Manny Pacquiao-Brandon Rios welterweight bout, which will be shown on HBO PPV.
Fred Garroy, SVP of EVS Americas, Luc Doneux, executive vice president of EVS Sports, and their respective teams have been instrumental in supporting Bexel during the last 15 years as they tackled major projects across the globe. “Bexel’s latest investment for the US Open is a testament to the ability of our solutions to deliver highly efficient production workflows for live sports,” notes Garroy. “EVS and Bexel share the same attitude when it comes to customer support, which goes well beyond normal service agreements. We look forward to continuing our partnership to enable our customers to enrich and monetize live content across multiple platforms.”
Looking forward to 2014, Bexel and EVS are already gearing up for the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi and the FIFA World Cup in Brazil. Concluded Schiller, “EVS’ systems are ideal for the scope of event logistics and live production operations that you find at the World Cup, and at the Olympics. We look forward to working with our colleagues at EVS on both of these events and continuing to offer their state-of-the-art solutions to our clients for many years to come.”