Innovation technology chosen by LBA and Eleven Sports has been realized by EMG Italy

Starting with the return round of Serie A UnipolSai, a fully remoted Instant Replay Center has been launched at the EMG Italy production center in Cologno Monzese, at the service of the basketball teams of LBA and the Italian Referees Committee of FIP.

Remote solution is now possible thanks to important investments on infrastructure made by Eleven Sports and on optic fiber connectivity made by LBA in all sport arenas. Network bandwidth capacity accomplished by Fastweb, sponsor and partner of LBA, has been increased by 5 times, as compared to the previous seasons.

The technology project, developed by EMG, has been appreciated and supported also by Eleven Sports. As exclusive rightsholder, they will use it also for producing and broadcasting LBA championship matches.

Each workstation at the Instant Replay Center is dedicated to one match and has an IR operator connected in remote mode with the field and directly with the referee, when the game actions require it. Real-time communication between the parties will allow the referee to give specific directions to the operator about the choice of images to view and review.

In fact, the system requires that all the cameras recording the match are available on two monitors (the one on the field for the referee and the one in Cologno for the operator) and they play the same images with minimum latency. It will therefore be possible to choose the best points of view from the mosaic: the operator could go full screen, zoom in on the actions, review them at reduced speed or frame by frame. The selected images could also be broadcasted live.

“After being the first European basketball league to use Instant Replay in all matches starting from the 2014-15 season – says the President of Lega Basket Umberto Gandini – in agreement with the Italian Basket Federation, we continue in the process of technological improvement to guarantee clubs and referees increasingly advanced tools capable of giving certainty and uniformity of decisions to each match”.

“The new system – states the Commissioner of Italian Referees Committee Luigi Lamonica – will facilitate the work of the referees above all by speeding up the decisions about the actions subject to verification. The hope is that this work will continue and, thanks to technology, further possibilities may be developed to facilitate choices made by the referees”.

“We are very happy to collaborate with LBA in this innovative project and to have chosen EMG as technologic partner. This venture is in line with our strategy of growth, as we want to invest in favor of sports and supporters to enjoy what they love” – commented Giovanni Zurleni, CEO of Eleven Sports Italia.

Francesco Donato, CTO of EMG Italy, explains the project: “The technological solution that we have set up in our production center is one of a kind and the first ever in Italy, both for basketball and for indoor sports. We designed and implemented the IRC as part of a larger remote production project, laying the foundation for extending the project to all Italian sports”.

The choice of remote production, increasingly frequent in Serie A matches, follows a precise choice of LBA, in agreement with Eleven and EMG that produces all matches in the championship. This has the aim of improving the quality of product, facilitating distribution on multiplatform, but also to make a more sustainable choice for the environment: lighter mobile unit on the street and outside sport arenas, less movement of personnel and greater overall energy savings are all points in favor of this new technological solution also in the next future of tv production.