BAKU, Azerbaijan – The inaugural European Games, an international multi-sport event for athletes devised by the European Olympic Committee took place in Azerbaijan’s ancient city Baku in June and featured 6,000 athletes from 50 countries. Creative Technology’s Sports Technology provided the entire AV infrastructure for the 20 competition venues and media/athlete areas.
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With 253 medal events to be won and opportunities in 11 sports to qualify for next year’s Summer Olympics in Rio, the Games are Europe’s answer to the Asian, Pan-American, All-Africa and Pacific Games.
Creative Technology’s specialist Multi-Sports delivery arm Sports Technology (ST) was engaged by local specialist Euromedia, to deliver the entire AV infrastructure across the 20 competition venues and key Media and Athlete areas.
ST’s core management team, who have been on the ground in Baku since March, grew to include over 100 technical and administrative personnel at the peak of operations.
The delivery scope varied from venue to venue depending on the complexity of the sport and the level of permanent facilities. Every location included video production facilities for sport presentation, front of house audio control and matrix intercom solutions for sport presentation production.
For the first time at a multi-sport Games, ST also provided a fully integrated Network infrastructure across every venue. The MediorNet backbone provided in partnership with Riedel Communications allowed data, intercom, video and audio signals to be delivered over a bi-directional and fully redundant fibre network with nodes in each of the key technical areas within each venue. The network carried all of the data and V-Lans for scoring timing and results alongside broadcast and production feeds. The installation massively reduced the traditional copper cabling requirement resulting in significant cost and time savings to the organisers and a tangible environmental benefit.
Depending on venue requirements ST’s delivery also included multiple LED boards and, in partnership with local production supplier Euromedia, PA systems in the majority of the sports venues, many of which were provided by CT’s audio division “Dimension”.
The combined delivery requiring 13 trucks and involving over 120 people on the ground was one of CT’s largest ever projects. Dave Crump, CT’s CEO commented “Baku 2015 has been an incredible journey, our teams both on the ground and back at base have delivered a fantastic variety of ground breaking services and technologies. This is a positive and tangible example of the legacy created in London in 2012 and we look forward to many more events in the region in years to come.”
