Appear’s X Platform broadcast all ATP Tour 500 matches at the Swiss Indoors Basel live to spectators through the venue's TV system out to approximately 100 TV screens.
From 19 to 27 October 2024, the Swiss Indoors Basel tennis tournament hosted world-class tennis as part of the Association of Tennis Professionals’ ATP Tour 500. In the lead-up to the ATP Tour Finals in Turin, the Basel athletes competed in Switzerland's most important tennis tournament and one of the world's premier indoor events.
Spectators at the Swiss Indoors, held at the St. Jakobshalle Indoor Arena, Basel, could follow the tennis action with high picture quality and in near real-time throughout the venue. Using Appear’s X Platform, all matches were broadcast live through the venue's TV system to approximately 100 TV screens in various areas, such as press offices, VIP lounges, restaurants, exhibition areas and stands. R. Geissmann AG was responsible for setting up this system. In collaboration with Teletrend AG, a venue wide TV signal processing system was developed.
Appear's modular X Platform established fast, reliable transmission, which was essential for this event. Characterised by high stability and straightforward handling, it made a good choice for distributing TV signals in a sports arenas with so many screens. The X Platform is a high capacity, very dense hardware platform, used for low-latency media processing and gateway, and capable of high-speed video networking, robust IP security and efficient compression.
Appear maintains system redundancy for continuous content flow and, through the use of industry standards and its APIs, integrates the X Platform into workflows enabling smooth connections with 3rd party infrastructure. As well as distribution applications like the ATP tournament, its performance supports broadcast-grade workflows for live video contribution and production.
Andreas Bartels, CTO of R. Geissmann AG, said that their earlier experiences with Appear's products, in collaboration with Teletrend AG, prompted them to use it again for this project. Chris Alner, SVP Commercial Director EMEA, Appear, noted, “Appear's X Platform delivers the quality and low-latency required for a sporting event at the level of the ATP 500 Swiss Indoors Basel. Our system and approach make sure that all viewers in the venue, whether in lounges or press areas, experience the action reliably, in real-time, and with competitive picture quality.”
The technical implementation of the solution included audio and video signal acquisition, taking feeds directly from the control room in HD-SDI quality. The project also covered encoding, using low-latency H.264 encoders from Appear to encode the signals, and converting them to IP multicast. www.appear.net
