Deutsche Telekom and PLAZAMEDIA remain strong partners and will continue their extensive cooperation over the next four years.
Ismaning, June 11, 2024
The success story is thus being extended, with PLAZAMEDIA also expanding its service portfolio for Deutsche Telekom. The scope of the production agreement includes PLAZAMEDIA taking over interior production for Telekom for the period from the 2024/2025 season up to and including 2027/2028.
This includes interior production in soccer for the 3rd German League, the Google Pixel Women’s Bundesliga and in ice hockey for the games of the German Ice Hockey League (Deutsche Eishockey Liga, DEL) and international games of the German national men’s team of the German Ice Hockey Federation (Deutscher Eishockey-Bund, DEB). In basketball, there are also all Turkish Airlines EuroLeague and EuroCup matches in the 2024/2025 and 2025/2026 seasons integrated.
PLAZAMEDIA GmbH has been working as a cooperation partner for Telekom since August 2019 and implements more than 1,400 live broadcasts per season for linear TV and online/OTT services as part of the MagentaSport offering.
PLAZAMEDIA is currently also strongly involved in preparations for the biggest sport event in Deutsche Telekom’s MagentaTV offering this year: the 2024 European Soccer Championship in Germany. The Ismaning-based production company is providing services and playout for all 51 live matches on three MagentaTV channels for UEFA EURO 2024.
Arnim Butzen, Head of TV at Deutsche Telekom: ”We are delighted to continue our long-standing collaboration with PLAZAMEDIA. In doing so, we are creating continuity and are relying on proven quality. The requirements for sports broadcasts in our extensive MagentaSport portfolio and for major soccer events such as the upcoming UEFA Euro 2024 on MagentaTV have increased significantly in recent years. As the leading digital company in Europe, we want to continue to lead the way as a driver of innovation in an increasingly digitalized environment. Our brands should stand for excellent and innovative sports coverage. We are convinced that with PLAZAMEDIA we have the right partner at our side.”
Jens Friedrichs, Chairman of the Management Board of PLAZAMEDIA GmbH: ”With our offer, we were once again able to convince Telekom of PLAZAMEDIA’s performance, innovative strength and sustainability. We will continue and further expand our successful partnership until at least 2028 – we are already in the process of implementing the major joint project UEFA EURO 2024. We would like to thank them for their trust and look forward to continuing our journey together.”
Playout for the UEFA EURO 2024
The European Soccer Championship in Germany will be a mega event for all soccer fans. The DFB team is dreaming of winning the title at home and PLAZAMEDIA is part of the biggest soccer event of the year as a service provider: Deutsche Telekom’s MagentaTV will be showing all UEFA EURO 2024 matches live from June 14 to July 14 and presenting an extensive range of programs. PLAZAMEDIA GmbH is providing the playout for the three Magenta EURO 2024 channels Fußball.TV 1-3 and associated services from a single source. This includes the planning and technical concept, the required production technology and the production staff. At the heart of the broadcast are all 51 live matches, tactics feeds, conferences, reaction shows combined with the studio broadcasts produced in Cologne at RTL as well as broadcasts to a studio on the Fan Mile in Berlin. Production will take place in UHD HDR and HD SDR formats. In addition, various streaming derivatives are produced, recorded and archived for external rights holders. In total, more than 40 signal paths have to be controlled.
PLAZAMEDIA expands service portfolio for Telekom
The cooperation between PLAZAMEDIA and Telekom, which has now been extended, includes the commission to implement up to 1,400 live matches of various sports for linear TV every year. This includes the live broadcasting of individual matches and conferences, as well as the recording and management of all linear non-live elements (replays, highlights, slomo playouts). It also includes operational personnel and multifunctional IP production units for handling live productions with commentary, graphics and content feeds, as well as the provision of conference control rooms for the implementation of conference broadcasts and a central media asset management platform. These services are supplemented by a comprehensive signal management service: All content relevant to production is received centrally as satellite, fiber optic or streaming signals via the Ismaning site. The same applies to the delivery of broadcast signals to the Telekom headend and third-party utilizers.
PLAZAMEDIA will continue to provide Telekom and Magenta Sport with innovative and reliable support. The range of services will be expanded by, among other things, virtualizing production methods even more. The PCR services will also be upgraded to include additional gallery functions, commentary cameras and the option of multiple parallel conferences. The provision and operation of VOD encoding and packaging technologies will be handled by PLAZAMEDIA in future. This includes replays and highlights of all matches and magazine videos. The streaming services will also have even greater capacities and extended functionalities in terms of stream monitoring and stream manipulation. In addition, Telekom will have access to the diverse possibilities of the fully IP-based studio infrastructure for classic, hybrid and virtual studio productions in the innovative PLAZAMEDIA Studios, the briX|woRk.studio XR LED Stage and the innovative ILLUSIONEER Studio.
About PLAZAMEDIA GmbH: Leading provider of smart content solutions
PLAZAMEDIA, a Sport1 Medien AG company, has developed into a leading sports TV producer in the German-speaking region since its foundation in 1976. Today, with its roots in classic television production, PLAZAMEDIA is also an established provider of smart, digital content solutions for all media platforms. Its customers include not only public and private broadcasters, but also platform operators, international sports associations, agencies for sports rights and national and international companies.
The range of services is broad: classic OB van-based production or remote production, staging of live sports or entertainment events, state-of-the-art content management solutions, editing, archiving and target group-specific content distribution on all media platforms – with convergent solutions, PLAZAMEDIA supports customers in the digital transformation of their business models along the entire content value chain.
Smart solutions for customer content: production, management, archiving and distribution – worldwide, digital and customized for all requirements.
News source: www.plazamedia.com
