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IN FUTURE, WIRELESS COMMS IS GOING TO BECOME MORE AND MORE IMPORTANT
Following on the heels of ESL One Cologne, the PMCO Spring Split Global Finals wrapped up at the Estrel Congress Center in Berlin. PMCO (PUBG Mobile Club Open) is the mobile tournament of the popular battle royale combat game PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds), from South Korean developer Bluehole. It was the year’s first global PMCO, with 27 teams from across the globe qualified for the prelims and finals. Organisers used an Artist mainframe with 30 SmartPanels and 30 Bolero beltpacks to enable crew communications for the tournament, which streamed in ten languages via YouTube, Twitch and other streaming platforms. “Like other large arena-based sports events, esports tournaments require clear and reliable communications between all members of the production team,” says Olivier Görts, senior account manager at Riedel. “We’re honoured that our Artist, MediorNet and Bolero systems played such a key role in the ESL Grand Slam and PMCO events, two of the most important tournaments on the global esports calendar.” The winner of the PMCO championship match was Chinese team Top Esports (also a top-end League Of Legends crew).
WAY MORE COMPLEX Gaming has always been at home with IP-based technologies and it wouldn’t occur to most gamers there would be any other way of communicating. High quality headsets are as essential in esports as good monitors, mice and keyboards. With the expansion of esports tournaments into large-scale entertainment events, with all the trappings of a major concert and big stadium sports events, a host of battle- hardened production technologies are being introduced into the medium. “Compared to other sports productions, esports productions are way more complex,” explains Simon Eicher, executive producer and director of broadcast at ESL. “Usually in sports or entertainment you have one director and maybe a few supporting associates. But with esports you have so many layers going on. Stage content, the league operations, the team working on replay features for the upcoming segment – they’re all tied into comms. In a larger production you might
also have a slave unit focusing on match play itself, with a vast amount of individual party lines needed.” It’s no surprise that ESL embraced Riedel as a technology partner. “From an R&D perspective Riedel is very open-minded on finding new solutions,” says Eicher. “They have been strong on providing high quantity, high reliability wireless comm systems and then additional features, too. Their latest generation of smart key panels especially has become more and more important. Having features like GPIO, for example, is helpful for managing all these different comms layers. And with the key panels, commentary can switch programme return feeds and multiviewers themselves without having to ask engineers to do it. It’s great to be able to do that on the panel and not need any additional interfacing gear.” If there’s one cliche that we’ve heard over and over, it’s that esports is the broadcast format of the future. So what will esports comms be like in the years to come? Eicher thinks that its going to come down to speed and ease of use. “In future, wireless comms is going to become more and more important as events get more complex. For us, financially speaking, the time it takes to set up is crucial. I look forward to being able to hook up to the comms system via Bluetooth or your mobile, and using it to patch in with your own headset. It will help production teams with individual needs to tie easily into the production and be fully integrated with any comms at the event.”
LOOK TO THE FUTURE Esports gives a taste of how future live broadcasting tech will evolve
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