BSKYB Champions League Final

PBLSat have provided SkySports with SNG and satellite facilities for the UEFA Champions League throughout the 2007-2008 season. This involved multi site uplinks and the provision of HD capacity throughout Europe. Therefore, it was a natural choice for Sky to choose PBLSat to provide coverage for the final in Moscow.

There were several challenges for PBLSat to deliver this event. Firstly, with the event being in Moscow there were many logistical and practical problems to overcome. Initially, we were told that only Russian transmission equipment would be permitted onsite and secondly, the licence and visa applications presented a large amount of red tape.

PBLSat provided a dedicated Account Manager in Nina Philipps to oversee the event and plough through the red tape liaising with Sky at every level. This made sure that all communication came through a single point of contact.

PBLSat organised customs clearance and border transportation for the extensive eighteen day round trip. Once on-site we provided an HD SNG to deliver an 18MHz transmission back to the UK for Sky to receive directly. We also provided a TVRO receiver to monitor the incoming transmission and to take an off-air feed.

“This event was very important to Sky Sports and with the difficulty of delivering HD from Russia we looked for a company that we could trust with one of our most important sporting events; this is why we went with PBLSat, to guarantee reliability in a difficult environment.” Darren Long, Head of Sky Sports Operations.

Although the project presented a few challenges, the final success made it all worthwhile and gave us a great opportunity to deliver yet another high profile sporting event.