EMG Italy completely renewed the infrastructure of the San Siro stadium, one of the symbols of Milan and Italian football
The Giuseppe Meazza Stadium, a tribute to the legendary Italian footballer, also known as “San Siro” from the Milanese district where it stands, is the largest sports facility in Italy and the second largest in Europe in terms of capacity.
Inaugurated in 1926, it is owned by the Municipality of Milan and managed through the company “M-I Stadio”. Today it seats 75,923 with the two teams AC Milan and FC Internazionale, who use it to play their matches.
In addition to concerts and religious events, it regularly hosts the Serie A TIM football championship, the Coppa Italia, the Supercoppa Italiana, the Champions League, the Europa League, the World Cup and the European Football Championships. Following an intense commitment, first for the design and then for the construction, EMG Italy completed, a few months ago, the complete renovation of the now dated audio/video/data infrastructure of the San Siro Stadium, also known as “La Scala del Calcio” for its beauty and prestige.
The work began at the end of the 2022-23 top-flight football championship and kept the technicians and companies involved busy for over five months, leading to the testing of the solution in mid-November. The new and advanced technological infrastructure was used for the first time on 2 December 2023, during the television production of the Serie A football match Milan-Frosinone.
“We have redesigned the entire infrastructure,” says Francesco Donato, CTO of EMG Italy, “with this project we have updated the systems not only by adapting the wiring to current technological standards, but we have also thought about it in light of the new filming formats, which require a different and more current configuration of the filming stations. The narrative of our days is certainly aimed at the maximum spectacularization of the sporting event and therefore we have implemented new solutions and positions previously available only through additional temporary systems.
Then, to make the connection with the filming equipment located at the TV compound easier, we have designed and installed all the terminations and active devices in a special container to allow the best connectivity to and from the stadium, in addition to having implemented control solutions to verify the functionality of both the active and passive components that make up the system infrastructure. The new solution, therefore, allows for the creation of productions that are significant from the point of view of narrative and technological complexity, favoring a rapid process of installing the filming stations as well as everything necessary from the point of view of reporting and interviews”.
New setup
The new setup has created 23 new shooting positions inside the stadium, plus an additional termination point for the cabling that is inside the container in the TV compound.
The cabling of the shooting positions was created with SMPTE cables and dark fibre for all positions, and active equipment was installed in some positions, both for the transport of video signals and audio signals. Finally, for some of these positions, copper connections were also created, to be considered only and exclusively as a reserve system. The system was also designed to allow a good degree of scalability, to guarantee a possible temporary expansion, should it be necessary to implement large-scale shooting configurations.
“There’s more,” adds Francesco Donato, “the new infrastructure was created in such a way that it will eventually be possible to carry out television production also in “reverse” mode and therefore, if required, it would be possible to carry out two simultaneous productions with great advantage from a commercial point of view, since the visibility of the sponsors would be doubled”.
EMG Italy, as project manager, carried out all the engineering of the project and meticulously followed the physical implementation carried out by CRV Sistemi di Nicola Carvelli, with the contribution of Professional Show which supplied the active components of the system.
Some numbers of the system:
• 30 km of cable between SMPTE and Dark Fiber
• 60 SMPTE camera points
• 200 dark fiber connections
• 82 SDI to Fiber and Fiber to SDI video trunks
• 210 Audio to fiber and fiber to audio
• 30 trunks with media converters
Double safety
“One of the fundamental objectives of this project”, adds Simone Sofia, Technical Resources Manager who personally followed the implementation, “was to guarantee the total safety of the system, which we wanted to be truly double and complete.
This means that first of all the cable routes between the shelter and the wall box were studied in particular, taking care to prepare dedicated passages and avoiding crossing old cable ducts. Furthermore, there was particular attention to the redundancy of the electrical supply, so that any event can take place without the slightest risk of discontinuity in the service.
The power supply, in fact, is double and is supplied to the shelter and the wall boxes both by a protected network with an electrical cabin owned by the stadium, and by hooking up the generator, when it is used in events. The same applies to the prevention of malfunctions due to possible excessively high temperatures. The shelter where all the connections end, positioned in the TV compound, operates at constant and controlled temperature and humidity.
All the wall boxes are also equipped with internal ventilation that manages and maintains constant the temperature, when necessary, in order to safeguard the machines contained even in the case of beating sun, avoiding possible blockages of the equipment due to excessively high temperatures.
All this is managed by EMG both in maintenance and in daily management, entrusted to a technical supervisor who, in addition to assisting the broadcasters in setting up the events, coordinates the entire active part of the system from a dedicated control station inside the shelter”.
The advantages: reliability and speed of set-up
The new system provides a great advantage both in the set-up phase and in terms of operation, then, last but not least, it is completely modular and adjustable both in terms of use and in terms of flexibility.
Francesco Donato concludes: “I would like to remind you that this new configuration also prepares the sports facility to facilitate a possible technological implementation, to develop “on-venue” communication and entertainment strategies and to promote new service systems, such as the adoption of 5G technological solutions that allow the capture and dissemination of special content dedicated to the entertainment of the public”.
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