BMG
(Image credit: BMG)
Broadcast Management Group has designed and deployed a custom REMI production ecosystem for The Pro Tour, a new professional golf tour featuring elite athletes from some of the world’s biggest sports leagues including the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL.
LiveU’s LU800 field units and LIQ intelligent connectivity served as key components within BMG’s broader production workflow. The setup gave camera operators the freedom of movement and a new view from the green that has always been challenging to achieve, while eliminating the cost constraints, environmental strain, and access limitations of legacy OB trucks.
As the tour’s turnkey broadcast partner, BMG provided creative services, live production, engineering, transmission, media management, and distribution for each five-hour live broadcast.
During a stop at the PGA National Resort in West Palm Beach last spring, BMG was faced with covering a crucial hole that had reportedly never been televised because it fell outside the venue’s fixed fiber infrastructure, according to the company.
In response, BMG implemented a nearly fully wireless production workflow using LiveU LU800 bonded cellular transmission systems enhanced by LiveU IQ intelligent connectivity. Starlink was ready as backup connectivity, though according to BMG, never had to be deployed. This meant that the technical director, master control, and channel management team could work from home or the NOC.
Golf
(Image credit: BMG)
Golf
(Image credit: BMG)
BMG
(Image credit: BMG)
The hybrid workflow dramatically shrunk the production footprint compared to a traditional cable-and-truck build, with more cameras able to cover more of the course because they’re no longer limited by where fiber happens to run, BMG said. Every camera, including drone coverage, transmitted live feeds to BMG’s Network Operations Center (NOC), where AI continuously monitored available network conditions and automatically optimized connectivity across multiple cellular networks.
“The Pro Tour let us design a broadcast ecosystem from the ground up, built around where the story was, not where cable could reach,” said Kathy Samuels, BMG’s director of creative services. “LiveU's LU800, and LIQ intelligent connectivity gave our creative vision somewhere to actually run. Bringing creative services, live production, engineering, and distribution into one workflow gave us a scalable model that supports the tour today and can grow with it.”