Adlib provided full technical production for the Netball World Cup, staged at the 11,000 capacity M&S Bank Arena in Liverpool, including fully integrated video, lighting and audio, and linking in with broadcast elements for BBC and Sky television broadcasts.
The spectacle took place over ten days that delivered world-class netball to an international viewing audience and the many thousands watching courtside, which was sold out for the duration. The event included a spectacular Opening Ceremony, which set the level of expectation for the sports to follow.
The on-court coverage produced by Sport Presentation specialists Red Sky at Night Events Ltd, and saw 16 nations compete for the Vitality Netball World Cup 2019 trophy.
Adlib’s technical team worked with curators of the ceremony Culture Liverpool and ‘Iluminos’, providing six Panasonic RZ21K laser projectors mounted vertically to project the visuals created by Iluminos onto the courts below. Lighting and video effects combined to produce the spectacle enjoyed the live audience and TV viewers.
Adlib worked with both clients, providing one point of contact. Project Manager Dave Eldridge had a highly talented and experienced crew onsite, and worked with host broadcaster Televideo and several other contractors to ensure seamlessly delivery of the event. Kenny Perrin and David Grimes looked after the audio, joined by Fabrizio Colucci for the Opening Ceremony, with Max Taylor assisting on the two day load-in and set-up.
The audio system included multiple flown speaker arrays, together with a control package to cater for various audio sources during the event along with Opening and Closing Ceremonies. A Coda Audio system – ViRay and AiRay – was used as the small physical size of these speakers made it easy to keep sightlines clear to the central video screens while keeping the audio coverage consistent throughout. The system was designed to cover all seating areas around the arena bowl including a temporary stand at the standard ‘stage end’ of the hall.
As with lighting and video, the sound design was multifunctional and dynamic to deal with the demands of the sporting action and the OC.
There were seven main loudspeaker hangs – two of eight AiRay were at the ‘D’ end of the arena along with a further six AiRay hang at the ‘stage’ end. Four further hangs of ViRay covered the long sides of the arena, with two hangs of 9 speakers each side. The system was zoned such that audio could be played in either half of the arena if needed (to coincide with the two-court set-up), and then both halves when the configuration moved to one court. Four Coda SCV-F subs made up each of the two sub hangs flown centrally in the arena.
All the amplifier racks and power distro were installed into the Arena roof, to allow maximum ground space for the sports action, so this was another plus in using Coda.
FOH was served by a DiGiCo SD11 mixing desk located at the back of one of the long-end seating areas, and the show was run from there. A backup audio console – for full redundancy – was set up in video world backstage, along with the I/O racks and RF distribution. Most of the audio feeds were taken directly from the video. This consisted of stings, music tracks, and recorded announcements. Added to that were Shure Axient handheld mics to look after the live announcements between games
For the Opening Ceremony, audio was generated from the video content so it was synchronised with the rest of the choreographed visual elements. As part of this show there was a solo singer and choir, which made use of additional Shure RF handheld microphones and Sennheiser IEM systems for their monitoring.
‘It was great to be supplier to such a high-profile sports event on home territory for us,’ Eldridge reflects. ‘It was exciting to break new ground as a full tech service provider for World Cup level sporting events. It’s been a busy summer with festivals, tours and events, and this was a unique challenge in which we were proud to be involved.’
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