Holding up to 65,000 people for music events and 55,000 for sports events, the Friends Arena is the home ground of the Swedish national football team and local football club AIK, as well as being a popular concert venue.
Opened in October 2012, the Friends Arena is owned by Föreningen Svensk Elitfotboll (SEF, the Swedish Elite Football Association) and Svenska Fotbollförbundet (SvFF, the Swedish Football Association), who have equipped it with what it regards as the ‘most modern’ media production centre in Sweden.
Operated by Onside TV Productions, the full-service facility is intended primarily to serve Swedish football events, but other productions can be handled from the venue itself and via its extensive telecom solutions. The production centre is equipped to handle everything from web-based broadcast to DVD production. It also manages the advertisements and information presented inside and outside the stadium. At the heart of its audio systems are Lawo digital mixing systems.
The production centre is located close to the players’ entrance and press area. Able to handle up to 30 cameras, it comprises three fully-equipped production rooms and two sound suites, along with two edit suites, a voiceover studio, vision control and a graphics facility. The sound suites are both equipped with 5.1-channel surround monitoring, and have a 16+16-fader Lawo mc²56 MkII console installed in Audio Control 1 and two 8+8-fader Lawo sapphire consoles in Audio Control 2. The facility also has a studio overlooking the stadium that has one of four moveable Lawo Dallis stageboxes as part of a Lawo network, connecting all the consoles and stageboxes. According to Onside TV Productions’ Technical Manager Jan Arvidsson, the Lawo systems were chosen for their audio quality and flexibility.
An overriding consideration – one that played a significant part in the selection of all systems – was redundancy. The need to be able to provide 24/7 operation meant that both the control and DSP/routing systems had to be extremely reliable and offer failsafe facilities and power supplies. In addition, the whole facility is served by a huge uninterruptable power supply (UPS) that is able to keep all systems operational in the event of a power failure.
The Onside production centre also serves as a MCR (Master Control Room) for all of Sweden’s football matches, both for live broadcast and recording. Sometimes this simply means accommodating an OB truck and transmitting its output, but it can require graphics to be inserted and an audio mix to be added before transmission – which can all be handled within the production center. Everything the center handles is also recorded for possible editing for use in weekly highlight programmes and for archiving.
The stadium’s opening was marked with a show by famous film director Colin Nutley, entitled Svenska Ögonblick (Swedish Moments), which attracted a live audience of a crowd of 46,000 people and was watched live by 1,700,000 on TV.
More: www.lawo.de
