Avaya Stadium

Design and Integration of Professional Sports Replay and Broadcast Facility Delivers Big Impact for MLS Team

Avaya Stadium is the new purpose-built stadium in San Jose, California for Major League Soccer’s (MLS) San Jose Earthquakes. Diversified designed and integrated the video replay control room to feed the large Daktronics displays and to serve as the production center for other events at the stadium. With extensive experience in building sports-venue control rooms, Diversified made the cost-saving decision to situate the control room at ground level near the truck dock. This allowed easy direct connections between mobile broadcast trucks and the control room, saving the client money in cabling.

Diversified exercised “value engineering” to produce the best equipment/system solution for the budget. The integration consisted of:

• Sony MVS-3000 production switcher: this small-to-mid range switcher ended up being the pivotal piece in this project because it contained an input board that enabled 8 external feeds to be referenced to the control room, eliminating the need for a separate device to perform this function. This switcher also brought truck dock signals in as sources, and since the build didn’t allow for many cameras, its ability to lock those signals was a cost savings as there was no need for external frame sync devices.
• Sony cameras and monitoring: The budget constraint lead Diversified to go with more industrial level cameras which in the end worked to an advantage as it gave the Earthquakes an adequate two-camera solution to complement the broadcast feeds from the truck dock.
• NewTek 3Play replay server for slow motion and instant replay was a very economical server choice, with performance that met all the needs of the team.
• Click Effects CrossFire unit was used as a clip server, providing the ability to put real-time data over top of the video replay or use for sponsorship.
• Additional equipment included a Daktronics video show control system for event control, Midasaudio mixer and Evertz terminal gear.

The Earthquakes team is pleased with how Diversified managed the project, especially the expert value engineering. Diversified delivered on time, with installation, vendor commissioning, and training completed prior to the Quakes’ first event. The Quakes now have a professional sports replay and broadcast facility—helping to create an exciting and exceptional fan experience.