A last-minute failure of fibre connectivity meant the production had to pivot entirely to LiveU kit for the live broadcast of the event

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Four-day mountain bike race Bara Epic Israel faced disaster one hour before the race started, with the fibre connection the production team had planned to use going down, putting the event at immediate risk of not being captured.

Instead, the event extended its use of LiveU kit, which it was already using to capture footage from remote places along very rugged routes, to cover the entire broadcast.

The event feed was sent live by a LiveU LU800 device to Sport5 in Israel. The international feed went via LiveU Matrix, a cloud video platform that enables users to share high-quality, low-latency live feeds with broadcasters around the globe.

The content was broadcast internationally and also streamed on the Epic Israel website. Sport5 covered the event for four hours per day and there was no fibre connectivity the whole time.

The units capturing the event included a LiveU LU600 on board a helicopter with a Xtender Antenna. This extended the connectivity provided with the addition of extra SIMs and an antenna array.

There were also three LU600 units on board all-terrain vehicles as well as three LU600 units used by riders on ebikes. These were connected to GoPro Hero 10 cameras.

There was also a motorcycle riding along the riders with an LU600 connected to a broadcast camera, a drone connected to an LU600, as well as an additional LU600 for redundancy and an LU800 for backup transmission. Production was carried out onsite.

The LU800 used LAN connectivity and then eight SIM cards on the output side.

The Bara Epic Israel is for teams of two riders, with more than 600 riders taking part. The race has been going for a decade so far, with the routes changing every couple of years. The stages range between 75 and 110 km per day with the challenge being to finish within the time limit.

Yuval Torbiner, broadcast producer, said: “I am very happy with LiveU and the results we achieved together. We achieved very good images from every point in the field. We were able to give our audience great coverage of the event. Working in dirt and dust for several days in a row is not good for any mechanical and electrical equipment and we had no issues with the system at all.”