Dedicated Internet Connectivity for one of the world's most high-profile broadcasters.
The 2011 MTV Europe Music Awards (EMAs) were held in Belfast, on Sunday, November 6, 2011, at the Odyssey Arena in the Titanic Quarter, additional live venues for the awards show included Ulster Hall and Belfast City Hall. It is estimated that the Awards generated £25m for the local economy and that it received coverage from over 130 media organisations from around the world, 8,000 room nights were booked by MTV across 40 hotels for guests, crew and artists. 2,399 media articles were released in relation to the awards, 33,500 attended Belfast Music Week, and there were more than 170 gigs across 45 venues over the course of the week. Worldwide it is estimate 1.2 billion people watched the awards. This really was an immense gig!
With so much publicity it was imperative that Belfast was portrayed in its best light including high capacity and resilient connectivity for streaming of the show and Internet access for the whole entourage, from artists, producers, to the media to get their stories out worldwide.
Tibus provided a managed service to provide all Internet traffic and allow MTV, performers and media to stream content live across the world, specialist links were configured for the VIP reception tent . Tibus worked very closely with the MTV Networks and Digital Media teams for over 6 weeks prior to the show for pre-event preparation. The test plans were agreed with the MTV Networks team weeks in advance, such was the planning these were relatively straightforward to work through when their teams arrived on the Wednesday before show night. Barring a small last minute configuration change, this all went smoothly and we were ready! Our preparation work was effectively complete late on Thursday 3rd November.
On Sunday 6th our biggest challenge was ensuring that our in-arena technical team could traverse the security cordons without issue. As one might imagine, security was watertight – event security, police security and then the various VIP security too. When we got our engineer into the arena it was a question of last minute testing for dress rehearsals and sound-checks...and then waiting.
Everything went extremely well – we monitored the Internet streams minute by minute and regularly confirmed with the MTV technical team. The preparation paid off and we got a great thumbs-up from their guys after the show. There really is no substitute for being on-site and being available. Our guys had a different ‘show experience’ than the audience; staring at laptop screens and looking at technical stats was ever-so-slightly less glamorous than enjoying the buzz and VIP hospitality backstage. But we wouldn’t have had it any other way and were proud to be an integral part of what was an extremely successful MTV EMA show.
Darren Monksfield, Project Director
