By Gavril Ellison, Customer Success Manager @ Red Bee Media

 

On Saturday April 3rd, it was finally time for the first race of the first season of Extreme E, the all-electric racing circuit that takes place in the most extreme environments of our planet, aiming to bring attention to the dire effects of climate change. 

This was a ground-breaking motorsport event, and with a global fanbase Extreme E needed to bring all the live action from the Saudi Arabian desert, to screens all across the world. Red Bee made sure of this, and between April 3-4, we handled the global satellite distribution for linear broadcasters, as well as the digital distribution for their website and rights holders across the world.

Two racing cars surrounded by a cloud of dust in a rocky, sunbaked landscape.
Copyright: Sam Bloxham

 

Delivering live event services for Extreme E’s inaugural event in Saudi Arabia during Easter Weekend, was a whirlwind experience involving many of our Red Bee colleagues and partners based around the globe.

Red Bee supported Extreme E every step of the way, with detailed planning and organizing, to make sure they got the best out of the technology they had on the ground. In preparation for the start of the season, we worked with their partners week after week, to ensure a feature rich viewing experience for the global audience no matter what platform they chose to view the action on.

A car racing through a desert landscape beside towering rocks.
Copyright: Colin McMaster

 

Working closely with our satellite partner Globecast, a fully diverse satellite routing covering the globe was quickly in place. Our global support centre harnessed our AWS backbone to distribute the produced world feed and many other peripheral feeds, such as on board cameras and the ‘Command Centre’, across the internet with minimal latency. Extreme E’s own website was home to all the action too and right from day 1, race 1 there was plenty of battery powered adrenalin going out in this brand-new motorsport game changer.

Over the days of the race, Extreme E was in the good hands of our Live Event Operations team, who provided a support and communications link between all the diverse and moving parts of the Extreme E organisation. This included managing trackside client updates, production centre communications, uplink sites and ongoing rights holder management. Our team made sure to provide professional guided service delivery, to make sure we created a stress-free environment where Extreme E could focus on the production of this ground-breaking race. 

We’re looking forward to being a part delivering all the races to people around the globe, from now until December!