League of Legends, a popular multiplayer online battle arena game, hosted its 2017 Brazilian finals on 1-2 September 2017 at the Mineirinho Arena, to a live audience of 8,000, broadcasted live on ESPN in Brazil. Audio supplier Gabisom were on hand to ensure the gamers aural experience would match its intensity, trusting a DiGiCo console as their weapon of choice.
For the large-scale, multi-facted production, Gabisom was tasked with providing the entire audio system, including the OB truck. Wanting to be equipped with the most flexible solution possible, they chose a combination of three DiGiCo SD7s – one at Front of House, one at monitors for the opening ceremony and one in the broadcast truck – and 2 DiGiCo SD10s at monitors for the gaming element of the event, all running on an Optocore fibre loop, with an L-Acoustics K1 and K2 system used for the main PA and outfills.
“For the opening ceremony, there was a live band and a lot of video mapping,” explained Eder Moura, system engineer for Gabisom. “For this, we used the 3 SD7s with 2 SD Racks, for each SD7, with the FOH console utilising 120 channels, monitors 96 channels/24 mixes and the broadcast truck, which was parked 200m from the monitor position, another 96 channels.
“48 channels were used for the live element of the opening ceremony, with an additional 46 channels for playback. Some of these were used for the band and others just for back up because it was a live broadcast. Playback was from FOH and we had to split this for both the monitor and broadcast consoles. At FOH we received 46 channels via MADI from the playback to give us the inputs we needed. We then copied the audio to the FOH stage rack outputs, and from there to the main splitter to feed the monitor and broadcast consoles. From the broadcast truck, we received 16 channels from FOH through the Comms sends for the TV hosts, reporters and for audio from the gaming computers, plus a few other bits.”
Full redundancy was required for the gaming section of the event, so 2 DiGiCo SD10s, each with its own SD Rack, received audio from the gaming computers, plus player, referee and coach communications. From there, outputs were sent to the broadcast team to provide them with the gaming audio.
“The production company in charge of League of Legends has specified DiGiCo for the past 2 years for the event,” concluded Moura. “They are fully aware of the flexibility of the consoles and the advantages that being able to connect the entire system via Optocore brings to an event such as this, which is why they specified them again this year. Their faith has certainly been rewarded and everyone was delighted with the results.”