TVU Networks provided the transmission infrastructure supporting HBS across a major international football event, with 130+ field packs, 52 channels running from 13 servers, beauty-camera connectivity across 16 venue cities, and an on-site team embedded at the International Broadcast Center in Dallas.
More than 130 field packs, 13 servers and connectivity for every venue’s beauty camera — deployed across three host countries, with a TVU team embedded at the International Broadcast Center for the tournament’s full two-month run.
Staging a major international football tournament across three countries is a logistics problem before it is a broadcast one. For the 2026 edition of the tournament, the appointed Host Broadcaster Host Broadcast Services (HBS) needed a transmission layer that could stretch from coast-to-coast and across borders, and keep every venue’s live signal flowing back to production for two uninterrupted months. It ran that operation on TVU Networks‘ transmission infrastructure, scaled specifically to match the tournament’s continental footprint.
The core of the deployment sat inside the International Broadcast Center in Dallas, where 13 TVU servers carried the tournament’s live signal in a quad configuration for the first time. Running four channels per server pushed total capacity to 52 channels, from roughly a quarter of the hardware footprint the same job would once have demanded. For an operation measured in rack space, power and cooling, that kind of consolidation is the difference between a server room and a server hall.
Reach mattered as much as density. TVU distributed more than 130 transmission packs across all three host countries, linking venues, camera positions and international feeds back to HBS’s production. As coverage scaled toward the semifinal and final host cities, TVU supplied and shipped additional packs to keep pace with the expanding footprint, delivering them in time and without disrupting the rest of the live network — one of several points across the run where the deployment flexed to match the operation’s evolving needs.
Some of the most visible payoff came from above the action. HBS installed 16 “beauty cameras” across the venue cities, the wide skyline shots that set the scene between plays, and TVU supplied the connectivity for every one. Many sat on rooftops and other hard-to-reach vantage points where a stable signal is anything but a given. All 16 held a clean signal for the length of the tournament.
Matching an operation this size wasn’t only a question of reach; it meant fitting into systems already in place. HBS runs its commentary and IFB audio over Dante, the audio-networking protocol used widely across the broadcast industry. Rather than ask HBS to bend its workflow to TVU’s, TVU integrated Dante directly into its own transmission ecosystem for the tournament, so its network plugged straight into HBS’s existing audio chain.
That same fit-to-the-customer approach played out on the ground. A TVU team was embedded at the IBC in Dallas for the full two months of operations, working inside HBS’s logistics rather than at arm’s length — the kind of on-site presence that let the deployment adapt in real time as production needs shifted throughout the tournament.
“This was one of the biggest deployments we’ve run for a single event — servers, packs and people, spread across three countries, for two straight months. We had more than 130 packs in the field, and as the operation scaled up for the semifinal and final host cities, we got the extra units there in time. That’s the job: wherever the request lands, TVU shows up and performs.” — Halid Hatic, VP of Media Services, TVU Networks
The transmission network adds to TVU’s wider role in HBS’ deliverables at the event , which also includes the cloud production architecture behind Match Buddy, HBS’s new mosaic-stream format for media partners.