TV coverage of El Clásico presented

Mediapro – the company producing TV coverage of this Saturday’s big game- presented their plans for the match at the Camp Nou today during an event attended by Andoni Zubizarreta and Emilio Butragueño.

The event was held at the Museu del FC Barcelona, where the Real Madrid Director of Institutional Relations, Emili Butragueño spoke via a TV link from the Santiago Bernabéu.

Mediapro will be using more than 300 professionals for their coverage, with an expected audience of about 400 million viewers.

Mediapro presented their coverage of this Saturday’s game against Real Madrid at the Club Museum this Monday . The event was attended by Barça’s Director of Professional Football Andoni Zubizarreta, accompanied by the Spanish commentators Axel Torres and Josep Maria Déu, as well as Real Madrid’s Director of Institutional Relations, Emilio Butragueño, who spoke by direct video link from Madrid.

Mediapro will be rolling out an impressive array of technological and human resources, with more than 300 people working in 10 mobile units – one of which is a 3D unit- and a total of 34 cameras, 12 of which will be at pitchside. There will also be a High Speed unit –to view action too fast for the human eye- a Steadycam, for dead ball situations- and a Beauty, for aerial views of the Stadium. The coverage will also use the Epsio application to allow lines to be drawn across the image of the pitch to adjudge offside decisions.

For the first time ever on a broadcast game, coverage will also use the stat analysis tool MediaCoach, an application widely used by managers in the Spanish League.

Andoni Zubizarreta stressed the importance of Saturday’s game: “this is the only chance we have to guarantee we take three points and Madrid drop three. I hope we can continue our run of good results against Real Madrid at our ground and with our fans behind us”. Zubizarreta also commented on the importance of this Wednesday’s Champions League game at Stamford Bridge, which he reckons will be “ a good preparation for Saturday - this is a week of high voltage games!”.

Emilio Butragueño was full of praise for Barça: “they have hardly any weak points and are a formidable team with a lot of different resources. Their players have a global view of the game and a lot of that is down to Guardiola’s fantastic work”. Butragueño also warned though: “whatever happens on Saturday, the league will still not be over”.

A Global Event

The importance of this Saturday’s game in the context of this year’s league title has really awoken interest in the game across the world and the game will be broadcast across all the five continents, with an estimated global audience of 400 million viewers. Mediapro will also be producing a special 3D signal for distribution. (via FCBarcelona.com)